Ten years ago, the Butterfly Knights saved the world. That was the easy part.
A magical girl story.
A magical girl story.
🦋 Team Butterfly Forever 🦋
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🦋 Prologue & Chapter 1: Happily Ever After
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Once upon a time, a girl received a piece of enchanted jewellery from a talking cat. By holding it aloft and saying the magic words, she would enter a cocoon of sound and starlight, and emerge remade into a creature of beauty and power.
She could have been any girl, but this girl's name was Eve.
Eve didn't think she was special. She didn't think she was cool, smart, brave, or pretty, nor confident or clever. In fact, she thought she simply wasn't the kind of girl who got a secret magical destiny, which is of course what every girl with a secret magical destiny thinks.
After making sure the cat didn't have the wrong person, she pushed up her glasses, wrapped the chain around her hand so she wouldn't drop it, and raised it above her head. She said, as clearly as she could around her braces, "For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
It took her a second run to pronounce 'kaleidoscope', but she got it.
The world fell away into the embrace of a dizzying storm of magic. In the dancing, ever-changing light, she was clad in raiment and ribbon, silk and steel, pleats and plate. A phantom wind combed through her hair as she spun to the swelling notes of a personal orchestra, weaving herself into the twisting and transforming bolts of cloth. The wings fluttered against her skin, guiding her into a delicate pirouette, until her outstretched hand touched the scabbard of a sword, descending to meet her. Her fingers closed around the handle and she clutched it against her chest.
In a world of light, it was heavy.
When the maelstrom faded, Eve was gone. In her place was a knight, of haunting brilliance and ethereal grace. They may have shared a face and voice and mind, but no one could mistake one for the other. The cat told her that she had become the beautiful Butterfly Ward, a being of such divine elegance that she could walk on blades of grass and leave them unbowed.
She still slipped and fell out her bedroom window, landing in a clatter of steel plate, but she was quick to point out that the grass was no worse for wear.
The cat guided Butterfly Ward through the night, telling her the secrets of the world. He was a messenger from the future, sent by the wise and benevolent Butterfly Queen to ensure Her own ascension and to protect the world from that which might harm it. He explained that Ward was one of Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights, sworn protectors of all that is good and true, and through service and sacrifice, a Heaven on Earth, the Eternal Realm, would be secured.
Butterfly Ward listened very patiently, and then asked why the Butterfly Queen got to be Queen. The cat explained that She was the wisest and most loving person in all the world. Butterfly Ward said she got that part, but then asked how many people voted for her. Well, nobody, said the cat. She was queen, after all, but if there were elections then surely Her Majesty would-
There has to be elections, Butterfly Ward protested. This is America. Are you a terrorist?
Not for the last time, the cat sighed, and rubbed his face with a tiny paw.
Such lightly treasonous inquiries were gracefully put aside by Her Majesty's loyal servant to focus on the mission at hand. Deep in the city, hidden in plain sight, a demonic being was raising a crystal shrine that would attune itself to the suffering and want of the material plane. This would thin the veil between worlds so other, more terrible servants of the Dark Queen could emerge.
Hold on, Butterfly Ward protested. There are two queens? Maybe they could run for election against one another, to make things fair. The cat protested that the Dark Queen was a being of pure malice and spite that would do nothing but bring ruin to the realm and all beyond it. Butterfly Ward said that was a normal part of democracy. In a stroke of dazzling brilliance, the cat suggested that perhaps she might consider striking this blow for justice and peace a ballot in Her Majesty's favour. Butterfly Ward inquired about third parties, but was convinced of the folly of throwing away her vote.
The two arrived at the location of the foul ritual, a desolate husk whose crumbling edifice bore the impression of once-prominent signage, declaring it to have once been the local Tower of Records. Butterfly Ward explained grimly that it once served the community proudly, before being sacked by the fell Kazaa. Such injustices were just a prelude to the current crime, for lurking behind the fading signage was the silhouette of one of the Dark Queen's demonic servants, slipping into the shadows.
At the instruction of Her Majesty's most devoted feline retainer, Butterfly Ward raised her arm, summoning forth her shield, and bravely charged through the doors, the crystal glass shattering with her passage. She demanded the demon present arms and remain silent, a respectable challenge, one met with a swipe of the creature's twisted, ever-changing claws. The razor fingers tore through the shelves of silver discs and scattered off her shield in a hail of sparks, sending Butterfly Ward to crash headfirst through a table.
Stunned by the temerity of this awful creature, that it would dare strike a servant of the Queen, Butterfly Ward reached for her sword, but was unable to free it from her scabbard. The cat explained that the sword was no ordinary blade, but the Razor of Time, whose edge could part worlds, and which would not be drawn except at the crossroads of destiny.
A less principled storyteller would declare that Butterfly Ward accepted this with grace and rose to meet the threat with joy in her heart. The truth, however, is that behind the shield, under the armour, there was a scared girl who had never been in a fight. A monster was looming over her, and the sword that hung heavy on her hip was stuck fast. The creature drove its claws into the shield, and the tiles cracked under her from the weight of the blows.
Butterfly Ward wept. She begged the cat for aid, and begged the creature for mercy. But there was no aid that could be rendered by a cat, and no mercy to be found in the monster. Its fanged maw pressed over the top of her shield, and she shoved it away with all her strength, greater than she knew. It sailed through the air and crashed into the wall, and Butterfly Ward staggered to her feet.
She ran, and did not stop until she was safe in bed.
As many had before her, Eve tried to flee her fate, and as in all those cases, fate would not be deterred. She tried to throw the necklace away, but it always found its way back to her bedside table. She hid it away to forget about it, but always felt it weighing on her neck. No tool in her father's workshop could score it, no fire in her mother's kitchen would melt it.
And all the while, suffering spread as a blight, as the Realm of Shadow intruded on the material. The cause was invisible to mortal eyes, but the effects were manifest, in nightmares, disease, and ill omens. The city took sick around her as demons stalked the streets, draining the vitality of the world.
On the fifth day, she asked the cat if this was her fault for running. The cat shook his head. It was his fault, for not preparing her. She asked to be prepared; she was scared, but she could not stand by while people were hurting. She dried her tears, donned the armour once more, and strode into battle. She braced her shield between the oncoming evil and the people of the city, and though she still feared, and though she sometimes wept, she met each challenge as they came, and with each triumph she stood taller.
Despite the tireless efforts and ceaseless reminders of her feline advisor, she showed the necklace to her most dear companion; to her credit, she withheld its purpose, boasting only of its luster. Isn't it pretty, Kimmy? she asked. That girl stole into her parent's bedroom the next night, and retrieved the necklace's twin from her mother's jewellery box, dotted with rubies. That night, Butterfly Sage joined the fight, entangling evil in the strands of fate, weaving the heartstrings of friend and foe.
New allies joined them. The brilliant Butterfly Spark, mistress of the elements, and the brave Butterfly Heart, of unmatched strength, were recognized in their humble guises and gifted their necklaces. Her Majesty's bodyguard herself, already hardened from years of battle, emerged from the shadows as Butterfly Shine, pledging herself to Butterfly Ward and the cause of justice. Together, they were invincible.
The Shadow Realm sent forth more terrible beasts, but none were as terrible as their Princes. Mortal men pledged to the Dark Queen in exchange for dark power, they slipped easily into positions of power and directed demonic forces to tear apart the city in search of the Butterfly Knights. But the material world had a champion of its own, the mysterious Prince Rose, who crossed sabres with his fell counterparts in aid of the Knights.
As was fated, it was love at first sight for Rose and Ward, their souls finding connection across eternity. When he left her to seek deeper truths in the Lower Realms, she was moved to such despair that she took on the mantle of Shadow Butterfly, and came very close to tearing the world asunder with her grief. It was only the tender and radiantly platonic love of her very close companion Sage that averted disaster, as she was pulled from the brink by friendship's kiss.
For two years, the Butterfly Knights fought back the darkness, and stranger things besides. The future, the past, and the endless void sent forth malefactors and disaster, and they met each in turn with growing power and confidence. Ward's empathy grew into a sixth sense, Sage wove her strings into a bow, Heart bent the crash of thunder to her will, Shine wove illusions so convincing they took on a life of their own, and Spark learned her mastery of the elements extended to the many discovered since the legends were written.
Things got a little out of control after that last one. Perhaps there is a reason that nature does not normally allow fifteen year olds to transmute matter into antimatter at will. There was a period of about a month where villains couldn't even get through their speeches before the air in their lungs was alchemically transformed into substances with names like 'fluoroantimonic acid'. Not to besmirch the wisdom and bravery of Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights, but it was frankly a little unsporting.
It would appear their foes agreed, for the final seasons of their battles were more desperate and cruel than any before. Their enemies discarded any honour they had remaining, holding hostage the people of the land, striking from the shadows, even targeting the family of the Knights. Not even the intervention of the wayward Knights Errant, Butterfly Echo and Butterfly Veil, could spare the city and its defenders, and ground was lost.
As the forces of the enemy grew ever-stronger, the Butterfly Knights undertook a dangerous journey to the future. I need not tell Her Majesty what transpired, except to say that the insight and power She granted in that brief visit stunned and humbled all present, filling them with great resolve for the hardship to come. All, save for their wise advisor of course, were shocked by the revelation that Butterfly Ward was herself destined to become the Butterfly Queen; he knew from the moment he saw her owing to the immaculate radiance already evident in her bearing even then.
Then, on a clear summer day, the Dark Queen put her final plan in motion. She came to the material realm in person, having remade herself with a blade of purest nightmares driven through her heart. She emerged through the great golden gates of the city as the Anathema of Life, a colossal beast whose gaze could still hearts and bring ruin, and her armies poured through the weeping wound in reality. Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights made a brave stand at the gates, and gave a good account. They felled the foul invaders in their hundreds, preserved life as they could and took it as was required, but step by step they were forced back as the very fabric of the world began to unravel.
The Knights Errant perished in a rearguard action, holding their ground while others fled. Butterfly Spark was struck down by the last of the Dark Princes, crashing through the great pyramid in the city's center; Prince Rose bested the man soon after, but was himself struck a lethal blow. Butterfly Sage pushed aside Heart as the Anathema turned its gaze upon her; Heart was gravely wounded, her leg becoming ash in an eyeblink, but such was Sage's indomitable will that she survived seconds longer, blowing away in the wind as Shine held her. As the Dark Queen descended from her throne in the heart of the void, Shine, gravely wounded, gave her final defiant effort, six sharp reports of a mortal weapon, for all others had been expended.
It was then that Butterfly Ward placed her shield in the path of the Anathema's gaze, and it was then, only then, that she drew her sword. With one blow, the Razor of Time severed the stolen Strands of Fate that bound the Anathema to the Dark Queen, with the next, she removed a grasping claw that had sought to grip the world, and with the third, she shattered the void itself, and the Anathema faded into nothing.
As the Dark Queen fell to her knees, defeated, Butterfly Ward commanded her to yield. The Dark Queen spurned her mercy and told her to strike true, doubting she could truly be extended a second chance. Ward declared that she could, as any would, if she would take it.
The Dark Queen was silent for some time. Then she said that there could be no second chances, not for one like her, and with a heavy heart, Butterfly Ward brought the sword down, parting the veil between worlds. The Dark Queen was banished back into the shattered lands of the Realm of Shadows, and the world was free.
Then, taking up the broken Strands of Fate, Butterfly Ward rewove them as Sage had taught her, remaking the world to be as it was. She restored to life all who had perished, and mended what she could with the frayed cord. Her Prince Rose joined her in the task, and then her Sage, and many hands made quick work. Not all the damage could be undone, not all wounds could be healed, but much that would have been lost was saved.
As night fell, Butterfly Ward faded away, and there was Eve. She was tired, and scared, but she dried her tears. Her Prince and her Sage were with her. She embraced them, and begged them both to stay with her, that her heart could not bear the cruel choice between them. Both tried to leave for the sake of the other; both chose to stay for Eve.
As they watched the stars come out over the darkened streets of the broken city, as the long summer faded into autumn, Eve was, at last, at peace.
And they lived happily ever after.
"You're pre-approved to feel good about your financial choices!"
You unfolded the page and skimmed over the form letter. Dear Ms. Nakamura, blah blah, minimum payments, you are responsible for, we will pursue collection efforts… you skipped ahead to the bit that mattered at the bottom, hoping very much for a number of digits you could handle.
Ah. Three. Three digits. That was two more digits than you were really hoping for.
It wasn't a disaster, you did have savings, though in reality that was just money you were not shovelling into your student loans so you could feel a little better when you checked the balance of your accounts. It was just another thing you didn't need after a long day of classes and before a long day of job-hunting. Fully aware that if you put the letter back in the envelope, it would disappear from your brain and you'd carry on obliviously until another letter with a bigger number arrived, you clutched the paper, stepped up to the door, and promptly failed to find your keys.
Placing the letter in your teeth, you fished around in your purse, shuffling around the strata of faded receipts, tangled earbuds, dried up Sparkle Beacon pens, and months-old Muni tickets. You did find a key, but it unlocked the Gates of Eternity or… something like that. Maybe the Vault of Dreams? No, that had a combination, you had that written down somewhere…
Dejected, you reached for the doorbell, then stopped. Somewhere in the apartment above, you felt Amara set down the half-filled kettle and pick up her buzzing phone, and you didn't want to interrupt.
"Hello? Yeah, it's Amara. Right, no, I did call earlier, it's about the documentation for the legacy bridge protocols. Yeah, the problem is it doesn't work. No, I know it's one of your listed functions, I'm telling you it's a listed function that doesn't. Okay, talk to your guy. Yeah, I'll be in the office all day. Talk to you then." She hung up the phone with a frown, briefly considered throwing it through the window, then slipped it back into her housecoat pocket.
You let her put the kettle on, then pressed Apartment #2's doorbell lightly to no effect. You gave it another, more forceful jab, and this time the muffled sound of the chime was just audible. The door opened almost instantly, and there was Amara, leaning against the doorframe with one eyebrow raised. Somehow, in her housecoat and with a bit of electrolysis-defying stubble, she still looked unimaginably cool.
"Forget your keys?" she teased. You opened your mouth to protest and the letter fell out of your mouth, fluttering pathetically to the ground between you. "Oh."
"Yeah, we missed a payment or something," you groaned. "And I think I missed my meds today, my brain is goo. The two things may be related. What's a legacy bridge protocol and why are you being called about it?"
"You were evesdropping? It's, uh… well, what it is appears to be a feature that got cancelled without anyone telling their manager. The tea's already on, let's get some caffeine in you if nothing else," she suggested, leaning down to pluck up the paper and sighing. "Fuck. This one's my bad, I think I turned off the automatic payments this month when I switched stuff up for rent."
"Yeah, but you only had to do that because I lost my job…" You sighed and followed her up the narrow, creaky stairs to your apartment, then stopped at your door as Amara padded her housecoat pockets ineffectually.
"Ah. Well, you don't have to feel bad about forgetting your keys, because you're not alone. Could you..?" She made a little motion with her finger, and you dutifully turned around and stepped down a few steps. There was a soft gust of air and a faint floral smell, and then you heard the door unlock from the inside. Amara opened the door, looking sheepish, and gave a dramatic sweep of her hand.
"And you shouldn't feel bad about the job either! You're not personally responsible for the bookstore going out of business," she reminded you. You nodded in reluctant agreement and staggered inside, kicking your shoes off into the undifferentiated pile of footwear on the mat and making a beeline for the ratty couch at the back of the room, stepping carefully around the half-reassembled computer tower Amara continuously assured you she'd finish one of these weeks and successfully avoiding stepping on any poinky little bits this time. You threw your purse and bookbag onto the cushions and collapsed after them, an action which had felt appropriate in the moment but mostly just smushed your glasses into your face.
"I knooooow. It still sucks," you complained, wiggling upright and pulling your phone out of your pocket. You stared a moment at your knockoff phone case, stylized representations of the Butterfly Knights posing together on a background of stars, then turned it over and tapped in your code as the kettle began to whistle. You stared at the menu uselessly through the fresh smudges on your glasses, disappointed by a lack of texts (discounting the one from Nancy Pelosi asking for your money for the midterms). You tapped to send a text, failed to think of something that wouldn't be annoying, and tapped over to your emails to confirm the utter lack of job offers.
You considered getting up to run your glasses under the tap, rationalized that your brain would make them invisible in a few minutes anyway, and began scrolling Instagram pointlessly, which handily consumed the time until Amara set a mug of tea on the coffee table and settled in next to you, a telltale smile on her lips.
"They're making a movie about us," she informed you, clearly waiting for you to have taken a sip, but you were wise to her games and only spilled a little.
"Actually this time? Who is this they, and do you think they can send me a royalty check?" you asked, already knowing the answer. You couldn't exactly go around compromising your secret identity for stuff like that; if there was some rogue Dark Prince or something still hanging around, you had absolutely no illusions that they wouldn't immediately mail you magic anthrax or a very literal glitter bomb.
"No idea. Joss Whedon's involved in some capacity and they've announced a cast," she said. You tapped in a search, already bracing yourself.
"Cool. What's the odds I'm being played by some white lady who- Jennifer Lawrence??!" you exclaimed, nearly dropping your phone.
"Yep."
"I was kidding! Like I know how the transformation works but… it doesn't make you blind, right? How?" You scrolled further and were relieved to see that at least they got Jamie Chung for Butterfly Sage, thus marginally reducing the odds of Kimiyo turning the Warner Brothers lot into a mass casualty event. "Wait, how are they going to do an origin story when they don't know our origins?"
"I guess they're going to make it up. At least it's something to talk about on the team call tonight, right?" Amara commented, sipping her tea and scrolling on her phone. "Aww, it looks like they're going with the alien invasion theory for the storyline."
"It's Wednesday?" you said stupidly. No, it was obviously Wednesday, morning classes, that's why the call was today. You stared across the apartment at your meds, the little white bottle of ritalin resting exactly where you forgot them this morning. Too late to take them now, you had class early tomorrow morning.
"It is. Also, how can you see anything? Gimme," Amara demanded, and you forked your glasses over and blinked as the world suddenly became a lot more blurry.
"My hero," you joked, though you very much meant it. The Amara-shaped blur moved to her computer desk as you held your phone right up against your face, continuing to hold it there until you realized that it was, in fact, the photo that was artfully out of focus. You scrolled on a little and found yourself somewhere in April, which you could tell because your feed was wall-to-wall pictures Kimiyo had taken of the cherry blossoms.
Amara returned with your glasses, and the world snapped into 1080p all at once, which was nearly as disorienting as removing your glasses had been.
"My God, it's full of clutter. How do we live like this?" you remarked, staring around at the now very visible layer of dust that had settled on much of the room. Kimiyo's little art table in particular looked like it had just been discovered in a crypt.
"It's not that bad," Amara said, looking around. "...It is that bad. We should probably pick up sometime this week."
You groaned and stretched, fetching your laptop and succeeding in opening several ongoing assignments without actually making any progress on any of them. You were so very close to being done, being free after five years with two whole degrees to show for it, but the run-up to the finish line was a slog. There were days, mostly unmedicated ones like today, when you questioned why you were doing this; surely the whole point of being Queen was that you didn't have to be qualified. They weren't going to take the crown away because your GPA fell under 3.5 or you couldn't remember how instrumental variable regression worked; if somebody tried that you could wave your hand and go "We tire of this, take him away."
Then again, you still had no idea how or when you'd actually become Butterfly Queen of the Eternal Realm, and you needed to pay rent until then. It was increasingly looking like you were at least going to have to manage the minimum payments until whatever vague future event made you into The Universally Beloved Monarch of Everything Forever; at that point your student loan plan hinged on forgiving all debts upon ascension, followed by a few centuries in some kind of crystal oubliette for the Sallie Mae board of directors.
That last part was a joke, just one you made a little louder every time you got an installment reminder. At this point you were fairly certain the Dark Queen got where she was because the antique IRS was on her about her tithe returns. Maybe her indulgence premiums kept going up for showing ankle at the cathedral. Dear Ms. Your Vile Magnificence, our collection agents have been trying to reach you about overdue chariot payments and we're coming to repossess your horse…
"Are you okay?" Amara asked.
"No…" you admitted, shutting your laptop and flopping back against the couch, trying to sink as deep into the cushions as you could. "I can't focus. I hate forgetting my meds, it's like trying to think uphill. Sometimes I wish I still had that prissy little magic cat telling me what to do."
"You hated that," Amara reminded you.
"Yeah, but I hate this too! I should probably be applying for job stuff but I sort of want to just wait until I graduate so I don't have to open my cover letter with all the times I can't work."
"We have savings, that's not unreasonable," Amara pointed out. "I'm not going to say I can single-handedly pay for everything indefinitely, but at the very least we'll survive until Kimiyo gets back and we're splitting the rent three ways again."
"You're right, but that feels like a lazy excuse," you retorted. You could tell it was a line of thinking you couldn't indulge, simply because it felt so very alluring. Once you started giving yourself excuses like that again, you wouldn't stop.
"First off, you have exams in, what, two weeks? That's as good a reason to stay unemployed a while as I can think of. And secondly… you saved the world once or twice, I think you're entitled to a few lazy excuses."
"I'll sign that on the next rent check," you groaned, then stopped. "Which you handle. And it's online. Okay, you win." You picked yourself up off the couch and made your way to the kitchen, wetting a cloth. If you couldn't focus on your schoolwork and you didn't have it in you to job-hunt, at the very least you could do something about the dust.
You started with Kimiyo's art desk, each swipe of the cloth revealing a much brighter and more saturated surface than you'd remembered and leaving a tangled, dark mess of dust bunnies on the cloth. You tried rinsing it out to little effect, then just dumped it into the sink to soak and grabbed another. The next victim of your cleanliness rampage was the rickety little second-hand table beside the door, where you discovered your forgotten keys, lying in plain sight, the butterfly charm mocking you. You pocketed the keys and began scrubbing, moving aside the pile of forgotten winter gloves, pamphlets, and a dusty rag you surmised had been left there after your previous abortive dusting spree.
You remembered what was lurking behind it all at the same time you uncovered it. A photo, the only photograph you had of everyone, together, in their everyday clothes, taken by a kind bystander in Golden Gate Park with Kimiyo's camera as you all waited for the celestial alignment that would allow you to travel into the future. You were sitting in the middle, blinking behind your glasses, clearly still exhausted from having to get up early. You were wearing that cute green top that unfortunately didn't fit anymore and those ridiculously bulky boots that were fortunately mouldering in the closet at your parent's place.
There was Kimiyo beside you, a black blouse and skinny jeans and boots with way too many buckles, black lipstick and hair that looked like a mess but you knew took her forever to get right. You were holding hands, it was just visible between you in the picture. She'd only gotten prettier.
Beside you both was Andy, perched proudly on the bench. Anyone looking at the picture would probably just think that an outdoor Birman cat had wandered into the shot, but to you the very distinct sapience and accompanying smug aura was visible even in still life. He was posing for the camera and hamming it up, cute little guy.
Brigid was staring directly at the camera with the kind of focus that would be intimidating if you didn't know she was just a little confused on the concept of group photos; her red hair was still long back then, puffed up in wild curls that framed her head all wrong. A book was folded on her lap, the cover not visible in the photo, though you imagined it was something about super-advanced quantum biology or whatever other field she'd decided to master that week.
Riley was unmistakable, and not just because she towered over all of you. A streak of green in her blonde hair, denim vest festooned with pins and patches that turned it into a riot of colour in the little photo. Her girlfriend at the time, Vanessa or something? Was in the shot, having absolutely no idea that she was in the presence of the world's best (and only) team of magical superheroes.
And beside her, fingers extended over Brigid's head, was Esmé. You looked on quickly.
Tracy and Lyra were lurking at the corner of the shot, ever so slightly in shadow, somehow blending in with the background despite Tracy's white suit jacket and Lyra's bright red dress. They'd looked so cool at the time; now they looked like exactly what they were, seventeen year olds who'd stolen several million dollars and were attempting to wear all of it.
And at the very back of the group, looking away from the camera, was Amara. She was distant at the time because of tensions in the group, but it felt appropriate. This was a version of her that should appear in photographs only reluctantly. She still had that grey sports jacket, but whereas now it made her look dashing, in this photo it made her depressingly square, like it was the walls of a prison cell. It didn't help that this was right after she'd cut her hair really short. She still looked good, she looked amazing, but she didn't look happy.
You set the photo down as your phone buzzed in your pocket, your fifteen minute reminder reminding you that in fifteen minutes you'd get a reminder to start the Skype call. You made a few more ineffectual swipes at the dust, set the cloth down on the table, and headed back into the living room. You considered grabbing your laptop and heading to the comfort of bed, but once you were cozy in bed, you might not want to get back up. You went to drink your tea, but it had gone cold.
You spent that time staring at the clock in the corner of your screen as it ticked over, the group chat open. Spark and Sage were already online. You waited patiently, tapping your foot against the leg of the coffee table, then at four o'clock exactly you hit the Call button. Boop-boop, boop-boop, boop-bo-
Brigid was the first to pick up, though she resolved as three blurry, dark stills before her voice came through and the image stabilized. It was midnight in England, though that alone didn't explain the low light levels; it looked like she was lit almost exclusively by the computer screen. She was ghostly pale, dark circles under her eyes, clearly run ragged, but you'd begun to suspect that wasn't all. In the still frames of her jittery connection, her usually intense stare was often unfocused, like she wasn't quite present.
Before you could say hi and maybe bring her back to this realm, Kimiyo picked up. You waited for her image to appear, but after a few seconds of black she hung up and called again. This time you saw her, framed against the window of her apartment. She looked composed and elegant, even through the blurry pixels, but as usual she seemed overdressed for the occasion, like this was a business call.
"Hey you two," you said, injecting as much cheer into your voice as you could. Brigid muttered something the microphone didn't quite pick up, and Kimiyo just nodded politely. "Just waiting on Riley now."
You glanced back down at the group chat and the four offline usernames, taking a deep breath to steady yourself. Then Heart's icon turned green, and Riley joined the call. Her image was crystal-clear and steady, showing her tired smile and the waves of her blonde hair as she awkwardly sat down. The screen shook as her prosthetic leg bumped into the table.
"Hey everyone, sorry I'm late, Finn was crying because I turned on the TV after he handed me the remote, which apparently was the wrong thing to do? Who knows. Also, sorry to start with this, but did you see they're making a movie of us?" she asked. She was smiling, but the exhaustion you'd expect from a mother of two young children was coupled with a nervous energy you hopefully wouldn't. She kept glancing up over the top of the laptop, and you weren't sure if it was because she was keeping an eye on the kids or the door.
"Actually this time?" Kimiyo asked, sounding skeptical.
"So it seems," you confirmed. There was muffled clacking as everyone searched at once, and a few seconds later you just made out Kimiyo mutter something that would probably be admissible as evidence of intent in court. "Yeeeeeeah I know. On the bright side, they cast Spark like, weirdly good, she looks just like Brigid. Wait, shit, let's step back a second. How's everyone doing?"
"Super!" Riley replied automatically.
"Fine," Brigid responded, her voice small. "Just tired. You know, really busy."
"I'm doing well. Less busy than you Brigid, but it's nice," Kimiyo said, her words sounding carefully measured.
"I'm glad," you said, and tried to mean it.
"Will Amara be joining us?" Kimiyo asked, and you glanced over the top of the screen. Amara was at her computer, typing furiously at something, her tea forgotten.
"She's working. Unlike me; I'm still unemployed, so that's less than great, and exams are looming, but I think I've got this. I know it's not as big a deal as Brigid's PHD, but I'm really excited to finally be done accruing student debt and start accruing interest. How is the dissertation going, anyway?"
Brigid kept staring off into nothing for a few seconds, and as usual you weren't sure if it was the connection or her. But it seemed to land, as she blinked and nodded.
"G-good, I'm almost done. I'm just waiting for lab time for, um, to run a few numbers and then I think I'm ready to go," she said, pushing her curls out of her eyes. As the video held on a frame, you couldn't help but notice how pale she was, more than usual, and the dark marks on the back of her hand.
"Still? How long's the waiting list, it feels like it's been weeks," Riley commented. Brigid looked away from the camera, lips pursed, then shrugged.
"Processing time is in high demand, you know, I-I'm lucky I get any time at all. And I have so much to do for Professor Bennett, you know. Busy." You felt distinctly like this conversation had happened before, beat by beat, but you didn't want to press. That wasn't what these calls were for, and she seemed so delicate.
"I mean, I'm still not sure what computational neuroscience even is, other than complicated, so I'm not surprised it's taking this long," you said lightly, gently nudging the topic along. "What about you, Kimiyo? I kinda hope none of your courses are too interesting."
You weren't exactly sure why Kimiyo had decided to sign up for another round of literature classes when she'd only get two months into them, but she'd apparently gotten some inheritance over there that meant she could just throw millions of yen around on stuff like that (which was less impressive than it sounded, but was still thousands of dollars).
"Nothing particularly thrilling, no, but I'm enjoying it," she said. You groaned inwardly; why did she treat every call like she was trying to avoid incriminating herself?
"Anything in particular?" you pressed lightly, and she shrugged.
"I've been enjoying the study of linked verse poetry we're doing right now. I'd read one of my favourites, but, well, it wouldn't exactly mean much to any of you," she said dismissively.
"I mean, it'd still be cool, I might recognize a word or two?" you offered, but she just smiled. She does have the right to remain silent, you supposed. "Fair enough. Anything cool in your life, Riley?"
"Yes! We have a vacation this week!" Riley announced, sounding genuinely excited for once. You breathed a sigh of relief; at least it wasn't the All Evasion Hour. It was something to work with. "Grant got a week off work, we're all heading down to that lakeside cottage I told you about, remember the pictures?"
"That did look lovely," Kimiyo agreed. "It reminds me of that campsite we rented in senior year." As best you could recall, it wasn't much like that camp at all; this was just Kimiyo bringing up an outing that had very conspicuously included her then-girlfriend.
"Any cool plans there, neat stuff?" you inquired, trying to smooth it over before Riley had a chance to use the words 'gay phase'. Riley opened her mouth to speak, paused, then shrugged.
"I mean, there's a lake? I'm not sure, I'm sure it'll be fun," she concluded. Nevermind then. She glanced off-screen at something, then looked back quickly. "Shit. Gotta go, nice chatting!"
Her image blinked out and she went offline within seconds, and the call was left in an awkward silence.
"... it sort of sounds like her vacation is going to be more of the same, just at a lakeside cottage," Brigid observed quietly.
"I somehow doubt Grant is going to be more hands-on due to the proximity of water, yes," Kimiyo agreed darkly.
"I mean, hey, it's something," you said wearily. "I know it's… hard sometimes, having her on the call, but I don't want to lose her too." You glanced at one of the offline accounts involuntarily. Kimiyo nodded.
"I just wish she'd wake the hell up."
"Yeah…" Brigid agreed, then yawned, the sound distorted into static by the connection. "I'm really tired, is it okay if I hang up early too? I have class tomorrow…"
"I thought Thursdays was tutoring?" Kimiyo asked. Brigid shrugged.
"Yeah. That's what I meant, um…" She trailed off, shifting in the picture as she moved her hands up to the trackpad.
"Hey, let's end the call properly at least," you reminded her, and she nodded.
"Of course. Three…"
"Two…" Kimiyo supplied, slightly delay.
"One…" Normally somebody else would do it, but it had to be you.
"Team Butterfly Forever!"
They both hung up, and you just stared at their icons for a few long moments before sighing. Amara was there instantly, nudging you over and sitting.
"Rough?" she asked, and you shrugged and crumpled against her a little. Not for the first time after a team call, you felt like you were going to cry, and you clamped down on it with everything you had. Crying wasn't going to solve anything, it never did.
"I just… I dunno. I just hope stuff gets better," you said uselessly. There was a boop from your laptop; Kimiyo had sent you a message. "I miss them a lot. Especially Kimiyo."
"Yeah. I miss her too. That her?" Amara asked.
"I think she wants to do, you know… a one on one call," you said, feeling your face heat up. Amara grinned.
"Well, you need some cheering up, so go have fun. I'll put on tea, should I wait until after you're done to bring it to you?" she asked as you scooped your laptop up and headed for the bedroom.
"Babe, just bring it in. Hell, say hi for a change! I can't imagine she'll mind," you instructed, folding the laptop under your arm. Honestly, Amara was too considerate for her own good; the three of you had shared a bed for three years, this was hardly the most scandalous thing that had occurred between them.
Your apartment wasn't exactly large, but it felt especially cozy in the bedroom; you suspected that whatever builders had erected it at some nebulous point in the past had figured there'd be a twin bed in the corner, presumably next to the clothes line, spinning wheel, and gaggle of soot-stained orphans that would have come with the building at the time. By some magic you still weren't entirely versed in, the three of you had managed to fold a king-size mattress like a taco and fit it through the narrow door. You weren't sure that was a feat that could be replicated, so if you ever moved, the landlord would need to knock a wall down.
You threw yourself onto the bed, bounced slightly more than expected, just managed to avoid tumbling off the side, and somehow never let go of the laptop at any point in the proceedings. You cleared a place among the pillows and opened the laptop back up, clicking into the private chat with Kimiyo and typing a quick 'here' in the chat.
Boop-bo-
You answered the call as fast as you could, and there was Kimiyo. She hadn't moved an inch, but she looked completely different, resting her head on her hand, her smile sharp and genuine. Just the change in poise had turned her uncomfortable-looking secretary getup into the garb of a delightfully intimidating business lady.
"Hey sweetie," she said, her voice like honey even through the fuzzy connection.
"Hey! Um… so, with your Green Card cutoff coming up, this is probably going to be the last of these, huh?" you asked, not able to conceal how excited you were about that. She glanced aside, just for a moment, then nodded.
"Probably, yes. Next time it'll be in person, and you've made me so many promises since I left, haven't you?" she pointed out, drawing out those last words. Yeah you had, and she had made a fair few promises of her own that you were very looking forward to seeing fulfilled.
"God, yeah. I've really missed you," you confessed, sighing as the feelings welled up in your chest. "I've been a mess, Kimmy. It's…" Fuck, this was supposed to be Sexy Call, but feelings were intruding and you didn't know how to stop them. "Brigid's getting worse, you can see it, and Riley…"
She held up a finger, and you stopped, hands perched on the trackpad.
"I know. I don't know what to do either, but you've been trying. I…" She took a deep breath, breaking eye contact. "It won't do to dwell, you're doing as much as you can. It can't be helped."
You didn't know how to tell her that this, this distance, emotional as much as physical, was one of the things that was hurting too.
"My whole thing is helping anyway," you pointed out, and that brought a smile to her face.
"I know. It's infuriatingly endearing of you, but somebody needs to give you a break, as you can't seem to take one on your own," she said, then, with a slow and deliberate motion, she pointed her finger on the screen, and made a little figure eight motion. You felt soft cord brush against your wrists, then snap tight around your wrists, the gesture responsible playing out on screen a moment later as Kimiyo snapped her hand into a fist.
"... okay," you agreed readily, which brought a huge, goofy grin to Kimiyo's face.
"Oh my God you are hopeless. I love you so much," she said, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "How is that all…" She hooked her finger in a 'come hither' motion. "... it…" She pulled it back, and you felt a gentle tug on the cord, just enough to tighten the ropes a bit. "... takes?"
"I… I… Honestly, I think fighting all those monsters with, like, vines and wires and stuff did something to my brain," you confessed yet again, blushing furiously. Getting tied up with your own metaphorical heartstrings made it very hard not to blurt out whatever dumb shit came into your head.
"You know, that happened to all of us a bunch, but this is just you," she pointed out, gesturing upward and pulling the cord with it until your arms were behind your head.
"I-I mean, do we know that for sure? I bet Tracy's a huge rope bunny," you joked, breathing heavily. She paused.
"You know, I can see that actually," she said, sounding like she was genuinely thinking about it. "Now then, Butterfly Ward, there's nobody here to save you this time. You're all mine."
You let yourself relax as you felt new cords slip under the cuffs of your jeans, sliding slowly up your legs as Kimiyo moved her fingers.
"Oh noooo, somebody save me…" you gasped playfully, shivering in anticipation.
There was a quick knock on the door, the sound of the latch, and footsteps behind you.
"Never fear, Butterfly Ward, I'm here to bring you tea and leave you to your fate. Hi Kimiyo!" Amara said brightly, setting the cup down on the bedside table. "Bye Kimiyo!"
She walked off, and you laughed, shaking your head.
"Helpful as always. Right, where were we?" you asked, glancing up at the screen. Kimiyo looked… off. Her face danced through the shadow of several unreadable emotions, then she sighed.
"Hey, I just saw the time. I need to go, I'll see you soon, okay?" She said. "Love you."
"Love-" you responded, then the call ended. Kimiyo snapped the laptop closed and sat back, staring intensely at it, angry at something. You, Amara, herself? The feelings were too muddled for even you to read.
You came back to yourself as the ropes around your wrists frayed and came apart into nothing, the scraps disappearing as they fell away. You sat up slowly, wiping your eyes, holding in the tears. What the hell was going on?
You stayed in the room for a few long minutes, not wanting to give Amara the impression she'd ruined anything. You spent that time wistfully scrolling your old messages to her to see if you could piece together anything. There wasn't much to go on, but that was her alright; she'd opened up a lot over the last few years, with you at least, but the longer she was gone the more closed off she seemed. Hell, you used to know where she was exactly at all times, you evesdropped on her conversations without meaning to, and now it was just that, little unreadable flashes.
You closed the laptop up and headed back into the living room, curling up next to Amara on the couch. You tried to bury yourself against her chest and just forget about everything, but everything was too much to keep out of your head.
"Hey, dummy," she said affectionately. "It's gonna be okay. Just like a week or two and she's back, right?" You nodded against her chest.
"Yeah. She's gotta come back." If she didn't, she couldn't; she'd lose her residency if she stayed more than a year, and it had been forty-nine very long weeks since she'd left for her grandfather's funeral. She was only supposed to be there for three weeks or so, which had at the time felt like it was going to be an eternity, but three weeks became a month, became three months, and now it didn't even sound like she was talking to any of her family anymore but she was still there.
You understood she was grieving; you'd only met her granddad one time, when you were thirteen and had joined her for her annual summer trip, but he was warm and funny even if Kimiyo had to translate everything he said. You'd been sad to hear it and you barely knew him; it clearly hit her hard.
But there was a part of you genuinely terrified that the cutoff date would come and go, she'd still be there for reasons she wouldn't tell you, and that would be that.
"We'll meet her at the airport. We'll get flowers," Amara assured you.
"Of course you'd think of that," you teased weakly.
"Hey, I still have my supplier's number. Unless he's gone out of business without me," she said. "Okay, I'm officially declaring today a wash. Your only responsibility for the rest of the evening is to decide what to watch."
You stared at the TV, wracking your brain.
"... did you remember to TiVo that new thing with John Oliver? I wanna see if it's any good. I liked him on the Daily Show," you asked.
Amara began to fiddle with the remote as you leaned back and stared out the window, catching a glimpse of dusk over the rooftops, people and cars rolling past the duplex, a cat making its way along the top of the neighbour's fence. The last rays of light painted the multicoloured homes in the district's namesake hues, and you did your best to just breathe.
She could have been any girl, but this girl's name was Eve.
Eve didn't think she was special. She didn't think she was cool, smart, brave, or pretty, nor confident or clever. In fact, she thought she simply wasn't the kind of girl who got a secret magical destiny, which is of course what every girl with a secret magical destiny thinks.
After making sure the cat didn't have the wrong person, she pushed up her glasses, wrapped the chain around her hand so she wouldn't drop it, and raised it above her head. She said, as clearly as she could around her braces, "For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
It took her a second run to pronounce 'kaleidoscope', but she got it.
The world fell away into the embrace of a dizzying storm of magic. In the dancing, ever-changing light, she was clad in raiment and ribbon, silk and steel, pleats and plate. A phantom wind combed through her hair as she spun to the swelling notes of a personal orchestra, weaving herself into the twisting and transforming bolts of cloth. The wings fluttered against her skin, guiding her into a delicate pirouette, until her outstretched hand touched the scabbard of a sword, descending to meet her. Her fingers closed around the handle and she clutched it against her chest.
In a world of light, it was heavy.
When the maelstrom faded, Eve was gone. In her place was a knight, of haunting brilliance and ethereal grace. They may have shared a face and voice and mind, but no one could mistake one for the other. The cat told her that she had become the beautiful Butterfly Ward, a being of such divine elegance that she could walk on blades of grass and leave them unbowed.
She still slipped and fell out her bedroom window, landing in a clatter of steel plate, but she was quick to point out that the grass was no worse for wear.
The cat guided Butterfly Ward through the night, telling her the secrets of the world. He was a messenger from the future, sent by the wise and benevolent Butterfly Queen to ensure Her own ascension and to protect the world from that which might harm it. He explained that Ward was one of Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights, sworn protectors of all that is good and true, and through service and sacrifice, a Heaven on Earth, the Eternal Realm, would be secured.
Butterfly Ward listened very patiently, and then asked why the Butterfly Queen got to be Queen. The cat explained that She was the wisest and most loving person in all the world. Butterfly Ward said she got that part, but then asked how many people voted for her. Well, nobody, said the cat. She was queen, after all, but if there were elections then surely Her Majesty would-
There has to be elections, Butterfly Ward protested. This is America. Are you a terrorist?
Not for the last time, the cat sighed, and rubbed his face with a tiny paw.
Such lightly treasonous inquiries were gracefully put aside by Her Majesty's loyal servant to focus on the mission at hand. Deep in the city, hidden in plain sight, a demonic being was raising a crystal shrine that would attune itself to the suffering and want of the material plane. This would thin the veil between worlds so other, more terrible servants of the Dark Queen could emerge.
Hold on, Butterfly Ward protested. There are two queens? Maybe they could run for election against one another, to make things fair. The cat protested that the Dark Queen was a being of pure malice and spite that would do nothing but bring ruin to the realm and all beyond it. Butterfly Ward said that was a normal part of democracy. In a stroke of dazzling brilliance, the cat suggested that perhaps she might consider striking this blow for justice and peace a ballot in Her Majesty's favour. Butterfly Ward inquired about third parties, but was convinced of the folly of throwing away her vote.
The two arrived at the location of the foul ritual, a desolate husk whose crumbling edifice bore the impression of once-prominent signage, declaring it to have once been the local Tower of Records. Butterfly Ward explained grimly that it once served the community proudly, before being sacked by the fell Kazaa. Such injustices were just a prelude to the current crime, for lurking behind the fading signage was the silhouette of one of the Dark Queen's demonic servants, slipping into the shadows.
At the instruction of Her Majesty's most devoted feline retainer, Butterfly Ward raised her arm, summoning forth her shield, and bravely charged through the doors, the crystal glass shattering with her passage. She demanded the demon present arms and remain silent, a respectable challenge, one met with a swipe of the creature's twisted, ever-changing claws. The razor fingers tore through the shelves of silver discs and scattered off her shield in a hail of sparks, sending Butterfly Ward to crash headfirst through a table.
Stunned by the temerity of this awful creature, that it would dare strike a servant of the Queen, Butterfly Ward reached for her sword, but was unable to free it from her scabbard. The cat explained that the sword was no ordinary blade, but the Razor of Time, whose edge could part worlds, and which would not be drawn except at the crossroads of destiny.
A less principled storyteller would declare that Butterfly Ward accepted this with grace and rose to meet the threat with joy in her heart. The truth, however, is that behind the shield, under the armour, there was a scared girl who had never been in a fight. A monster was looming over her, and the sword that hung heavy on her hip was stuck fast. The creature drove its claws into the shield, and the tiles cracked under her from the weight of the blows.
Butterfly Ward wept. She begged the cat for aid, and begged the creature for mercy. But there was no aid that could be rendered by a cat, and no mercy to be found in the monster. Its fanged maw pressed over the top of her shield, and she shoved it away with all her strength, greater than she knew. It sailed through the air and crashed into the wall, and Butterfly Ward staggered to her feet.
She ran, and did not stop until she was safe in bed.
As many had before her, Eve tried to flee her fate, and as in all those cases, fate would not be deterred. She tried to throw the necklace away, but it always found its way back to her bedside table. She hid it away to forget about it, but always felt it weighing on her neck. No tool in her father's workshop could score it, no fire in her mother's kitchen would melt it.
And all the while, suffering spread as a blight, as the Realm of Shadow intruded on the material. The cause was invisible to mortal eyes, but the effects were manifest, in nightmares, disease, and ill omens. The city took sick around her as demons stalked the streets, draining the vitality of the world.
On the fifth day, she asked the cat if this was her fault for running. The cat shook his head. It was his fault, for not preparing her. She asked to be prepared; she was scared, but she could not stand by while people were hurting. She dried her tears, donned the armour once more, and strode into battle. She braced her shield between the oncoming evil and the people of the city, and though she still feared, and though she sometimes wept, she met each challenge as they came, and with each triumph she stood taller.
Despite the tireless efforts and ceaseless reminders of her feline advisor, she showed the necklace to her most dear companion; to her credit, she withheld its purpose, boasting only of its luster. Isn't it pretty, Kimmy? she asked. That girl stole into her parent's bedroom the next night, and retrieved the necklace's twin from her mother's jewellery box, dotted with rubies. That night, Butterfly Sage joined the fight, entangling evil in the strands of fate, weaving the heartstrings of friend and foe.
New allies joined them. The brilliant Butterfly Spark, mistress of the elements, and the brave Butterfly Heart, of unmatched strength, were recognized in their humble guises and gifted their necklaces. Her Majesty's bodyguard herself, already hardened from years of battle, emerged from the shadows as Butterfly Shine, pledging herself to Butterfly Ward and the cause of justice. Together, they were invincible.
The Shadow Realm sent forth more terrible beasts, but none were as terrible as their Princes. Mortal men pledged to the Dark Queen in exchange for dark power, they slipped easily into positions of power and directed demonic forces to tear apart the city in search of the Butterfly Knights. But the material world had a champion of its own, the mysterious Prince Rose, who crossed sabres with his fell counterparts in aid of the Knights.
As was fated, it was love at first sight for Rose and Ward, their souls finding connection across eternity. When he left her to seek deeper truths in the Lower Realms, she was moved to such despair that she took on the mantle of Shadow Butterfly, and came very close to tearing the world asunder with her grief. It was only the tender and radiantly platonic love of her very close companion Sage that averted disaster, as she was pulled from the brink by friendship's kiss.
For two years, the Butterfly Knights fought back the darkness, and stranger things besides. The future, the past, and the endless void sent forth malefactors and disaster, and they met each in turn with growing power and confidence. Ward's empathy grew into a sixth sense, Sage wove her strings into a bow, Heart bent the crash of thunder to her will, Shine wove illusions so convincing they took on a life of their own, and Spark learned her mastery of the elements extended to the many discovered since the legends were written.
Things got a little out of control after that last one. Perhaps there is a reason that nature does not normally allow fifteen year olds to transmute matter into antimatter at will. There was a period of about a month where villains couldn't even get through their speeches before the air in their lungs was alchemically transformed into substances with names like 'fluoroantimonic acid'. Not to besmirch the wisdom and bravery of Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights, but it was frankly a little unsporting.
It would appear their foes agreed, for the final seasons of their battles were more desperate and cruel than any before. Their enemies discarded any honour they had remaining, holding hostage the people of the land, striking from the shadows, even targeting the family of the Knights. Not even the intervention of the wayward Knights Errant, Butterfly Echo and Butterfly Veil, could spare the city and its defenders, and ground was lost.
As the forces of the enemy grew ever-stronger, the Butterfly Knights undertook a dangerous journey to the future. I need not tell Her Majesty what transpired, except to say that the insight and power She granted in that brief visit stunned and humbled all present, filling them with great resolve for the hardship to come. All, save for their wise advisor of course, were shocked by the revelation that Butterfly Ward was herself destined to become the Butterfly Queen; he knew from the moment he saw her owing to the immaculate radiance already evident in her bearing even then.
Then, on a clear summer day, the Dark Queen put her final plan in motion. She came to the material realm in person, having remade herself with a blade of purest nightmares driven through her heart. She emerged through the great golden gates of the city as the Anathema of Life, a colossal beast whose gaze could still hearts and bring ruin, and her armies poured through the weeping wound in reality. Her Majesty's Butterfly Knights made a brave stand at the gates, and gave a good account. They felled the foul invaders in their hundreds, preserved life as they could and took it as was required, but step by step they were forced back as the very fabric of the world began to unravel.
The Knights Errant perished in a rearguard action, holding their ground while others fled. Butterfly Spark was struck down by the last of the Dark Princes, crashing through the great pyramid in the city's center; Prince Rose bested the man soon after, but was himself struck a lethal blow. Butterfly Sage pushed aside Heart as the Anathema turned its gaze upon her; Heart was gravely wounded, her leg becoming ash in an eyeblink, but such was Sage's indomitable will that she survived seconds longer, blowing away in the wind as Shine held her. As the Dark Queen descended from her throne in the heart of the void, Shine, gravely wounded, gave her final defiant effort, six sharp reports of a mortal weapon, for all others had been expended.
It was then that Butterfly Ward placed her shield in the path of the Anathema's gaze, and it was then, only then, that she drew her sword. With one blow, the Razor of Time severed the stolen Strands of Fate that bound the Anathema to the Dark Queen, with the next, she removed a grasping claw that had sought to grip the world, and with the third, she shattered the void itself, and the Anathema faded into nothing.
As the Dark Queen fell to her knees, defeated, Butterfly Ward commanded her to yield. The Dark Queen spurned her mercy and told her to strike true, doubting she could truly be extended a second chance. Ward declared that she could, as any would, if she would take it.
The Dark Queen was silent for some time. Then she said that there could be no second chances, not for one like her, and with a heavy heart, Butterfly Ward brought the sword down, parting the veil between worlds. The Dark Queen was banished back into the shattered lands of the Realm of Shadows, and the world was free.
Then, taking up the broken Strands of Fate, Butterfly Ward rewove them as Sage had taught her, remaking the world to be as it was. She restored to life all who had perished, and mended what she could with the frayed cord. Her Prince Rose joined her in the task, and then her Sage, and many hands made quick work. Not all the damage could be undone, not all wounds could be healed, but much that would have been lost was saved.
As night fell, Butterfly Ward faded away, and there was Eve. She was tired, and scared, but she dried her tears. Her Prince and her Sage were with her. She embraced them, and begged them both to stay with her, that her heart could not bear the cruel choice between them. Both tried to leave for the sake of the other; both chose to stay for Eve.
As they watched the stars come out over the darkened streets of the broken city, as the long summer faded into autumn, Eve was, at last, at peace.
And they lived happily ever after.
Chapter One - Happily Ever After
After one or two tries getting your blunt fingernails under the edge of the glued flap, and succeeding only in tearing a small portion, you managed to get the envelope open and pull out the folded sheet inside. The Bank of America logo was perched next to the words Important Notice, which never accompanied anything good. Would it kill the bank to send you the occasional "Good job at the money!" letter?"You're pre-approved to feel good about your financial choices!"
You unfolded the page and skimmed over the form letter. Dear Ms. Nakamura, blah blah, minimum payments, you are responsible for, we will pursue collection efforts… you skipped ahead to the bit that mattered at the bottom, hoping very much for a number of digits you could handle.
Ah. Three. Three digits. That was two more digits than you were really hoping for.
It wasn't a disaster, you did have savings, though in reality that was just money you were not shovelling into your student loans so you could feel a little better when you checked the balance of your accounts. It was just another thing you didn't need after a long day of classes and before a long day of job-hunting. Fully aware that if you put the letter back in the envelope, it would disappear from your brain and you'd carry on obliviously until another letter with a bigger number arrived, you clutched the paper, stepped up to the door, and promptly failed to find your keys.
Placing the letter in your teeth, you fished around in your purse, shuffling around the strata of faded receipts, tangled earbuds, dried up Sparkle Beacon pens, and months-old Muni tickets. You did find a key, but it unlocked the Gates of Eternity or… something like that. Maybe the Vault of Dreams? No, that had a combination, you had that written down somewhere…
Dejected, you reached for the doorbell, then stopped. Somewhere in the apartment above, you felt Amara set down the half-filled kettle and pick up her buzzing phone, and you didn't want to interrupt.
"Hello? Yeah, it's Amara. Right, no, I did call earlier, it's about the documentation for the legacy bridge protocols. Yeah, the problem is it doesn't work. No, I know it's one of your listed functions, I'm telling you it's a listed function that doesn't. Okay, talk to your guy. Yeah, I'll be in the office all day. Talk to you then." She hung up the phone with a frown, briefly considered throwing it through the window, then slipped it back into her housecoat pocket.
You let her put the kettle on, then pressed Apartment #2's doorbell lightly to no effect. You gave it another, more forceful jab, and this time the muffled sound of the chime was just audible. The door opened almost instantly, and there was Amara, leaning against the doorframe with one eyebrow raised. Somehow, in her housecoat and with a bit of electrolysis-defying stubble, she still looked unimaginably cool.
"Forget your keys?" she teased. You opened your mouth to protest and the letter fell out of your mouth, fluttering pathetically to the ground between you. "Oh."
"Yeah, we missed a payment or something," you groaned. "And I think I missed my meds today, my brain is goo. The two things may be related. What's a legacy bridge protocol and why are you being called about it?"
"You were evesdropping? It's, uh… well, what it is appears to be a feature that got cancelled without anyone telling their manager. The tea's already on, let's get some caffeine in you if nothing else," she suggested, leaning down to pluck up the paper and sighing. "Fuck. This one's my bad, I think I turned off the automatic payments this month when I switched stuff up for rent."
"Yeah, but you only had to do that because I lost my job…" You sighed and followed her up the narrow, creaky stairs to your apartment, then stopped at your door as Amara padded her housecoat pockets ineffectually.
"Ah. Well, you don't have to feel bad about forgetting your keys, because you're not alone. Could you..?" She made a little motion with her finger, and you dutifully turned around and stepped down a few steps. There was a soft gust of air and a faint floral smell, and then you heard the door unlock from the inside. Amara opened the door, looking sheepish, and gave a dramatic sweep of her hand.
"And you shouldn't feel bad about the job either! You're not personally responsible for the bookstore going out of business," she reminded you. You nodded in reluctant agreement and staggered inside, kicking your shoes off into the undifferentiated pile of footwear on the mat and making a beeline for the ratty couch at the back of the room, stepping carefully around the half-reassembled computer tower Amara continuously assured you she'd finish one of these weeks and successfully avoiding stepping on any poinky little bits this time. You threw your purse and bookbag onto the cushions and collapsed after them, an action which had felt appropriate in the moment but mostly just smushed your glasses into your face.
"I knooooow. It still sucks," you complained, wiggling upright and pulling your phone out of your pocket. You stared a moment at your knockoff phone case, stylized representations of the Butterfly Knights posing together on a background of stars, then turned it over and tapped in your code as the kettle began to whistle. You stared at the menu uselessly through the fresh smudges on your glasses, disappointed by a lack of texts (discounting the one from Nancy Pelosi asking for your money for the midterms). You tapped to send a text, failed to think of something that wouldn't be annoying, and tapped over to your emails to confirm the utter lack of job offers.
You considered getting up to run your glasses under the tap, rationalized that your brain would make them invisible in a few minutes anyway, and began scrolling Instagram pointlessly, which handily consumed the time until Amara set a mug of tea on the coffee table and settled in next to you, a telltale smile on her lips.
"They're making a movie about us," she informed you, clearly waiting for you to have taken a sip, but you were wise to her games and only spilled a little.
"Actually this time? Who is this they, and do you think they can send me a royalty check?" you asked, already knowing the answer. You couldn't exactly go around compromising your secret identity for stuff like that; if there was some rogue Dark Prince or something still hanging around, you had absolutely no illusions that they wouldn't immediately mail you magic anthrax or a very literal glitter bomb.
"No idea. Joss Whedon's involved in some capacity and they've announced a cast," she said. You tapped in a search, already bracing yourself.
"Cool. What's the odds I'm being played by some white lady who- Jennifer Lawrence??!" you exclaimed, nearly dropping your phone.
"Yep."
"I was kidding! Like I know how the transformation works but… it doesn't make you blind, right? How?" You scrolled further and were relieved to see that at least they got Jamie Chung for Butterfly Sage, thus marginally reducing the odds of Kimiyo turning the Warner Brothers lot into a mass casualty event. "Wait, how are they going to do an origin story when they don't know our origins?"
"I guess they're going to make it up. At least it's something to talk about on the team call tonight, right?" Amara commented, sipping her tea and scrolling on her phone. "Aww, it looks like they're going with the alien invasion theory for the storyline."
"It's Wednesday?" you said stupidly. No, it was obviously Wednesday, morning classes, that's why the call was today. You stared across the apartment at your meds, the little white bottle of ritalin resting exactly where you forgot them this morning. Too late to take them now, you had class early tomorrow morning.
"It is. Also, how can you see anything? Gimme," Amara demanded, and you forked your glasses over and blinked as the world suddenly became a lot more blurry.
"My hero," you joked, though you very much meant it. The Amara-shaped blur moved to her computer desk as you held your phone right up against your face, continuing to hold it there until you realized that it was, in fact, the photo that was artfully out of focus. You scrolled on a little and found yourself somewhere in April, which you could tell because your feed was wall-to-wall pictures Kimiyo had taken of the cherry blossoms.
Amara returned with your glasses, and the world snapped into 1080p all at once, which was nearly as disorienting as removing your glasses had been.
"My God, it's full of clutter. How do we live like this?" you remarked, staring around at the now very visible layer of dust that had settled on much of the room. Kimiyo's little art table in particular looked like it had just been discovered in a crypt.
"It's not that bad," Amara said, looking around. "...It is that bad. We should probably pick up sometime this week."
You groaned and stretched, fetching your laptop and succeeding in opening several ongoing assignments without actually making any progress on any of them. You were so very close to being done, being free after five years with two whole degrees to show for it, but the run-up to the finish line was a slog. There were days, mostly unmedicated ones like today, when you questioned why you were doing this; surely the whole point of being Queen was that you didn't have to be qualified. They weren't going to take the crown away because your GPA fell under 3.5 or you couldn't remember how instrumental variable regression worked; if somebody tried that you could wave your hand and go "We tire of this, take him away."
Then again, you still had no idea how or when you'd actually become Butterfly Queen of the Eternal Realm, and you needed to pay rent until then. It was increasingly looking like you were at least going to have to manage the minimum payments until whatever vague future event made you into The Universally Beloved Monarch of Everything Forever; at that point your student loan plan hinged on forgiving all debts upon ascension, followed by a few centuries in some kind of crystal oubliette for the Sallie Mae board of directors.
That last part was a joke, just one you made a little louder every time you got an installment reminder. At this point you were fairly certain the Dark Queen got where she was because the antique IRS was on her about her tithe returns. Maybe her indulgence premiums kept going up for showing ankle at the cathedral. Dear Ms. Your Vile Magnificence, our collection agents have been trying to reach you about overdue chariot payments and we're coming to repossess your horse…
"Are you okay?" Amara asked.
"No…" you admitted, shutting your laptop and flopping back against the couch, trying to sink as deep into the cushions as you could. "I can't focus. I hate forgetting my meds, it's like trying to think uphill. Sometimes I wish I still had that prissy little magic cat telling me what to do."
"You hated that," Amara reminded you.
"Yeah, but I hate this too! I should probably be applying for job stuff but I sort of want to just wait until I graduate so I don't have to open my cover letter with all the times I can't work."
"We have savings, that's not unreasonable," Amara pointed out. "I'm not going to say I can single-handedly pay for everything indefinitely, but at the very least we'll survive until Kimiyo gets back and we're splitting the rent three ways again."
"You're right, but that feels like a lazy excuse," you retorted. You could tell it was a line of thinking you couldn't indulge, simply because it felt so very alluring. Once you started giving yourself excuses like that again, you wouldn't stop.
"First off, you have exams in, what, two weeks? That's as good a reason to stay unemployed a while as I can think of. And secondly… you saved the world once or twice, I think you're entitled to a few lazy excuses."
"I'll sign that on the next rent check," you groaned, then stopped. "Which you handle. And it's online. Okay, you win." You picked yourself up off the couch and made your way to the kitchen, wetting a cloth. If you couldn't focus on your schoolwork and you didn't have it in you to job-hunt, at the very least you could do something about the dust.
You started with Kimiyo's art desk, each swipe of the cloth revealing a much brighter and more saturated surface than you'd remembered and leaving a tangled, dark mess of dust bunnies on the cloth. You tried rinsing it out to little effect, then just dumped it into the sink to soak and grabbed another. The next victim of your cleanliness rampage was the rickety little second-hand table beside the door, where you discovered your forgotten keys, lying in plain sight, the butterfly charm mocking you. You pocketed the keys and began scrubbing, moving aside the pile of forgotten winter gloves, pamphlets, and a dusty rag you surmised had been left there after your previous abortive dusting spree.
You remembered what was lurking behind it all at the same time you uncovered it. A photo, the only photograph you had of everyone, together, in their everyday clothes, taken by a kind bystander in Golden Gate Park with Kimiyo's camera as you all waited for the celestial alignment that would allow you to travel into the future. You were sitting in the middle, blinking behind your glasses, clearly still exhausted from having to get up early. You were wearing that cute green top that unfortunately didn't fit anymore and those ridiculously bulky boots that were fortunately mouldering in the closet at your parent's place.
There was Kimiyo beside you, a black blouse and skinny jeans and boots with way too many buckles, black lipstick and hair that looked like a mess but you knew took her forever to get right. You were holding hands, it was just visible between you in the picture. She'd only gotten prettier.
Beside you both was Andy, perched proudly on the bench. Anyone looking at the picture would probably just think that an outdoor Birman cat had wandered into the shot, but to you the very distinct sapience and accompanying smug aura was visible even in still life. He was posing for the camera and hamming it up, cute little guy.
Brigid was staring directly at the camera with the kind of focus that would be intimidating if you didn't know she was just a little confused on the concept of group photos; her red hair was still long back then, puffed up in wild curls that framed her head all wrong. A book was folded on her lap, the cover not visible in the photo, though you imagined it was something about super-advanced quantum biology or whatever other field she'd decided to master that week.
Riley was unmistakable, and not just because she towered over all of you. A streak of green in her blonde hair, denim vest festooned with pins and patches that turned it into a riot of colour in the little photo. Her girlfriend at the time, Vanessa or something? Was in the shot, having absolutely no idea that she was in the presence of the world's best (and only) team of magical superheroes.
And beside her, fingers extended over Brigid's head, was Esmé. You looked on quickly.
Tracy and Lyra were lurking at the corner of the shot, ever so slightly in shadow, somehow blending in with the background despite Tracy's white suit jacket and Lyra's bright red dress. They'd looked so cool at the time; now they looked like exactly what they were, seventeen year olds who'd stolen several million dollars and were attempting to wear all of it.
And at the very back of the group, looking away from the camera, was Amara. She was distant at the time because of tensions in the group, but it felt appropriate. This was a version of her that should appear in photographs only reluctantly. She still had that grey sports jacket, but whereas now it made her look dashing, in this photo it made her depressingly square, like it was the walls of a prison cell. It didn't help that this was right after she'd cut her hair really short. She still looked good, she looked amazing, but she didn't look happy.
You set the photo down as your phone buzzed in your pocket, your fifteen minute reminder reminding you that in fifteen minutes you'd get a reminder to start the Skype call. You made a few more ineffectual swipes at the dust, set the cloth down on the table, and headed back into the living room. You considered grabbing your laptop and heading to the comfort of bed, but once you were cozy in bed, you might not want to get back up. You went to drink your tea, but it had gone cold.
You spent that time staring at the clock in the corner of your screen as it ticked over, the group chat open. Spark and Sage were already online. You waited patiently, tapping your foot against the leg of the coffee table, then at four o'clock exactly you hit the Call button. Boop-boop, boop-boop, boop-bo-
Brigid was the first to pick up, though she resolved as three blurry, dark stills before her voice came through and the image stabilized. It was midnight in England, though that alone didn't explain the low light levels; it looked like she was lit almost exclusively by the computer screen. She was ghostly pale, dark circles under her eyes, clearly run ragged, but you'd begun to suspect that wasn't all. In the still frames of her jittery connection, her usually intense stare was often unfocused, like she wasn't quite present.
Before you could say hi and maybe bring her back to this realm, Kimiyo picked up. You waited for her image to appear, but after a few seconds of black she hung up and called again. This time you saw her, framed against the window of her apartment. She looked composed and elegant, even through the blurry pixels, but as usual she seemed overdressed for the occasion, like this was a business call.
"Hey you two," you said, injecting as much cheer into your voice as you could. Brigid muttered something the microphone didn't quite pick up, and Kimiyo just nodded politely. "Just waiting on Riley now."
You glanced back down at the group chat and the four offline usernames, taking a deep breath to steady yourself. Then Heart's icon turned green, and Riley joined the call. Her image was crystal-clear and steady, showing her tired smile and the waves of her blonde hair as she awkwardly sat down. The screen shook as her prosthetic leg bumped into the table.
"Hey everyone, sorry I'm late, Finn was crying because I turned on the TV after he handed me the remote, which apparently was the wrong thing to do? Who knows. Also, sorry to start with this, but did you see they're making a movie of us?" she asked. She was smiling, but the exhaustion you'd expect from a mother of two young children was coupled with a nervous energy you hopefully wouldn't. She kept glancing up over the top of the laptop, and you weren't sure if it was because she was keeping an eye on the kids or the door.
"Actually this time?" Kimiyo asked, sounding skeptical.
"So it seems," you confirmed. There was muffled clacking as everyone searched at once, and a few seconds later you just made out Kimiyo mutter something that would probably be admissible as evidence of intent in court. "Yeeeeeeah I know. On the bright side, they cast Spark like, weirdly good, she looks just like Brigid. Wait, shit, let's step back a second. How's everyone doing?"
"Super!" Riley replied automatically.
"Fine," Brigid responded, her voice small. "Just tired. You know, really busy."
"I'm doing well. Less busy than you Brigid, but it's nice," Kimiyo said, her words sounding carefully measured.
"I'm glad," you said, and tried to mean it.
"Will Amara be joining us?" Kimiyo asked, and you glanced over the top of the screen. Amara was at her computer, typing furiously at something, her tea forgotten.
"She's working. Unlike me; I'm still unemployed, so that's less than great, and exams are looming, but I think I've got this. I know it's not as big a deal as Brigid's PHD, but I'm really excited to finally be done accruing student debt and start accruing interest. How is the dissertation going, anyway?"
Brigid kept staring off into nothing for a few seconds, and as usual you weren't sure if it was the connection or her. But it seemed to land, as she blinked and nodded.
"G-good, I'm almost done. I'm just waiting for lab time for, um, to run a few numbers and then I think I'm ready to go," she said, pushing her curls out of her eyes. As the video held on a frame, you couldn't help but notice how pale she was, more than usual, and the dark marks on the back of her hand.
"Still? How long's the waiting list, it feels like it's been weeks," Riley commented. Brigid looked away from the camera, lips pursed, then shrugged.
"Processing time is in high demand, you know, I-I'm lucky I get any time at all. And I have so much to do for Professor Bennett, you know. Busy." You felt distinctly like this conversation had happened before, beat by beat, but you didn't want to press. That wasn't what these calls were for, and she seemed so delicate.
"I mean, I'm still not sure what computational neuroscience even is, other than complicated, so I'm not surprised it's taking this long," you said lightly, gently nudging the topic along. "What about you, Kimiyo? I kinda hope none of your courses are too interesting."
You weren't exactly sure why Kimiyo had decided to sign up for another round of literature classes when she'd only get two months into them, but she'd apparently gotten some inheritance over there that meant she could just throw millions of yen around on stuff like that (which was less impressive than it sounded, but was still thousands of dollars).
"Nothing particularly thrilling, no, but I'm enjoying it," she said. You groaned inwardly; why did she treat every call like she was trying to avoid incriminating herself?
"Anything in particular?" you pressed lightly, and she shrugged.
"I've been enjoying the study of linked verse poetry we're doing right now. I'd read one of my favourites, but, well, it wouldn't exactly mean much to any of you," she said dismissively.
"I mean, it'd still be cool, I might recognize a word or two?" you offered, but she just smiled. She does have the right to remain silent, you supposed. "Fair enough. Anything cool in your life, Riley?"
"Yes! We have a vacation this week!" Riley announced, sounding genuinely excited for once. You breathed a sigh of relief; at least it wasn't the All Evasion Hour. It was something to work with. "Grant got a week off work, we're all heading down to that lakeside cottage I told you about, remember the pictures?"
"That did look lovely," Kimiyo agreed. "It reminds me of that campsite we rented in senior year." As best you could recall, it wasn't much like that camp at all; this was just Kimiyo bringing up an outing that had very conspicuously included her then-girlfriend.
"Any cool plans there, neat stuff?" you inquired, trying to smooth it over before Riley had a chance to use the words 'gay phase'. Riley opened her mouth to speak, paused, then shrugged.
"I mean, there's a lake? I'm not sure, I'm sure it'll be fun," she concluded. Nevermind then. She glanced off-screen at something, then looked back quickly. "Shit. Gotta go, nice chatting!"
Her image blinked out and she went offline within seconds, and the call was left in an awkward silence.
"... it sort of sounds like her vacation is going to be more of the same, just at a lakeside cottage," Brigid observed quietly.
"I somehow doubt Grant is going to be more hands-on due to the proximity of water, yes," Kimiyo agreed darkly.
"I mean, hey, it's something," you said wearily. "I know it's… hard sometimes, having her on the call, but I don't want to lose her too." You glanced at one of the offline accounts involuntarily. Kimiyo nodded.
"I just wish she'd wake the hell up."
"Yeah…" Brigid agreed, then yawned, the sound distorted into static by the connection. "I'm really tired, is it okay if I hang up early too? I have class tomorrow…"
"I thought Thursdays was tutoring?" Kimiyo asked. Brigid shrugged.
"Yeah. That's what I meant, um…" She trailed off, shifting in the picture as she moved her hands up to the trackpad.
"Hey, let's end the call properly at least," you reminded her, and she nodded.
"Of course. Three…"
"Two…" Kimiyo supplied, slightly delay.
"One…" Normally somebody else would do it, but it had to be you.
"Team Butterfly Forever!"
They both hung up, and you just stared at their icons for a few long moments before sighing. Amara was there instantly, nudging you over and sitting.
"Rough?" she asked, and you shrugged and crumpled against her a little. Not for the first time after a team call, you felt like you were going to cry, and you clamped down on it with everything you had. Crying wasn't going to solve anything, it never did.
"I just… I dunno. I just hope stuff gets better," you said uselessly. There was a boop from your laptop; Kimiyo had sent you a message. "I miss them a lot. Especially Kimiyo."
"Yeah. I miss her too. That her?" Amara asked.
"I think she wants to do, you know… a one on one call," you said, feeling your face heat up. Amara grinned.
"Well, you need some cheering up, so go have fun. I'll put on tea, should I wait until after you're done to bring it to you?" she asked as you scooped your laptop up and headed for the bedroom.
"Babe, just bring it in. Hell, say hi for a change! I can't imagine she'll mind," you instructed, folding the laptop under your arm. Honestly, Amara was too considerate for her own good; the three of you had shared a bed for three years, this was hardly the most scandalous thing that had occurred between them.
Your apartment wasn't exactly large, but it felt especially cozy in the bedroom; you suspected that whatever builders had erected it at some nebulous point in the past had figured there'd be a twin bed in the corner, presumably next to the clothes line, spinning wheel, and gaggle of soot-stained orphans that would have come with the building at the time. By some magic you still weren't entirely versed in, the three of you had managed to fold a king-size mattress like a taco and fit it through the narrow door. You weren't sure that was a feat that could be replicated, so if you ever moved, the landlord would need to knock a wall down.
You threw yourself onto the bed, bounced slightly more than expected, just managed to avoid tumbling off the side, and somehow never let go of the laptop at any point in the proceedings. You cleared a place among the pillows and opened the laptop back up, clicking into the private chat with Kimiyo and typing a quick 'here' in the chat.
Boop-bo-
You answered the call as fast as you could, and there was Kimiyo. She hadn't moved an inch, but she looked completely different, resting her head on her hand, her smile sharp and genuine. Just the change in poise had turned her uncomfortable-looking secretary getup into the garb of a delightfully intimidating business lady.
"Hey sweetie," she said, her voice like honey even through the fuzzy connection.
"Hey! Um… so, with your Green Card cutoff coming up, this is probably going to be the last of these, huh?" you asked, not able to conceal how excited you were about that. She glanced aside, just for a moment, then nodded.
"Probably, yes. Next time it'll be in person, and you've made me so many promises since I left, haven't you?" she pointed out, drawing out those last words. Yeah you had, and she had made a fair few promises of her own that you were very looking forward to seeing fulfilled.
"God, yeah. I've really missed you," you confessed, sighing as the feelings welled up in your chest. "I've been a mess, Kimmy. It's…" Fuck, this was supposed to be Sexy Call, but feelings were intruding and you didn't know how to stop them. "Brigid's getting worse, you can see it, and Riley…"
She held up a finger, and you stopped, hands perched on the trackpad.
"I know. I don't know what to do either, but you've been trying. I…" She took a deep breath, breaking eye contact. "It won't do to dwell, you're doing as much as you can. It can't be helped."
You didn't know how to tell her that this, this distance, emotional as much as physical, was one of the things that was hurting too.
"My whole thing is helping anyway," you pointed out, and that brought a smile to her face.
"I know. It's infuriatingly endearing of you, but somebody needs to give you a break, as you can't seem to take one on your own," she said, then, with a slow and deliberate motion, she pointed her finger on the screen, and made a little figure eight motion. You felt soft cord brush against your wrists, then snap tight around your wrists, the gesture responsible playing out on screen a moment later as Kimiyo snapped her hand into a fist.
"... okay," you agreed readily, which brought a huge, goofy grin to Kimiyo's face.
"Oh my God you are hopeless. I love you so much," she said, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "How is that all…" She hooked her finger in a 'come hither' motion. "... it…" She pulled it back, and you felt a gentle tug on the cord, just enough to tighten the ropes a bit. "... takes?"
"I… I… Honestly, I think fighting all those monsters with, like, vines and wires and stuff did something to my brain," you confessed yet again, blushing furiously. Getting tied up with your own metaphorical heartstrings made it very hard not to blurt out whatever dumb shit came into your head.
"You know, that happened to all of us a bunch, but this is just you," she pointed out, gesturing upward and pulling the cord with it until your arms were behind your head.
"I-I mean, do we know that for sure? I bet Tracy's a huge rope bunny," you joked, breathing heavily. She paused.
"You know, I can see that actually," she said, sounding like she was genuinely thinking about it. "Now then, Butterfly Ward, there's nobody here to save you this time. You're all mine."
You let yourself relax as you felt new cords slip under the cuffs of your jeans, sliding slowly up your legs as Kimiyo moved her fingers.
"Oh noooo, somebody save me…" you gasped playfully, shivering in anticipation.
There was a quick knock on the door, the sound of the latch, and footsteps behind you.
"Never fear, Butterfly Ward, I'm here to bring you tea and leave you to your fate. Hi Kimiyo!" Amara said brightly, setting the cup down on the bedside table. "Bye Kimiyo!"
She walked off, and you laughed, shaking your head.
"Helpful as always. Right, where were we?" you asked, glancing up at the screen. Kimiyo looked… off. Her face danced through the shadow of several unreadable emotions, then she sighed.
"Hey, I just saw the time. I need to go, I'll see you soon, okay?" She said. "Love you."
"Love-" you responded, then the call ended. Kimiyo snapped the laptop closed and sat back, staring intensely at it, angry at something. You, Amara, herself? The feelings were too muddled for even you to read.
You came back to yourself as the ropes around your wrists frayed and came apart into nothing, the scraps disappearing as they fell away. You sat up slowly, wiping your eyes, holding in the tears. What the hell was going on?
You stayed in the room for a few long minutes, not wanting to give Amara the impression she'd ruined anything. You spent that time wistfully scrolling your old messages to her to see if you could piece together anything. There wasn't much to go on, but that was her alright; she'd opened up a lot over the last few years, with you at least, but the longer she was gone the more closed off she seemed. Hell, you used to know where she was exactly at all times, you evesdropped on her conversations without meaning to, and now it was just that, little unreadable flashes.
You closed the laptop up and headed back into the living room, curling up next to Amara on the couch. You tried to bury yourself against her chest and just forget about everything, but everything was too much to keep out of your head.
"Hey, dummy," she said affectionately. "It's gonna be okay. Just like a week or two and she's back, right?" You nodded against her chest.
"Yeah. She's gotta come back." If she didn't, she couldn't; she'd lose her residency if she stayed more than a year, and it had been forty-nine very long weeks since she'd left for her grandfather's funeral. She was only supposed to be there for three weeks or so, which had at the time felt like it was going to be an eternity, but three weeks became a month, became three months, and now it didn't even sound like she was talking to any of her family anymore but she was still there.
You understood she was grieving; you'd only met her granddad one time, when you were thirteen and had joined her for her annual summer trip, but he was warm and funny even if Kimiyo had to translate everything he said. You'd been sad to hear it and you barely knew him; it clearly hit her hard.
But there was a part of you genuinely terrified that the cutoff date would come and go, she'd still be there for reasons she wouldn't tell you, and that would be that.
"We'll meet her at the airport. We'll get flowers," Amara assured you.
"Of course you'd think of that," you teased weakly.
"Hey, I still have my supplier's number. Unless he's gone out of business without me," she said. "Okay, I'm officially declaring today a wash. Your only responsibility for the rest of the evening is to decide what to watch."
You stared at the TV, wracking your brain.
"... did you remember to TiVo that new thing with John Oliver? I wanna see if it's any good. I liked him on the Daily Show," you asked.
Amara began to fiddle with the remote as you leaned back and stared out the window, catching a glimpse of dusk over the rooftops, people and cars rolling past the duplex, a cat making its way along the top of the neighbour's fence. The last rays of light painted the multicoloured homes in the district's namesake hues, and you did your best to just breathe.
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September 10th, 2004 + 🦋 Chapter 2 - The Cat Returns (Part 1)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Content Warning: Implied danger of sexual assault.
September 10th, 2004
Butterfly Ward stepped gingerly across her suburban street, shadows dancing against the pavement as the night insects scattered away from her approach. She wasn't supposed to be out this late, and it wasn't just demons she was scared of.She knew she wasn't alone; the cat was watching her, somewhere, blending into the background. He'd volunteered to stick close to her side, but she'd asked if he could defend himself any better than a normal cat could, and as he couldn't, she insisted he hang back.
It was difficult not to be self-conscious in the outfit. She looked ridiculous, she knew it, the exact middle ground between cartoon princess and fantasy knight, but the part that was worse was the part where she resented her own resentment. The dress was cute as hell! The glasses made her look smart and stylish, the amber gems complemented its dark blue and white elegantly, yet it felt and looked strangely practical.
The armour plates were polished like a mirror; if she held up her gauntleted hand to the light, she could just see herself reflected on the cuff, around the gem. The cat had said that the costume didn't have a mask because it didn't need one; the magic would disguise her so thoroughly her own mother wouldn't recognize her. She didn't expect that same magic to also work on her. The girl in the reflection was not Eve. She shared every single feature, expression, and habit, and yet they were completely different. Butterfly Ward saw Butterfly Ward in the reflection; Eve barely crossed her mind.
A car rolled passed, slowly, and somebody yelled something from the window; the words were indistinct but the cruelty behind them was not. She made an angry gesture with her gauntleted fist back.
She wasn't out to fight a particular evil today; she was starting small. Walk around the block, Butterfly Ward, grow comfortable with your new form, look for what might be wrong. Practice seeing what was out of place. Unfortunately the evil in question was going to be some kind of horrid demons, not just jerks in crappy cars.
She reached Wawona Street, cutting down the street and staring at the strange, gated building recessed among the trees there. It certainly looked spooky; its positioning down the hill managed to make it look like it was lurking, all dark grey wood and boarded-up windows, the flat roof covered in leaves and detritus from the surrounding trees just visible through the lights opposite.
But… it was just some kind of city utility building or something. It had been here forever, certainly since before her family moved here. She forced herself to move on, crossing 19th Avenue into the grove and onward down the unlit path.
The dark didn't look as dark to her as it should; the shadows softer, painted in blues and purples instead of unforgiving black. She hadn't really noticed it on the road, it only really occurred to her as she trod along the path toward the small playground inside. There were people there, a trio of boys, and she recognized one of them even in the dark and from such a distance; he was an older student, she'd caught glimpses of him once or twice in the halls of Lowell over the last two weeks. The other two she didn't; maybe she hadn't seen them, or maybe they went to ALHS instead.
They were drinking.
She paused, considering what to do. Perhaps it would be best to duck off the path or turn around, it's what she'd have done if she'd been stupid enough to come out here in any other circumstance… but she wasn't Eve, scared and fragile and human. She was Butterfly Ward, she was a knight, a superhero. How could she save the world if her night patrol got stopped by some seventeen year old boys?
Squaring her shoulders, she walked on down the path, doing her best to ignore them. She just had to walk on past them, just to the trees on the other side of the park, and she'd turn back out onto the road and nearly be there. She just had to ignore them whispering, them laughing.
"Halloweens not for a month, retard!" one of the boys called.
"Shut up, Jake, Jesus," another retorted. "You'll scare her off."
"Hey, come hang out! We got beer!" another called. What would a superhero do in this situation? Say something like, not now citizen, the city of San Francisco needs me!, right?
She couldn't quite manage that, so she sped up a bit instead, power-walking down the path. She had a mission, that was fine. She was ignoring distractions.
She wasn't looking, but she could hear one of them moving toward her. Hear the sound of his sneakers flicking through the dry grass, his breathing, the fabric of his clothes with each motion.
"Hey, come on. I don't think I've seen you around, you go to ALH?" he said. In her peripheral vision, she saw him reach out toward her wrist.
She snapped her hand away faster and more forcefully than she had intended, and the boy stumbled off balance, cutting in front of her. He was tall, much taller, feathered dirty blond hair, in a bright red Blink-182 t-shirt and torn jeans. He stumbled up in front of her and smiled, trying to play off his near-faceplant and look cool. It was the one from her school.
"You're a freshman, right? At Lowell?" he asked; there wasn't malice in his eyes, but there also wasn't any understanding of how vulnerable Butterfly Ward was feeling, why he might be coming off as intimidating. His friends were moving and something in her brain was screaming that they were coming to cut off her escape. "What is that, some kinda movie thing? Is that real metal?"
She took a step back and raised her arm defensively, and the small disc on her forearm twisted and unfolded into a shimmering, interlocking brass shield, shaped like a pair of butterfly wings. The boy's shocked face was still visible through a round loophole at the top, but it was strange. Blurry.
She was crying.
"Leave me alone!" she yelled, backing away. Backing into another one, recoiling, stuck in the middle as the voices got closer and the world seemed to collapse in on itself. They should have backed away, or stopped, or anything other than laugh and get closer.
"What the hell are you doing out here?"
"Come on, sit, calm down. Jesus."
"Guys, we're freaking her out."
"Shut up, dude, stop being a fag."
"She's crying though-"
"Jesus Christ, Eric, get her a fucking drink."
"Why are you crying? We're just-"
There was a rustle of fabric, a gust of wind, and the sound of metal whistled through the air. Butterfly Ward lowered her shield to see the boy closest with wide eyes, trembling, with a gleaming line of silver metal at his throat.
"Back away. All of you," the newcomer said. His voice was clear and level, deep and resonant, and it belonged to a man that had appeared among the three in an eyeblink. Illuminated only by the sodium light of the park building, Ward could still make out the long white cloak, the trim lavender coat and white sash, the white masquerade mask in stark contrast to the dark skin underneath and the curls of long, dark hair spilling over the side. His white-gloved hand held an ornate sabre, its layered basket hilt the shape of rose petals, perfectly steady, its razor's edge an inch from skin. "Now."
Two of them rushed to comply, one of them tripping over his feet and falling off the path into the dry, dusty grass, the can in his pocket rupturing and hissing from the fall. The one in the red shirt, the one from her school, though, filled with the idiot bravado of youth and alcohol, laughed, reaching into his pocket and flipping open a slim cell phone.
"Fuck off, dude, who the hell do-"
There was a whistle and a flash. The top half of the boy's phone clattered to the dirt, and the front of his tight-fitting t-shirt parted like paper torn on a perforated line, exposing a window of pale, intact skin under it.
"Now," the newcomer repeated, and the boy fled. The newcomer waited until they were out of sight, eyes scanning the park, and only when they were gone did he reach down a hand to Butterfly Ward. "My apologies, miss."
"... n-not at all. Who are you?" Butterfly Ward asked, blinking away tears as her eyes flicking to the hilt of the sword. The man's face twitched, just a moment, and then he released her hand and stepped well back, hands raised in front of him and well away from his sword.
"Just a stranger," he said. "I'll stay away, but you should know; you don't have to be scared of guys like that. You're stronger than that."
"I didn't want to hurt them either," she stammered, looking down to dust herself off. "I'm Butterfly Ward, who-"
She looked up, and he was gone. There was nothing but the wind, distant footsteps, and a single white rose pedal fluttering to the dirt.
Chapter 2 - The Cat Returns
You didn't remember your dreams; sleep was just an abyss you fell into, and then typically stayed in past any number of alarms you set yourself. You'd found that somewhat disappointing, honestly; shouldn't a magic princess get prophetic dreams, dramatic remote viewing, or visions of a past life? Or even, like, dramatic war movie flashbacks to the fucked up stuff?But no, Riley got the omens, Kimiyo would see things unfold through the connections, Amara saw her past life as the First Prince, and apparently everyone got at least some nightmares, though it was nothing like what Esmé had faced.
You got snippets of your partners' dreams sometimes, on the rare occasions they were asleep and you weren't. The first thing you'd ever seen through your ESP was a snippet of one of Kimiyo's dreams at a sleepover when you were… what, nine, ten? But it didn't happen often; Amara was a night owl and Kimiyo was a morning person, but you weren't really that great at either end of the day. Honestly, you were still working on the middle bit.
On the upside, insomnia was never a problem, which was a very adaptive trait when sharing a bed with people who suffered from it. No warm milk or melatonin or Benadryl for you, the vodka didn't make a difference one way or another; you'd just zone out for a second and bam, express train straight to the pleasant nothingness of Sleepytown USA. Next stop, sometime past noon tomorrow (if only you didn't have class).
This pleasant journey was derailed much too early. Your phone lit up, and you'd slid off your pillow such that it was right in your face. As a result, it flashbanged you with the bright white butterfly on your lock screen and a buzz against your nose. You winced and pawed at it ineffectually, holding it up to try and read it as you blinked. Kimiyo had uploaded something on Instagram, and your phone had seen fit to notify you of this at 2:13am just because you'd told it to.
You tapped the app and took a look; you were already awake, might as well. It was the view out of her apartment window at sunset, the sky was a clear, dark blue backdrop, the lights of the city not yet drowning it out. Painted in shades of orange and pink against it was the skyline, Tokyo tower in the middle. You ran her comment under it through Google translate, which spat out something about watercolours that didn't quite parse, and you were too sleepy to figure it out. Pretty, though.
You rolled over and nestled yourself against Amara's shoulder, craving the warmth and closeness. The glow of the sodium lights outside, diffused through the translucent veil of the curtains over your bed, was just enough to pick out the shape of her face in soft, warm light, tracing her profile against the negative space created by her dark skin and the shadowed wall. You just lay there and stared, lost in it. You'd heard people talk about how love faded with time, but in moments like this there was still a giddy swell in your chest and you felt fourteen and hopeless all over again. You shut your eyes and relaxed happily against her, shifting to maximize how much of your skin touched hers, and just melted into the moment.
There was still someone missing, but soon she'd be back, as more than notifications on your phone.
The moment stretched out, on and on, until it was elsewhere. Amara always had the exact same dream, night after night, like a movie playing on a loop. You'd pieced it together over the years; it was memories, the life of the First Prince brutally cut down and edited, but they weren't quite right, not actually what happened. It was like there were stage actors in her subconscious, reading out the script on barebones sets. You didn't know much about history, but you knew what you were seeing didn't hang together right, the props and costumes dreamlike reconstructions of lost-long originals.
While your ESP would normally show you people's dreams from their perspective, for hers you were just in the audience. This was a throne room, that much was clear. White marble, colourful tapestries, jade and gold, a deep green carpet. The world outside the windows was a flat, empty grey.
Amara was kneeling at the edge of the room, not herself; other than sharing a similar complexion, this Prince looked very little like her. She, and the assembled crowd, were watching the center of the room, where a familiar woman was standing with her hands outstretched over a crucible. The hot metal inside shrieked and boiled, becoming, slowly, a thing, not dead metal but not alive by any measure either. A demon. The first demon, forged from years stolen from the mortal realm, from lives cut short.
The creature finally rose and stood, the metal cooling. It was horrid, somehow industrial and insectoid at once, a body of chrome chitin. It sank to a knee in front of its Queen, the impact resonating against the stone floor. The Prince looked away.
There was a sound above you, a groan of the window on its hinges, and a gust of cool sea air that shook you back to your senses. You pulled one of the assorted blankets strewn across the bed up to your shoulders, grabbing blindly to find one you could move without exposing your feet, and were just settling back in when you heard something rattle against the screen. Weakly, you looked up, rubbing sleep from your eyes to see the dark silhouette of a cat with its front claws caught against the metal mesh, pulling in a panic.
"Awww. Hold still kitty, lemme help. How'd you get up here?" you muttered, sitting up and gently reaching out to try and guide the poor little thing free.
"Not easily, Your Highness, I'll tell you that!" the cat replied. You stopped, squinting against the dark, but backlit all you saw was a vague kitty-shaped blob.
"... Andy?" you asked.
"Yes, Your Highness. How many other talking cats do you know? Now, if I could beg your assistance, I'm… well, I do seem to be stuck fast," the cat complained, tugging again against the screen. Amara shifted in her sleep as you helped guide the claws out of the screen by feel, lifting with your thumb. "Ow, ow, that stings!"
"It'd be easier if you weren't pulling, you silly thing. I would have thought you'd be smarter than this," you chided in a whisper, guiding the final claw free. "There."
"Very good, Your Highness," Andy replied, perching on the windowsill and trying to pose himself back into some semblance of dignity. "Now, if you could please let me in?"
You pinched the little metal release latch at the bottom of the screen and pulled it up; it only went a few inches, but it was sufficient for Andy to smoothly duck under and hop onto your bed lightly, looking around in the dark. You reached to the bedside table for your glasses, realized they'd fallen, and leaned over to pad your hand against the floor in the dark for them.
"There you are… Right. Andy, where the hell have you been? It's been like… I haven't seen you in eight years!" you said, pushing your glasses on, but Andy was too busy scanning the room.
"My word, Your Highness, you live like this?" he said, turning around, the streetlights reflecting in his eyes. Amara shifted upright slightly, glancing over to you.
"Thehellsgoingon?" she muttered, the words all slurring together.
"Ahem, nevermind that. I have a very important report to deliver in my duties as your advisor. If you could get the light?" Andy said, sitting politely on the edge of the bed.
"... sorry babe," you whispered to Amara, then you reached out of bed, leaving the warm confines of the blanket to hit the light.
"Ah! Shit! Why!" Amara cried, at roughly the same time Andy clamped a tiny paw over his eyes.
"My Goddess, Eve, I didn't know you weren't decent! Where's your nightwear?" he asked, looking away. You swept your eyes across the room.
"Uh… well, I can see my pyjama pants over there, and I think that's the top I was wearing?" you guessed, then shook your head. "If it's making you uncomfortable, I'll put a shirt on, but like… you're a cat, why do you care?"
"Even so-!"
You rolled out of bed and selected a shirt at random from those strewn about the bed; it was one of Amara's, but that was fine. Better, honestly. Amara sat up, the sheet falling away, and you heard a tiny kitty gasp.
"Goddess, man, what are those?"
"Uuuh…" Amara glanced down. "So, some stuff has happened."
"I'll say! It might even be connected, perhaps disrupting prophecy… Eve, do you have a lead on this already?" Andy asked. You blinked, shuffling back into bed.
"What?"
"I don't know the specifics, but I assume some kind of curse-" Andy began, and Amara burst into laughter.
"No, there's no curse… okay, formal reintroductions. Amara, this is Androcles the talking cat. Andy-"
"Wait, that's what Andy's short for?" Amara said, holding out a hand. Andy looked away politely and stuck his paw out to shake.
"It's a perfectly suitable name," Andy replied, as Amara wiggled his paw up and down.
"Well, nice to meet you, Androcles. Do I need to explain what being trans is?"
"Ah! No, I'm well versed. Charmed," Andy replied, withdrawing his paw and then licking it fastidiously. "Mlem. I do feel somewhat embarrassed, but in my defense, given what we've all been through, the mundane explanation seemed more outlandish. In any case-!"
You held up a hand.
"No no, hang on. Andy, where the hell have you been? When you said you were taking care of some things, I assumed that meant, like… ducking into the future to hand a report in to future me and coming right back." The cat nodded.
"That is the first thing I did, yes! But after dispatching the letter there were… well, certain other tasks I had to attend to in preparation of your eventual ascension, you understand. Everything was well in hand, so I thought I'd leave you in peace and go take care of business, Your Highness," Andy reported, then looked down. "I do apologize for disturbing your happily ever after like this, I had intended to never bother you again…"
"... what?" you replied, a sinking feeling in your chest. "Andy, we were worried sick about you!"
"Y-your Highness, I..?" Andy stammered, clearly at a loss. "You always seemed so resentful of me, not for nothing of course, I did drive you quite hard. I… once my duty was complete, I thought…"
"Oh God, Andy, no!" you replied, cradling your forehead in your hands. "Christ, no. I was a kid under a lot of stress and I put that on you, but I couldn't have gotten through it without you. I'm sorry, I missed you. Even the little lectures."
Andy straightened up a little, a look of pride on his tiny face.
"W-well. I… I missed you too, Your Highness. And… if it makes you feel better, then…" He raised a little kitty paw to his chest, posing. "My God, Eve, sharing a bed out of wedlock? If the court knew, it would be such a scandal! I've overlooked your indiscretions in the past, but this is unbefitting of a Princess!"
"I think magic soulmates is kinda like being married," Amara offered, and Andy theatrically threw up his nose.
"You would think that," he sniffed. "What's stopped you from putting a ring on Her Highness' finger?"
"Uh, well, for a good few years after the paperwork went through, Proposition 8," Amara said sheepishly. "And, well…"
"We figure we'll get married after I'm crowned so we can have a giant stupid marriage in a castle," you interjected. "Also, what the hell kind of Queen am I that my court would care one way or another?"
"... ah, well, Your Highness, I did not mean to presume… which is to say, I… it's probably fine," Andy stammered, ears flat and wincing in that strange combination of cat and human expressions he did. "Never mind, there's… I am here on Knight business."
"Right, yes," you agreed, gesturing for him to continue. He puffed himself up, coughed theatrically into a paw, then stared into your eyes.
"The Dark Queen has returned, and the world is in peril. We must rally the Butterfly Knights."
"Oh," you said, staring blankly at the cat. Then you flopped back against the pillow. "Couldn't you have lead with that?"
🦋
You told Andy to go wait in the kitchen while the two of you threw on clothes, then gathered around the counter with tea (and a saucer of milk) to discuss the details.
The early warning system Andy had set up with the Knights Errant back in the day, the one that had detected the ritual to create the Anathema of Life, had alerted him; he'd checked the old instrumentation Brigid had built, and discovered a reading growing steadily stronger. He'd spent a precious week double-checking before coming to San Francisco to tell you in person. His assessment was that the ritual had been restarted sometime in the last year, and while unsteady and far slower than before, it was growing in strength.
"How soon?" Amara asked, and the cat looked uncertain.
"I can't say. There have been spikes of magical energy at random, I presume connected to events in the material world and agents we haven't spotted, then long periods of stability or even decline. At the earliest, two weeks is possible, on average perhaps eight months, but-"
"We can't gamble. We have to deal with it as soon as possible," Amara summarized. Andy nodded.
"Precisely. What I am presuming is happening is that we didn't manage to clear all of the focuses the Enemy had established during their last incursion, and for the last eight years they have been building up charge on mundane misery and, perhaps, a handful of leftover agents, human or demon. The Dark Queen managed to gain access somehow, and is channeling it once again."
"Will it be the same thing? Fifty foot tall scary lady made out of nothing?" you inquired.
"I don't think so. The energy source is too small and unstable. But it's sufficient if what she wants is just revenge. She might not be able to end the world with it, but she could end San Francisco, and then potentially use the energy of doing so to carve a path back into the material realm and reforge an army," Andy said grimly. "It would be a crude, dangerous, and unreliable plan, but it might be all she has."
"Do we know it's the Dark Queen herself, and not… I dunno, an underling? Or somebody new?" you asked quietly. Strangely, you hoped it wasn't, that it was something else, somebody else. The alternative was too sad.
"... it has to be her. The Shadow Realm only has one inhabitant now, and the energy originates from there. The only way in or out that remains rests in Butterfly Ward's scabbard," Andy confirmed. "Yes, there's a chance it might be something completely different, we have our share of unsolved mysteries, but this is nothing like the mirror traps or our alien friends."
You stared down at your tea, a cold guilt washing over you. Amara and Andy were still talking, something about the logistics and the Dark Princes, but none of it was registering with you. It was like you were there again, standing over the defeated Queen, clutching the stump of her wrist, the utter despair on her face.
"Eve?" Amara asked finally. "Eve, are you okay?"
"Has… has she hurt anyone yet? Since coming back?" you asked quietly.
"We don't know, Your Highness," Andy said.
If she had, that was on you. You had your chance to prevent it, eight years ago. You had the gleaming edge of the Razor against her throat, her blood was already bright red across the silver. You could have just… pressed. One half-inch forward, and you'd still be in bed now.
But it still didn't feel right. You still felt you did the right thing then, but you knew what you had to do now.
"Okay. Okay, I can do this. It's just her, yeah? I'll go tonight," you said, pushing yourself away from the counter. You reached to your neck and hooked your thumb around the golden chain. "I'll go now, and I'll end this."
She'd cried. She wanted to end the world, she'd wanted nothing but death and destruction, to rule over the ashes, she had brought a weapon to your city that had killed tens of thousands, but she'd cried, and you couldn't do it. You'd destroyed any number of her constructs, and they'd fought to the end, snarling and roaring as their sophisticated disguises came apart to reveal the things inside. You'd killed two of her Princes yourself and watched a dozen others die at the hands of your friends. They'd mocked you, laughed, maybe panicked as their plans came apart and justice came for them at last, and they'd died.
But it had always been a fight. A battle where the only way to protect people was to stop them and the only way you had to stop them was with the edge of your shield or the knuckles of your gauntlets. You'd never had somebody at your mercy. You'd never faced somebody looking up at you and seeing death.
"Y-your Highness, please," Andy protested. "We don't have enough information, and you are too important to risk-"
Why did it have to be you?
Amara could have done it; she said it wasn't easy, but sometimes it was the merciful thing. Kimiyo could have; she'd choked the life from a helpless Prince Thornheart, slowly, and said the only thing she'd felt was satisfaction. Though given he was the creepy one with the magic mind control mirror, you felt she got a pass for that one.
Brigid said she never felt bad about stopping people trying to end the world. Riley probably wouldn't have given the Queen time to yield in the first place. Hell, Esmé once shot a dying collaborator in the throat while the rest of you debated what to do, like it was nothing. "Wait guys, I figured it out!" Bang. "Let's go to Swensen's!"
But none of them had been there. It was you, and you couldn't do it. You didn't know if you could do it now.
"There's no risk. I've beaten her before, I just need to finish the job," you concluded, closing your hand around the golden charm. But then, in a moment, a flash, Amara was there, her hand clamped around yours.
"Hey, dummy. It's not about if you could do it alone; you don't have to," she reminded you. "And besides, you're not exactly at the top of your game right now."
She wasn't wrong; the days when you could jump buildings and lift cars even untransformed were long behind you, fading as the group went their separate ways. Even your ESP was nothing compared to back then, the days when it felt like you could feel the city breathing.
"And you are?" you deflected, and she shrugged.
"Hey, I didn't say that. I kept in okay shape, but toward the end there I was more of a cheerleader than anything, once everyone was throwing around the really scary stuff," she said. "But I've still got my sword, costume still fits, and I can still teleport. There's advantages to not relying on magic."
"Sorry, you can teleport, but you're not reliant on magic?" Andy scoffed.
"Nono, it's just a trick! She taught me how," you said. "It's, uh, you just gotta step kinda…" You shifted your weight slightly and didn't move an inch. "Guys, I can't do it if you're watching."
"It's true, you can't," Amara confirmed. Andy nodded, clearly skeptical.
"I see. Regardless, she's right, you should not, and cannot, do it alone," he declared, stalking to the end of the counter. "The Queen may have been able to build new demons, or have allies we don't know about. The Knights are strongest together and always have been; it's imperative you act as a unit."
You leaned back against the wall, letting the necklace drop from your hand. Obviously, what were you thinking, going off alone? You couldn't do anything alone, if you didn't have your friends to save you you'd be nothing. The moment things got hard, you'd panic, start crying, and then it'd be over.
But this… this was a reason to get everyone back together after years of drifting apart. A crisis that would remind them all who they were, who you were to each other, it would be like old times. It was a chance to make things right. Or at least, as right as you could.
"Okay, yeah. We gotta get… everyone. We'll need the Knights Errant too, but, uh, we don't know where they are. They dropped out of contact about five years ago, just… ghosted us out of nowhere," you explained. Andy nodded.
"That does seem like them. Not to worry, Your Highness! I have a sense for these things, it's how I found you, after all. Give me a few days and I should be able to narrow down the location of our wayward Knights," Andy said brightly.
"Good. Get on it, right away," you instructed, glancing at the clock and doing the time zone math while fishing your phone out. "Brigid's tutoring right now and she'll have her phone off." You tapped your contacts and the phone buzzed twice. Kimiyo finished her brushstroke, cleaned her brush, and picked up.
"Eve? I'm surprised you're awake, what time is it over there?" she asked, a smile on her face.
"Late. Sorry, something big's come up, you're going to need to come home early. Andy turned back up, the Dark Queen's returned. We gotta stop her. How fast can you get a flight back?," you explained in a rush.
Kimiyo stared dead ahead, holding her phone awkwardly, her mouth half-open but unable to find a sound. She looked around the room, at the half-finished watercolour in front of her, her photo now rendered in beautiful pastels, pink and teal and deep blues.
"Kimmy?" you asked, and she pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at your name, and hung up. She dropped the phone from shaking hands, pulling inward, and then you couldn't see her anymore.
You lowered the phone, an awful, heavy feeling on your back. You breathed, slowly, aware you were being stared at. You couldn't cry, people needed you.
"She's not okay, something's wrong," you said, thinking it over. You called again, and she didn't pick up, she wasn't even in the room. You breathed, weighing your savings, the time, remembering the look on her face. "Okay, okay. I'm going to go, right now."
"Go?" Andy asked, as you stalked over to the living room, wincing as you stepped on a screw from the half-built computer.
"To get her," you said, opening your laptop and waiting for it to wake up. "Andy, do you have any more information for us?"
"I've told you all I know, Your Highness," he said solemnly.
"Thank you. Go find Tracy and Lyra, report back the moment you have them," you said, not even looking as you searched flights. You winced at the cost; there wasn't any way you could do this for less than a thousand dollars, so you just sucked it up and booked a direct flight. "Amara, get my bag, I need my credit card and passport."
Amara threw you your purse, then opened the back door. You caught the sight of the little off-white cat gliding toward it over the top of the laptop.
"Andy!" you called, looking over your laptop at the cat. "Hey, uh, come back this time, okay?"
"... Of course, Your Highness. Good luck," the cat said, bowing low with a little paw up, and then he bound off into the night.
"You too," you said quietly, as Amara shut the door and came to sit with you.
"What do I do?" she asked quietly as you punched in your number.
"Pack me a bag, enough stuff for, uh, three nights, bring it all down to the car and make sure it starts. You're going to drop me off at 8, that'll give me time in case something weird happens in security. You call Brigid at 9, uh, 9:15, and you call until she picks up, she'll be out of her afternoon class… I think?" Your memory of her class schedule was shaky, not helped by the fact that what she said it was didn't always make sense.
"Should I call Riley now?" she asked, and you tried to think that through, your finger hovering over the button to order your tickets, the price lock-in timer ticking down.
"No. Fuck, no, she's going to her stupid cabin with her stupid… okay." You took a deep breath. "Actually, this is better. After I get Kimiyo and we get Brigid on a plane, we'll go next week, all of us together. Show up at her house when whatshisfuck's at work and she can't… wiggle." You pressed order and let out a breath. That was the most money you'd spent in a while, and you'd need to get back. "Tickets booked, take off's at 11:40. This is happening."
You let out a sigh and flopped back against the couch, breathing hard.
"We have five hours. I need my pills, I'm going to… uh, fuck, I'm…" you stumbled, grasping for something.
"You're going to slow down. You've got a plan and a long day ahead," Amara said, offering you the pill bottle and a glass of water. You'd barely noticed her move. "Maybe get some rest and wait on the pills until you leave?"
"If I go to sleep, I'll stay asleep," you said bitterly, leaning forward again and wrestling open the bottle. "I'll figure out my route from the airport to Kimiyo's place, and if she's really mad at me, I'll find a hotel with vacancies nearby so I know where to go. Maybe two, so I have a backup."
"That seems reasonable. Are you okay?"
"I don't know. I don't know how Kimmy's going to feel, I'm… I don't know if she'll come with me, I just gotta go. And I don't really expect much from Riley, it's too complicated, but Brigid might-"
"That's not what I asked. How's Eve doing?" Amara repeated. You paused, thinking about your breathing. Breathing okay. Muscles in back tense. Weight on chest from suppressed panic. All distantly familiar.
"I'm okay," you said, then stopped. "Well, low-key freaking out, actually. I… I dunno how we're supposed to do this without Esmé. She'd have known what to do, she always knew what to do," you mumbled, staring at the screen. She'd have nodded and smiled and launched into a plan, and it might not even be the best plan but she'd go for it and you'd all go with her.
"You seem to know what you're doing now?" Amara offered. It felt weak.
"I dunno. Okay. Okay, I'll find those hotels, write an email to my professors, and then… and then I'm going to play Animal Crossing a bit and that's okay because I've done everything I can?" you asked anxiously, looking at her face to see if you got the right answer. Fingerguns said yes!
Amara headed to your room as you located a couple places that wouldn't cost what little savings you had remaining, then you shut your laptop with finality and reached across the coffee table for the WiiU controller. You passed over your phone doing so, and you stopped, grabbing it. You shouldn't call her again, but you could text her. What could you say? You were scared that maybe she thought this was a trick, you lying to get her to come home.
You picked it up, trying to figure out what to write, what to explain, how much to say. Trying not to feel hurt, even though it hurt so much. Crying never helped.
"heads up"
"omw"
"♥️"
"omw"
"♥️"
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🦋 Chapter 2 - The Cat Returns (Part 2)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Content Warning: Discussion of underage drinking, hallucinations, death and suicide
You hadn't been on an airplane since… 2003? Really? That didn't sound right, but no, it was just road trips. Everyone could chip in for gas money and you'd take Riley's crappy used van and it was off to LA or Disneyland or Butte Lake (heh) and you'd all laugh and sing along with the radio and you'd fall asleep on Kimiyo's shoulder in the back seat as the road went on and on…
It just seemed wrong because you'd gone to airports a lot. Kimiyo went overseas once a year like clockwork, leaving just after your birthday and arriving back the second-to-last Saturday in July and you'd meet her at the airport every time. And you'd seen off Brigid when she left, and Amara flew for work a few times a year, so you'd been to SFO plenty of times, just not through security.
It wasn't as bad as you feared; the line seemed long, but went quickly. You didn't much care for the new scanning machines, and you definitely didn't care for the fact you had to take the butterfly necklace off and put it in a tray along with your shoes. The fact that fate wouldn't let you lose it wasn't the point; you literally couldn't remember the last time you'd taken it off, and it felt wrong that you'd done so now. Like you'd reset a clock, or lost your high score.
A lot had changed, but every Butterfly Knight was still wearing their necklace. Kimiyo hid it subtly under her clothes, but it was there. Brigid would cling to it like a lifeline when she went out of focus. Riley had abandoned every other part of who she used to be, but you still saw the chain around her neck on the calls. You couldn't imagine otherwise.
You collapsed onto one of the seats at Gate A1, popped your earbuds in, and started on your backlog of Welcome to Nightvale, trying to fight the anxiety rising in your chest. It didn't feel real, a trip like this was something you were supposed to plan weeks and months in advance, you didn't just up and decide to travel across the Pacific. Wired from your meds and tired from the early wake-up, you stared at the ceiling and felt your thoughts spiralling away from you.
There were so many ways this could go wrong, and the one weighing heaviest on your mind as you anxiously wrapped your earbud cords around your fingers was that Kimiyo might just slam the door in your face. Maybe this was her trying to break up in a way that wouldn't hurt (which wasn't working), and all you showing up would do is trigger a fight. Were you really travelling halfway around the world so you could break down crying in the hallway outside your now-ex-girlfriend's door?
And that's putting aside the fact that if she did do that and you left with nothing but debt, you then had to go home and fight the Dark Queen and save the world. No biggie, you'd just fight Her Royal Floofiness (how did she get her hair to do that) without her! It's not like the Dark Queen is well known for her weird love of mind control powers that definitely hadn't had any long-term effects on your psychological development. It's not like Kimiyo was the only Butterfly Knight that was immune to all that. Super fair, extremely balanced.
You always used to complain that it wasn't fair you had to be a teenager and a superhero at the same time. Turns out it wasn't much more fair being a superhero and an adult.
Amara texted you just past nine, and twice more over the next two hours. Nothing from Brigid, she'd probably fallen asleep right after tutoring. Nothing from Kimiyo either, no matter how long you stared. You glanced repeatedly at the gate agents, worried you were coming off like a crazy person as you tapped your foot and stared at the screen and mummified your thumb with the earbud cord. Making eye contact with the blonde girl at the ticket scanny thing was probably a mistake; it wasn't like she could make the plane take off faster.
A few minutes of cycling through and staring at all the unchanging text chats later, you were shaken out of your spiral by a voice talking directly to you, saying a lot of words you didn't understand. You glanced up at the smiling face of a JAL employee, presumably some kind of supervisor, looking at you with the sort of professional worry one might employ when there's a crazy lady on the edge of tears at his gate. Presumably assuming you were nervous about going home rather than nervous about leaving it.
Face flushed and right back to being thirteen on your last trip, you had to sheepishly admit your Japanese proficiency extended to being able to introduce yourself and asking where the bathroom was. The man nodded, speaking in clear, if somewhat stilted, English.
"Are you travelling alone?" he asked. You nodded. "I know it can be nerve-wracking. Are you alright?"
You glanced reflexively at your phone, then nodded quickly.
"Yeah, sorry, just… long day? I… booked at four AM, kinda last minute emergency type stuff…" you rambled uselessly, trailing off. This guy definitely does not want to know your life story, idiot!
He indicated your boarding pass, and you offered it apologetically. He scanned it quickly, then handed it back.
"Ah, you're in luck, Miss Nakamura. Go talk to Susan at the gate; your seat is eligible to be upgraded to Premium Economy on this flight. A few less things to worry about, if nothing else?"
You sputtered your way through a kind of useless combination of thanks, apologies, and humble insistence that it was fine, really, blather that continued unabated at the desk and carried you all the way back to your original chair with a brand-new boarding pass in hand.
Pre-boarding (not you), Priority boarding, Group 3. That was you now! Suck it, Group 5! 19 E… One of the middle seats among four. USB port, funky multi-country power outlet, wifi? The future was now. There was also a cheap little blanket, a menu, and in a little plastic bag, a pair of slippers.
Airplane slippers! Nobody told you they gave you slippers when you went flying. There were also some earphones, a separate set of yellow earplugs, and a… blindfold? Why would… Sleep mask! That made more sense.
The flight attendants walked everyone through the technically complex procedure of putting on a seatbelt in two languages; you mostly spent that time daydreaming irresponsibly about the weirdly hot dude in the crumpled business suit in the seat across the aisle from yours (he was already dead asleep but was muttering along with the instructions). Then you were pressed back gently into your seat by the acceleration and you were up and off.
Once the seatbelt sign switched off, you grabbed your laptop and tried to use this new-fangled wi-ed fi, but it appeared the future sucked because while you could connect to the Gogo network, it didn't seem to Gogo onto the internet very well. Skype wouldn't log in and Firefox wouldn't load, so your dreams of Netflix were dashed. You closed your laptop and poked at the in-flight entertainment options a while, gave up, and just settled back into your seat and closed your eyes.
In ten hours you'd see Kimiyo again. Ten hours. After a year of waiting, ten hours felt like both an eternity and an instant. She hadn't responded to your texts before you'd left, and now that you were in the air you wouldn't see if she did until you touched down. The nightmare possibility that she might have told you to stay away and you wouldn't know until you were at her metaphorical door weighed heavily.
Once again, you found yourself wondering how the hell this had happened, all of this. Even when things were getting bad with the other girls, you and Kimiyo were close, everything was good, she was probably doing the best out of all of you. It wasn't like you'd fought or argued or were growing apart, the morning she'd left she'd clung to both you and Amara right up until you reached the security line.
Something had changed, after her grandfather's funeral. She wouldn't say what, she wouldn't talk about anything. She just said she was staying a while because something came up, and then she got distant. Colder. Stopped calling Amara separately, stopped calling you as often. It was only three months later that you found out she wasn't talking to her parents anymore, something you learned from them.
Not that they'd given any more details either. Inability to talk about literally anything was apparently an Okamoto family tradition. "Oh, you know how she is!" Apparently you didn't!
If she just didn't love you anymore… you couldn't say it was fine, because the thought made you want to cry, but it'd be something. A clear, concrete fact that would make sense. The thing that made it hurt was it was plainly obvious how much she did love you, you didn't need ESP to sense it, she needed you as badly as you needed her and you could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes even through the lag and low bitrates. Something was keeping her away, and it hurt she wouldn't tell you what.
It didn't help anything to dwell, but it was hard not to. There was nothing else to do, just stuck with your thoughts between the middle-aged couple on one side and the absolutely ancient old lady snoozing on the other. In ten hours you'd be at Kimiyo's apartment or meeting her at a train station or something, begging her to come back with you. To save the world, and more importantly, save your relationship.
Yes, The World, you meant in that order. Last time you had a breakup, you got so emo about it you nearly tore the fabric of space and time asunder in your grief. The universe better get its shit together, that's all you were saying; you'd think misfortune would steer clear of the sort of people who could become Shadow Butterflies.
You poked the in-flight entertainment stream yet again, contemplated finally watching Frozen instead of just watching that one song on youtube over and over, decided singing along in the plane would be frowned upon, and just started cycling through the shows on the Japanese language half. You randomly hit play on a movie about skiing without reading the description based entirely on the excellent choice of hat from the girl in the poster, and then proceeded to not watch it as your thoughts tangled up again.
How was this happening again? You'd saved the world once already, you'd think that would be all anyone could ask of you. Maybe Kimiyo was just doing the smart thing by ducking out of this one; it was hard enough the first time. If you thought there was anyone else in the world that could do it, you'd have gone right back to bed.
She had more reason than most to want to duck out; she'd died last time. You'd undone that, she said she couldn't actually remember it happening, but that was the sort of thing that would probably put anyone off of superheroing. Actually, thinking about that… you suddenly weren't sure you wanted her to go. What if it happened again and you couldn't put it right again?
You turned the idea over and over in your head, the magnitude of it spreading. You were so excited to get the Knights back together, and sure they'd once again spring into action like they always did, but maybe none of them were up for this.
You unwrapped the cord from your fingers, trying to force your thoughts back in order. You tried to watch the movie; you'd basically missed the first few minutes and you didn't know who anyone was, but that was fine. Friends were out skiing in the height of 1980s snowsuit fashion. There was a meet-cute as the Lead Boy pulled the Lead Girl, the one in the white snowsuit from the poster, out of a snowbank. The girl got unsteadily back on her skis, made it about ten more feet down the hill, and fell right back over.
Finally, a character you could relate to. It was so nice to have representation.
You watched on, as best you could, as RomCom Shenanigans and ski tricks unfolded, but focusing was difficult. You were a sucker for this kind of movie, even one from before you were born; in better times it'd be good movie night fare with Amara. Right now, though, for what felt like the first time in your life, a cheesy romance came off as annoyingly saccharine and trivial.
That probably wasn't a good sign.
You didn't want to dwell on Kimiyo, but that just brought your thoughts to your other friends. All of them were hurting, which made the little pity-party you were having at ten thousand feet feel particularly indulgent. It was hard not to feel like you'd gotten off easy by comparison; you still had all your limbs, for one thing.
You'd tried to fix it, you really did, but the frayed ends of the string were coming apart in your hands and you didn't have enough to do it and save everyone who needed to be saved. Riley had said she wasn't bitter about it, she said it over and over, but it had crushed her. All the teams she wanted to try out for, all the trophies she was destined to win, it was all replaced with countless hours of physical therapy and pain. She couldn't even be proud of how she got the injury; instead of the heroic Knight that held a street alone for two hours, she was just another helpless girl left wounded in the wake of the Whatever It Was.
The Riley that used to stride tall through the halls, out and proud and daring anyone to say anything, was now limping along on a clumsy prosthetic. She tried to put on a brave face, kept training and practicing, she swore up and down that one of these days she'd be back to normal, then she went to college, dropped out of contact for a year, and came back with a ring on her finger and a different surname and a kid.
It wasn't as dramatic, but you suspected that maybe Brigid didn't make it through much better. You'd had broken limbs and broken ribs and flare-ups of pain in your back and shoulders despite the fact you weren't even 24 yet; you were supernaturally tough when you were transformed, but not invincible. Brigid had gotten hit, a lot, she was their priority, and didn't have your armour and shield to take the brunt of it. While Brigid had always been spacy, prone to drifting off into her thoughts, in retrospect that had gotten a lot worse in the years afterward. She was tired a lot, would need to have things repeated to her, sometimes it felt like she'd forgotten where she was, but at the time you'd just put it down to the fact she was up all night reading again, the nerd.
You should have gotten her help after she collapsed the second time, if not the first. But she said it was just low blood sugar, that she forgot to eat again. Haha, isn't that just like her?
You twisted up the flimsy airplane headphone cord in your hands again as your thoughts began to dwell on Esmé. You'd wondered at first how you were supposed to do this without her, but if she were still here, asking her to go might be the cruelest thing you could do.
For the year after the battle, the Knights always talked about it as going back to normal, back to a time before you were running around at night having life or death battles, back to being regular people. It only really sunk in after she disappeared that maybe that wasn't something Esmé could actually do; she'd been doing this for years before any of you, which had made her seem cool and experienced when you were fourteen and now made you impossibly sad. She was twelve when she started. What normal did she have to go back to?
None of you got away from this trauma-free, but Esmé was the only one whose flashbacks posed a danger to the people around her. Team Butterfly was big on sleepovers, in no small part because of the nightmares, which was how you kept finding yourself back there, not in your dreams but actually, physically, woven into Esmé's illusionary hallucinations as she involuntarily transformed the room into that last battlefield.
You'd done what you could, but it wasn't much. You were kids. By your last year of high school she was barely hanging on; she was jumpy, defensive, she snapped at people over nothing and got suspended repeatedly. You found out she was bringing her pistol to school in her bag because she didn't feel safe without it. In March, she showed up at your door, kicked out because her mum had finally caught on to how much she'd drunk out of her liquor cabinet. She spent the next month rotating between the houses of the rest of the team for 'sleepovers' as you all lied to your increasingly concerned parents.
A month before graduation, almost exactly six years ago, she had a bad flashback at Riley's place. Mrs. Carter had been pulled in too, and had gotten hurt. Esmé apologized, said she was going home to finally talk to her mom, and then she was gone. No note, no trace, no goodbyes. Gone.
The cheap plastic of the headphone cable cracked and snapped around the wire, and the movie became even less comprehensible as the sound became a stuttering and murky echo.
You never found out what happened. It wasn't surprising. If she'd run away, nobody would find her, and otherwise… You personally suspected she had gone to the bridge and jumped. Probably at night, probably with a weight so she wouldn't leave a trace. You used to hope you were wrong, but now you just hoped it was quick.
Life had gone on. Team Butterfly had one last hurrah as a group, a road trip to LA to see all the places Esmé had promised to show you from her hometown. You'd started at USF, Amara came back from New York with her degree and you'd moved in together with her and Kimiyo, time didn't stop for grief. You did your best, instituting the weekly call, but Tracy and Lyra had dropped out almost immediately. Brigid and Riley were mentally checked out. Team Butterfly was just you and Kimmy, like when you started, and then she left too.
You'd spent the last four years just wanting to break down and scream. This wasn't how it was supposed to go! You'd seen the future, you'd seen the Crystal Palace, the Kaleidoscope Throne, the marble round table whose seven chairs were set with each of your gemstones. Were they just for show, empty places set in honour of long-lost friends?
You were shaken out of your despair by one of the attendants, who was indicating to the old lady like 'is she okay?' All you could do was shrug and hope so. The reason for this interruption was revealed moments later as lunch arrived, and with it a hot towel and the blessed, wonderful relief of the drink cart.
You used to say that food was the best solution to misery, but that was before you met food's seductive mistress booze. A totally-noon-appropriate glass of Chivas Regal in hand and shockingly good egg fried rice rapidly making its way from tray to mouth genuinely did make things better; you settled back, questioned why exactly the workplace Christmas function unfolding on-screen included a girl in a Playboy Bunny tuxedo number, and laughed probably too loudly at the suspenders-bowtie-and-jeans combo on the glasses guy.
Somehow, as you ate, the world didn't seem quite so dark anymore, it didn't feel hopeless. Hard? Yes. Awful? Obviously. Completely unfair to you, paragon of love and truth that you were? Absolutely, but such was your beneficence you would forgive the world for making you work for your happy ending. That's what you did, why you fought, right? Hope was your business. How did you ever give in to such awful thoughts?
The answer occurred to you as you fumbled with the funny little pyramid of transparent plastic containing the salad dressing.
Breakfast. You had forgotten to eat breakfast.
Last edited:
September 28th, 2004
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
A single set of footsteps echoed in the dark, empty mall, a steady tap-tap of expensive shoes against well-worn tile. In the middle of the hall, the woman who had stood unmoving behind the large new kiosk turned slowly, her eyes fixed with unnatural focus on the source of the sound.
From the shadow, lit by the silver of moonlight emerging from the skylight, a man emerged. He was tall, finely dressed in a suit and tie, his hair cropped short and with a single silver earring.
"Umbra IV, report," he said. The woman snapped a fist to her chest and bowed.
"Yes, my Prince. Over four hundred devices were distributed today. Young adult humans appear skeptical of the contract's generous terms, but adolescents and older humans are easy sells and do not ask questions," the woman reported. "We will need more devices."
"Very good, Umbra IV. More will be arriving with the morning. To quicken distribution, the Queen has authorized the deployment of another. This is Lamenta II; it is a more sophisticated model, and you are now subordinate to it," the man snapped. Behind him, a shape loomed, just briefly, but it shrank and changed as it approached the light until all that remained was a young woman with hair in an elaborate braided bun and a plethora of plastic jewellery around her neck.
"Reporting, my Prince. What do you order?"
The man turned to address the newcomer, then stopped. His eyes shifted, scanning the dark, a smile crossing his face.
"Clever bitch…"
"STOP!" a voice ran out. He and his servants turned, and there, perched on the railing like a balance bar, was a familiar figure in white and blue, the moonlight's silver redoubled against armour plate. "Cell phones are a miracle technology that connect friends and family no matter where they are! To corrupt them to foul schemes is an act of profound injustice! It's evil! It's wrong! It's un-American!"
She stepped off the balcony, landing on the tile so lightly she didn't make a sound. The bronze buckler on her arm unfolded like elegant origami, butterfly wings fluttering into a tall tower shield that seemed to glow with a golden light.
"I am the beautiful defender of the people of this beautiful city, and I will not stand to see it harmed! Now is your last chance to surrender!" she declared her arm outstretched, the shield weighing nothing to her.
The man laughed.
"You again. This won't be like last time, Butterfly Ward; my Queen has been quiet generous. Umbra IV, Lamenta II… kill her."
The two woman's gaze snapped to her with unnatural speed, and they moved. Umbra leapt over the kiosk and landed heavily, heavy footfalls tearing up the tile, while Lamenta simply launched herself with full force. Butterfly Ward planted the shield into the ground and shoved, timed exactly right to meet her attacker. The woman recoiled off and rolled against the ground even as Umbra skidded past to flank her.
Ward pivoted on her armoured heel, tearing apart the flooring as she brought the shield around with a heavy thump and a shower of blue sparks. Umbra span away onto all fours, her head snapping up to expose the hideous ruin made of her youthful face. The skin and muscle was torn away to expose a metallic, inhuman skull under it, the surface unworked and raw, eye glowing with teal fire. It hissed and scrambled forward again, fingers distorting into lengthening blades.
Ward's gauntleted fist came down in an overhand punch that drove it headfirst into the ground, then she slammed the lower edge of the shield into its neck a moment later. There was a snap.
"Jesus," the man exclaimed with a wince. The girl jerked the shield from the shattered remains of the demon; molten lead dripped onto the floor. She locked eyes with the man and began to advance, trailing motes of amber light and flowing, diaphanous ribbon.
Then Lamenta came back in like a thunderbolt, tackling Ward to the ground. The blow had torn loose the disguise on the top of its forehead to expose the brassy crystalline structure under it and the insectoid compound eyes lurking in its sockets. It raised back its fist and drove it down into Ward's face, rebounding her head off the floor and vapourizing the false flesh on its knuckles.
"Bright Star Aura!" Ward called, her body suddenly flaring gold. The demon shrieked and recoiled, what was left of its disguise burning away wherever the light touched, sloughing off and dripping like melting wax. The light faded just as quickly, but it gave time for Ward to stand and wipe the blood away from her nose. She was panting, and sounded like she was choking back tears.
"W-wow, this one can hit," she admitted, squaring herself up. "O-oh God, come on. Let's go, let's fucking go…"
Lamenta II lashed out, an inhumanly long arm whipping around Ward's shield and pulling her forward. As she stumbled, its other arm came forward, tipped with a blade, and plunged for her chest; she deflected with her gauntlet, but not far enough to avoid it cutting deep into her arm. A kick to her leg sent her down to a knee, and she looked up groggy into the pitiless eyes of the demon looming over her.
"Finish this," the man ordered, and Ward gave a bloodied smile.
"B-Bright Star Aura," she stammered, and wrapped the creature's waist in a hug. It screamed, not like a person but like escaping steam, hot iron plunged into water, flailing and pushing and unable to escape. It simply came apart in the middle, and Butterfly Ward was left doubled over, its red-hot remains flowing off the shimmering golden halo as she breathed heavily.
"Okay… okay… I got this… I got this…" she muttered, pushing herself back to her feet. She was crying, face screwed up from pain, blood dripping from the cut on her shield arm, but she stood. "It's over, Prince Thornheart."
"It is," the man said, stepping forward. He reached into his suit and drew something forth, something that glinted in the light. "You are magnificent, you know that? We weren't expecting this kind of resistance from the mortal world, especially not from one so lovely."
Butterfly Ward shivered. This dude was like, what, forty? She squared up behind the shield, watching him approach through the loophole, her other hand closing around her sword. Maybe this was the time it was truly needed.
"I could use someone like you," the man said, and then he held out a mirror in his hand. Eve caught sight of herself, cowering behind the shield, caught sight of a wide eye staring through the loophole, and then she could see nothing else, vision locked. "Lower your guard, Butterfly Ward."
"No," she said firmly, as the shield fell away.
"Hand off your sword, Butterfly Ward."
"N-no," she said, as the hilt slipped from her fingers and her hand fell loose to her side.
"On your knees, Butterfly Ward."
"... no…" She fell, head bowed, and the man approached and reached out.
Then something caught his arm. Something pulled, and he stumbled, the mirror dropping away. Butterfly Ward gave a weak sob and collapsed to her side, grasping ineffectually at the floor as the man turned.
"Disgusting old man! Take your hands off her!" a voice called.
"Fuck off, another one?" the man exclaimed. He gripped his tie and pulled it loose, and the suit went with it with a ripple of fabric, exposing a suit of dark steel armour, a flowing cape of turquoise and gold, and a crown of iron. He drew a long falchion smoothly with one hand, the other still gripping the mirror. "The one from LA, I presume."
There, standing atop the food court sign was a new figure. She wore a long red skirt and white vest, her arms and shoulders protected with lacquered crimson steel that gleamed in the moonlight. She stepped forward and walked down through the air, a string appearing in mid-air and drawn tight to form a staircase that vanished as soon as she walked on.
"Aren't you going to give your little speech?" the man mocked.
"Hikari no ito," she replied, drawing her hand into a fist. Instantly, a dozen spectral ropes looped around the man, constricting as she squeezed her fist tighter. The armour cracked and crumpled against the force of it. She pulled her fist downward, and Prince Thornheart crashed heavily to his knees. "Not so fun, is it?"
The man twisted and found his leverage, and his sword passed through the strings in an instant. The girl gasped and staggered, her hand opening involuntarily as the threads fell away, then she drew herself up again and cast her arm out. The sword parted the strings with ease, and then the Prince was standing before her, the mirror raised to her face.
"What is your name, girl?" he demanded.
"Butterfly Sage."
"On your knees, Butterfly Sage," the man snarled.
"No," she replied. She grabbed his wrist and drove her elbow into his armoured breastplate, and there was a bang as the metal deformed around the impact. The Prince was blown backward, feet digging furrows in the ground until he stopped. He glanced down at his mirror, then back.
"Next time, Butterfly Knights," he spat, and then he turned and was gone. The mall now was silent, echoing only with the sizzling sound of molten metal and Butterfly Ward's pained, sobbing breaths.
Butterfly Sage walked over to her and leaned down, turning her over and inspecting the wound. With a twirl of her finger, threads wove through the cut on her arm, stitching it closed, then she reached out a hand. Butterfly Ward took it, wiping her other gauntlet across her cheeks to dry her tears.
"T-thank you," she said, sniffling. "What was that? It felt so awful…"
"Butterfly Ward," Sage said sternly. "Go home."
"W-what?" she said, blinking behind her glasses.
"Whatever that was, you're too weak to stand up to it. You're terrified, you're crying, you obviously don't want to be here," she said. Her voice was stern, but there was concern there. "I'll take it from here."
She turned, her footsteps silent as she walked away.
"Wait!" Ward called. "I… can't we work together? Everything's easier with a friend."
The girl paused, clearly thinking about it. Something about the words resonated with her.
"Tomorrow night, meet me at Oracle Park. There's something wrong there; I can see it in the strings," she instructed.
"Okay. Thank you!" Ward called out. Butterfly Sage ducked through the doors of the mall, and she was gone.
Butterfly Ward staggered toward the opposite door, where a tiny off-white cat bound out from his hiding place just inside the Limited Too.
"Oh thank the Goddess, Ward, I was terrified," Andy said, glancing down the hall.
"Did you know she was going to show up? Butterfly Sage?" Ward asked. The tiny cat shook his head.
"Hadn't the foggiest, but twas a good thing. Come now, Butterfly Ward, chin up! You did well, though I daresay you could learn a thing or two from that Sage."
"I hope so," Butterfly Ward muttered, glancing through the door. "Oh, cops again. Let's go to the roof. And… yeah. You sure I can't tell anyone about any of this?"
"Positive, Butterfly Ward, the secret is what protects you and those who care for you," Andy instructed as they made their way up the stairs.
"That sucks. I bet Kimmy would love to know about Butterfly Sage." Ward paused on the stairs, frowning. "Hey Andy, who's the one from LA Prince Thornheart mentioned? Is that her?"
"I don't know, Butterfly Ward. There is much it seems I haven't been told," he said. "Now, be a dear and pick me up, and do hold on tight when you jump. I may always land on my feet, but from a certain height that is a somewhat academic distinction."
From the shadow, lit by the silver of moonlight emerging from the skylight, a man emerged. He was tall, finely dressed in a suit and tie, his hair cropped short and with a single silver earring.
"Umbra IV, report," he said. The woman snapped a fist to her chest and bowed.
"Yes, my Prince. Over four hundred devices were distributed today. Young adult humans appear skeptical of the contract's generous terms, but adolescents and older humans are easy sells and do not ask questions," the woman reported. "We will need more devices."
"Very good, Umbra IV. More will be arriving with the morning. To quicken distribution, the Queen has authorized the deployment of another. This is Lamenta II; it is a more sophisticated model, and you are now subordinate to it," the man snapped. Behind him, a shape loomed, just briefly, but it shrank and changed as it approached the light until all that remained was a young woman with hair in an elaborate braided bun and a plethora of plastic jewellery around her neck.
"Reporting, my Prince. What do you order?"
The man turned to address the newcomer, then stopped. His eyes shifted, scanning the dark, a smile crossing his face.
"Clever bitch…"
"STOP!" a voice ran out. He and his servants turned, and there, perched on the railing like a balance bar, was a familiar figure in white and blue, the moonlight's silver redoubled against armour plate. "Cell phones are a miracle technology that connect friends and family no matter where they are! To corrupt them to foul schemes is an act of profound injustice! It's evil! It's wrong! It's un-American!"
She stepped off the balcony, landing on the tile so lightly she didn't make a sound. The bronze buckler on her arm unfolded like elegant origami, butterfly wings fluttering into a tall tower shield that seemed to glow with a golden light.
"I am the beautiful defender of the people of this beautiful city, and I will not stand to see it harmed! Now is your last chance to surrender!" she declared her arm outstretched, the shield weighing nothing to her.
The man laughed.
"You again. This won't be like last time, Butterfly Ward; my Queen has been quiet generous. Umbra IV, Lamenta II… kill her."
The two woman's gaze snapped to her with unnatural speed, and they moved. Umbra leapt over the kiosk and landed heavily, heavy footfalls tearing up the tile, while Lamenta simply launched herself with full force. Butterfly Ward planted the shield into the ground and shoved, timed exactly right to meet her attacker. The woman recoiled off and rolled against the ground even as Umbra skidded past to flank her.
Ward pivoted on her armoured heel, tearing apart the flooring as she brought the shield around with a heavy thump and a shower of blue sparks. Umbra span away onto all fours, her head snapping up to expose the hideous ruin made of her youthful face. The skin and muscle was torn away to expose a metallic, inhuman skull under it, the surface unworked and raw, eye glowing with teal fire. It hissed and scrambled forward again, fingers distorting into lengthening blades.
Ward's gauntleted fist came down in an overhand punch that drove it headfirst into the ground, then she slammed the lower edge of the shield into its neck a moment later. There was a snap.
"Jesus," the man exclaimed with a wince. The girl jerked the shield from the shattered remains of the demon; molten lead dripped onto the floor. She locked eyes with the man and began to advance, trailing motes of amber light and flowing, diaphanous ribbon.
Then Lamenta came back in like a thunderbolt, tackling Ward to the ground. The blow had torn loose the disguise on the top of its forehead to expose the brassy crystalline structure under it and the insectoid compound eyes lurking in its sockets. It raised back its fist and drove it down into Ward's face, rebounding her head off the floor and vapourizing the false flesh on its knuckles.
"Bright Star Aura!" Ward called, her body suddenly flaring gold. The demon shrieked and recoiled, what was left of its disguise burning away wherever the light touched, sloughing off and dripping like melting wax. The light faded just as quickly, but it gave time for Ward to stand and wipe the blood away from her nose. She was panting, and sounded like she was choking back tears.
"W-wow, this one can hit," she admitted, squaring herself up. "O-oh God, come on. Let's go, let's fucking go…"
Lamenta II lashed out, an inhumanly long arm whipping around Ward's shield and pulling her forward. As she stumbled, its other arm came forward, tipped with a blade, and plunged for her chest; she deflected with her gauntlet, but not far enough to avoid it cutting deep into her arm. A kick to her leg sent her down to a knee, and she looked up groggy into the pitiless eyes of the demon looming over her.
"Finish this," the man ordered, and Ward gave a bloodied smile.
"B-Bright Star Aura," she stammered, and wrapped the creature's waist in a hug. It screamed, not like a person but like escaping steam, hot iron plunged into water, flailing and pushing and unable to escape. It simply came apart in the middle, and Butterfly Ward was left doubled over, its red-hot remains flowing off the shimmering golden halo as she breathed heavily.
"Okay… okay… I got this… I got this…" she muttered, pushing herself back to her feet. She was crying, face screwed up from pain, blood dripping from the cut on her shield arm, but she stood. "It's over, Prince Thornheart."
"It is," the man said, stepping forward. He reached into his suit and drew something forth, something that glinted in the light. "You are magnificent, you know that? We weren't expecting this kind of resistance from the mortal world, especially not from one so lovely."
Butterfly Ward shivered. This dude was like, what, forty? She squared up behind the shield, watching him approach through the loophole, her other hand closing around her sword. Maybe this was the time it was truly needed.
"I could use someone like you," the man said, and then he held out a mirror in his hand. Eve caught sight of herself, cowering behind the shield, caught sight of a wide eye staring through the loophole, and then she could see nothing else, vision locked. "Lower your guard, Butterfly Ward."
"No," she said firmly, as the shield fell away.
"Hand off your sword, Butterfly Ward."
"N-no," she said, as the hilt slipped from her fingers and her hand fell loose to her side.
"On your knees, Butterfly Ward."
"... no…" She fell, head bowed, and the man approached and reached out.
Then something caught his arm. Something pulled, and he stumbled, the mirror dropping away. Butterfly Ward gave a weak sob and collapsed to her side, grasping ineffectually at the floor as the man turned.
"Disgusting old man! Take your hands off her!" a voice called.
"Fuck off, another one?" the man exclaimed. He gripped his tie and pulled it loose, and the suit went with it with a ripple of fabric, exposing a suit of dark steel armour, a flowing cape of turquoise and gold, and a crown of iron. He drew a long falchion smoothly with one hand, the other still gripping the mirror. "The one from LA, I presume."
There, standing atop the food court sign was a new figure. She wore a long red skirt and white vest, her arms and shoulders protected with lacquered crimson steel that gleamed in the moonlight. She stepped forward and walked down through the air, a string appearing in mid-air and drawn tight to form a staircase that vanished as soon as she walked on.
"Aren't you going to give your little speech?" the man mocked.
"Hikari no ito," she replied, drawing her hand into a fist. Instantly, a dozen spectral ropes looped around the man, constricting as she squeezed her fist tighter. The armour cracked and crumpled against the force of it. She pulled her fist downward, and Prince Thornheart crashed heavily to his knees. "Not so fun, is it?"
The man twisted and found his leverage, and his sword passed through the strings in an instant. The girl gasped and staggered, her hand opening involuntarily as the threads fell away, then she drew herself up again and cast her arm out. The sword parted the strings with ease, and then the Prince was standing before her, the mirror raised to her face.
"What is your name, girl?" he demanded.
"Butterfly Sage."
"On your knees, Butterfly Sage," the man snarled.
"No," she replied. She grabbed his wrist and drove her elbow into his armoured breastplate, and there was a bang as the metal deformed around the impact. The Prince was blown backward, feet digging furrows in the ground until he stopped. He glanced down at his mirror, then back.
"Next time, Butterfly Knights," he spat, and then he turned and was gone. The mall now was silent, echoing only with the sizzling sound of molten metal and Butterfly Ward's pained, sobbing breaths.
Butterfly Sage walked over to her and leaned down, turning her over and inspecting the wound. With a twirl of her finger, threads wove through the cut on her arm, stitching it closed, then she reached out a hand. Butterfly Ward took it, wiping her other gauntlet across her cheeks to dry her tears.
"T-thank you," she said, sniffling. "What was that? It felt so awful…"
"Butterfly Ward," Sage said sternly. "Go home."
"W-what?" she said, blinking behind her glasses.
"Whatever that was, you're too weak to stand up to it. You're terrified, you're crying, you obviously don't want to be here," she said. Her voice was stern, but there was concern there. "I'll take it from here."
She turned, her footsteps silent as she walked away.
"Wait!" Ward called. "I… can't we work together? Everything's easier with a friend."
The girl paused, clearly thinking about it. Something about the words resonated with her.
"Tomorrow night, meet me at Oracle Park. There's something wrong there; I can see it in the strings," she instructed.
"Okay. Thank you!" Ward called out. Butterfly Sage ducked through the doors of the mall, and she was gone.
Butterfly Ward staggered toward the opposite door, where a tiny off-white cat bound out from his hiding place just inside the Limited Too.
"Oh thank the Goddess, Ward, I was terrified," Andy said, glancing down the hall.
"Did you know she was going to show up? Butterfly Sage?" Ward asked. The tiny cat shook his head.
"Hadn't the foggiest, but twas a good thing. Come now, Butterfly Ward, chin up! You did well, though I daresay you could learn a thing or two from that Sage."
"I hope so," Butterfly Ward muttered, glancing through the door. "Oh, cops again. Let's go to the roof. And… yeah. You sure I can't tell anyone about any of this?"
"Positive, Butterfly Ward, the secret is what protects you and those who care for you," Andy instructed as they made their way up the stairs.
"That sucks. I bet Kimmy would love to know about Butterfly Sage." Ward paused on the stairs, frowning. "Hey Andy, who's the one from LA Prince Thornheart mentioned? Is that her?"
"I don't know, Butterfly Ward. There is much it seems I haven't been told," he said. "Now, be a dear and pick me up, and do hold on tight when you jump. I may always land on my feet, but from a certain height that is a somewhat academic distinction."
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🦋 Chapter 3 - At Home in Limbo (Part 1)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Chapter 3 - At Home in Limbo
It was surprisingly easy to sleep on a plane. Admittedly, you'd found you had a knack for sleeping just about anywhere or any time; if anything you had the opposite problem. But after dinner, and with the aid of a plastic cup of complementary souchu, you snuggled up in the little blanket with your airplane slippers on and you were out like a light.You didn't dream, at least not in a way you could remember, but the lingering sense of nostalgia chased you into wakefulness This was brought about with some external effort from the man seated beside you, apparently at the behest of a flight attendant; it seemed like you were landing soon, and you had some paperwork to do.
Groggy, you folded down the little tray table and filled in the two little cards. You had to list the address you were going to stay at, and that gave you pause; you fished out your phone to try and scroll back through the Skype logs to the address she told you, but of course you didn't have a connection and the wi-fi didn't work. Finally, you gave up and listed one of the hotels from your notes, which you'd at least had the foresight to write down properly formatted. "Purpose of visit" wasn't easy either; you should have just checked Tourism, but your anxious honesty won out.
At least the customs form was easy, given you'd accidently left all your illegal drugs, agricultural products, and commercial samples at home. Oh well, next time!
You dozed off again the moment you were finished, and awoke to the jolt of the wheels hitting tarmac. In a daze, you rose with the other passengers, grabbed your bag out of the overhead compartment, and just remembered to grab your shoes of the ground before shuffling out. You were hoping for a spot to pause and switch them for your slippers, but everything was moving rather quickly and nobody was slowing down, which meant you kind of ended up standing in line at passport control still holding your shoes.
They were, of course, the first thing the passport control officer noticed. He cocked an eyebrow at the as you fished around in your purse and pockets for your passport and forms, then scanned over them.
"Purpose of visit, other?" the man inquired, looking over the sheet You nodded.
"Yeeeah. Um, I'm visiting a, um, a friend. Checking in on her," you explained, poorly.
"I see. For five days?" You'd penciled in a longer estimate, just in case. He typed something into the computer.
"We might leave before then," you said, and he stopped typing.
"Do you have a return ticket?" he asked pointedly. Shit.
"No, but I have the money set aside for one?" you explained hastily. He nodded.
"Is your friend a Japanese citizen?" the man asked. You opened your mouth to answer and then found yourself not quite able to remember how that worked. You dimly remembered Kimiyo saying something about how she'd have to give up her Japanese citizenship for an American one, but she still had a Green Card, and something about her 21st birthday…
"Um, she has a Japanese passport?" you offered. That at least you remembered, the bright red booklet clutched tight in her hand when she'd left.
You got grilled with a few more questions, and then had a photo and fingerprints taken; you weren't sure if that was a universal thing or if it was because you were so terrible at answering questions. But you were let through into the brightly lit airport, and you finally found a table, sat down, and got to change out of your slippers. A lady with a little kid stared at you from the next table over as you did so.
That done, you leaned back over the chair and stared up at the ceiling. That sucked. You had a new Queen of the World priority; no more passport control. They should just stamp your hand or something.
You pulled out your phone and clicked off airplane mode, and after a few seconds received a barrage of texts from multiple sources. You ignored the AT&T one (probably trying to get you to upgrade your plan) to check the ones from your friends.
Brigid had sent "what's going on" and nothing else about eight hours ago. You didn't have to deal with that yourself, though, because Amara was on it; she sent a flurry of texts explaining that she'd finally called Brigid and had been met with long stretches of unsettling silence and the claim that she was 'too busy' to save the world. No contact since. Fuck.
You couldn't deal with that now. You had just one more text, from Kimiyo, which must have been sent just minutes after you put your phone in airplane mode.
"♥️"
At least she knew you were coming.
You spent a few minutes checking your emails, then double-checked your route on Google Maps a few times. Keisei Narita to Daimon Station, Toei Ōedo to Azuba-Juban station, then you wandered around until you saw the building from Streetview. Easy!
Frustratingly, presumably due to Travel, your credit card was declined at the ticket desk, so you had to find an ATM and pay five dollars to remove your own money, albeit transmuted into a stack of brown ¥5000 bills by some kind of Bank Alchemy. The fact you now fully understood that bank alchemy and the inner workings of international currency exchange markets didn't make it any less alchemy-y; most of your conclusions from your 9/10ths of an economics degree came back around to money being stupid and fake. It wasn't going to stop you from minting giant gold coins with your face on it, but still.
You had just sat down on the train and were midway through googling "who's the lady on the 5000 yen bill" when you got yet another text from AT&T, and you made the extremely fortunate mistake of opening this one.
AT&T FREE MSG: Eve, your current roaming data usage is 31MB.
With a slowly creeping sense of dread, you scrolled up past the half-dozen ignored messages from the last hour.
AT&T FREE MSG: Welcome to Japan! Your International Data Plan rate is $20.08/MB. Texts are $0.50, Phone $2.50 per minute. For details, att.com/wirelessinternational.
You felt a kind of cold chill come over you that you usually associated with serious injury. In a daze, you opened settings, turned on airplane mode, turned off your phone just in case, and stuck it as deep into the lower strata of your purse as you could get it.
Cool.
You sat back and tried to will yourself into a state of perfect calm. What was done was done; despair wouldn't help anything. You had a job to do, and nothing you could do now would make anything better. Once this was managed, you could contact the phone company and your bank and get this sorted, and in the worst case this just bit into savings you still had, however fast they might be dwindling. Last thing you needed was to break down in tears on the train.
You got your breathing under control and tried to focus on something else, on the city roll by out the window. The scale of it seemed unimaginable; it wasn't like the monolithic core of San Francisco, Sacramento's grid, or the endless sprawl of LA; it felt like somebody had taken the transitional zone between suburb and skyscrapers and just stretched it out into eternity. Every time you felt like you'd passed through the densest part of the city, it started building up again, like the landscape outside was being played in a loop.
Your previous trip to Japan had been when you were 13. You were visiting Kimiyo's place just after school had ended for the summer, you stayed for dinner as you often did, and you offhandedly mentioned how much you were going to miss her when she left and how much you were dreading it. Presumably, her parents had talked to your parents and some kind of arrangement was made, and you were invited along that year, and it was without a doubt the best month of your life.
The city you'd seen then was three days doing tourist stuff in Kyoto, which in retrospect was a bit like learning about life in the United States by heading to Disneyland and studying Main Street USA. You really hadn't seen much of it, though, and only in a tourist-y sort of way, looking at big castles and old shrines and museums. You mostly remember taking pictures of Old Stuff while Kimiyo translated various signs as best she could for you, though she needed a lot of help with the kanji in turn.
This was nothing like that. Once you crossed the river, the density started to feel almost artificial somehow, like the city was a drawing by somebody who had mistaken complexity for realism and just kept putting in more signs, bike paths, and wires wherever there was negative space on all the rectangles. It, in fact, looked exactly like the cities Kimiyo used to draw from her How to Draw Manga books, a fact that did something funny to your brain.
Your July in Japan had mostly been spent at Kimiyo's grandfather's house and in the surrounding town. It was a tiny middle-of-nowhere place which had felt timeless probably because it was largely forgotten, a town clinging to life by its fingertips. To you at the time, that just meant it was filled with amazing curiosities, funny little shops, and the old arcade you and Kimiyo spent whole afternoons filled with games you'd never seen before or since.
The house itself had been incredible too, old and traditional and sprawling. You knew your memory probably made it look bigger than it was, but it still had to be pretty big; the two of you had slept in a little side building which had been converted into a guest room. That had been special too; neither of you really understood back then quite what it was, but the duration and the surreal unreality of a foreign locale had made it different, not just another sleepover. Your first halting, awkward kiss had been in the dark room, lying on the floor; you'd asked her to grab your glasses and she'd put them on your face for you and just sort of leaned in.
Brain overwhelmed with not-yet-understood feelings of sublime happiness, you'd said "That was weird." In retrospect, those three words were a magical spell which had transported both of you to the back of the closet for the next two years.
The train pulled in at Diamon Station after what seemed like an eternity, a low grey subway station whose signage fortunately had enough English for you to find your way. Unfortunately, it was also some kind of maze, and there was something of a crowd. You took the escalator toward what you thought was the Toei Ōedo line, followed another sign that seemed to be pointing the way, passed through what in retrospect was an exit gate, and then you were standing on the street nestled between glass skyscrapers and construction cranes.
You stood there on the sidewalk, right in the middle of everyone, for what must have been a minute or two, just sort of staring up at it. Internally, you were fighting a battle between the reality that you could probably just turn around and pay closer attention to the signs, and the growing fuzzy jetlag feelings battling your ritalin for dominance and winning.
You remembered enough from the map to know you were close. If you could find Tokyo Tower you could figure it out from there. You couldn't see it from where you were, but there were an awful lot of buildings in the way, and you had a solution to that.
You crossed the street and walked on through the narrow midrises, glancing down the tight alleys until you found one wide enough that you didn't think you'd get stuck. Glancing around to make sure nobody was paying too much attention, you ducked inside and walked down the strange, dark hallway until there was a niche between two support pillars you could hide behind. Carefully hanging your travel bag from a power meter, you undid the latch on your necklace, and held the tiny gold butterfly in your palm. Even in the darkened alley, the amber stones seemed to glimmer with a light of their own.
You took a deep breath, glanced one last time down the alley to be sure, then thrust your hand in the air.
"For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
The world didn't so much fade as it was drowned out by light that came from everywhere, swirling like bubbles in a liquid, like falling glass. You were lifted off your feet, not propelled but floating, untethered by gravity. You closed your eyes, but the light remained.
It didn't feel like putting on armour. It was like falling into silk bedsheets, like sinking into a warm bath, your motions guided by a gentle force that suggested more than compelled, and you felt so comfortable in that cocoon of love and light that you moved without resistance. The dress assembled itself bolt by bolt, thread dancing and leaping over one another down seams, laces elegantly knotting themselves, ribbons pulling taut. Even the steel plate fell into place gently, around your chest and shoulders and hips, each piece weighing nothing, moving smoothly, the buckles snapping and tightening until they fit perfectly. The gauntlets could have been made of satin and you'd not be able to tell the difference.
As your hair brushed and styled itself, as a delicate pair of round, brass spectacles replaced your plastic frames, you felt that gentle pull of fluttering wings guiding your hand out in front of you. Your fingers found the sword, and it felt heavy. As you always used to do, you kept your hand open as long as you could, wanting to stay just one more safe moment in this private place, where there was no pain, no exhaustion, no missed bills or roaming charges.
You drew the sword to your chest, cradled it, and it pulled you down like an anchor. Out of this place, away from the orchestra, out of the light.
The you that set back down in the dark alleyway was not the one who had left it. You shared a perspective, yes, memories and opinions and loves and sorrows, but Eve was still there, in the light. Safe.
Your name is Butterfly Ward, and you are her shield.
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🦋 Chapter 3 - At Home in Limbo (Part 2)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
You scooped your bag onto your shoulder and glanced up, briefly, at the building stretching above you. Then you jumped, clearing a dozen feet and pushing lightly up and off the wall a dozen more. It wasn't forceful, you didn't need force; you were light as a feather, mass and gravity suggestions. Making your way up the buildings was no more difficult than walking down the street, the wind in your hair, cool air over your skin.
At the apex of your last jump, as you broke out into the sunlight, you flipped upright again. You let the pull of gravity draw you down again, landing atop the building with the neat footwork of a gymnast. You opened your eyes, breathing out, smiling.
There, over the sea of buildings, was the spire of the red and white tower. Between you and the next set of buildings was an eight-lane road. A big jump even for you.
You raced for the rail, stepped up onto it, and jumped. A bit more forcefully this time, the paint on the steel railing scraped away by your heeled sabaton, and then you were hanging in the air, high above the streets, weightless. Behind you, trailing dancing, shimmering light, was a mirage of orange and black wings.
You landed and rolled on the rooftop opposite, up on your feet, sprinting again. Up and over, feet barely grazing the tiles, the slightest force able to send your feather-light form racing on faster and faster. You laughed as a cluster of air conditioning fans blew you up onto a higher roof like a leaf on a breeze, as you raced up the sloped side of a tall hotel and slid down the other side, throwing yourself across the road. Ascending higher still as you raced up the inner corner of an L-shaped building, racing along and over the ductwork, touching the next building with just a single step before rocketing up and onto a raised beam holding a facade at the top of the next tower.
You'd never done this somewhere else, somewhere so different. The closely packed blocky buildings and their tangles of ductwork, on and on unbroken, was a novel playground, and it had been years since you'd been out like this, racing the wind, free.
Being Butterfly Ward had brought you so much pain. But it had also brought you this, and you could never begrudge that.
You kept the tower to your right, your north, moving along the edge of the highway. Your destination was just ahead, a straight shot, just past where the road forked; you could see it. You raced along the uneven rooftops and jumped up, crossing over toward a dark grey monolith with delightfully climbable looking balconies, up and up floor after floor until the roof. Another skyscraper, this one with a circular top, loomed just ahead, and you threw yourself across the impossible distance between them, falling short but stepping up the corner balconies like a staircase.
You saw her as you were descending the other side. She was perched atop a radio aerial atop a blocky office building, standing tall and bold and beautiful, the bow held down and her fingers on the string. The wash of emotions almost made you stumble as you landed, your knees weak, face warm, barely able to form the sound of her name.
"Butterfly Sage," you said, in barely more than a whisper. She nodded.
"Butterfly Ward," she acknowledged, nodding. She stepped out off the post, descending the rapidly reweaving staircase that formed itself in the air ahead of every step, her hand still on her bow and her eyes locked with yours. She looked different then when you last saw her; the loose black top and red skirt were frayed, the surface of the lacquered armour cracked like shattered porcelain. The dark makeup around her eyes was thick and roughly-applied, and her hair blew loose in the wind.
You expected her to say something else, but she didn't. She just stood there, eyes scanning the horizon, guarded, defensive. She had an arrow notched, and despite yourself you recoiled, your shield fluttering into shape on your arm. Her eyes snapped to yours and the string was drawn back, just an inch, and instinctively, you put your shield up and centred her in the loophole.
Her hand trembled as she drew the bow back.
"I…" she started, her face contorted with emotion, but then she finished her draw, the twisting strands forming the arrow coming to a sharp point. She was pulling her head away, torn between not wanting to look and an inability to avoid it. You'd come close, circling each other, close enough you bet she could put that arrow through your loophole. close enough it still might not stop you in time.
But she didn't want to be here. You could see it. She was scared, confused, she didn't understand what was happening any more than you. She didn't come here to threaten you, nor you her, but… all she knew was the enemy was back, and Butterfly Ward was here, and she knew more than anyone how easily friends could be subverted.
You don't know when she stopped trusting you, but you also knew you had to start trusting her.
You lowered your shield, letting it fold away, and stood up straight, the arrow pointed at your heart. She was breathing hard, eyes watering, and with great effort, she relaxed the bowstring, then let it fall from her grip. It dissolved back into frayed scraps before it hit the floor, and she collapsed to her knees after it.
You were at her side in an instant, arms around her, face pressed to hers as you held her as tight as you could. After a moment, you felt her arms around you in turn, nestling her head against your cheek, smearing a hot tear between you. You weren't sure which of you it had belonged to, but it felt right to share it.
"Why are you here?" she muttered against your ear.
"I told you I was coming," you reminded her, and she shook her head.
"I mean, you. Transformed," she said. "I felt it in the strings, I thought… her forces were already here, or-"
"Oh." You sighed. Right. "No, I just got lost. This was faster."
"... what?" she breathed. You winced.
"I got confused by all the signs at the train station, you know?"
She pulled back from the hug, staring at you.
"Ward, there's English on them. There's arrows," she said softly. You nodded sheepishly, a gauntleted hand going to the back of your neck as you broke into a guilty smile.
"I know," you admitted with a shrug. "I'm not very good at reading that either, I think."
The laughter overtook her slowly, starting her in her chest as a vibration that seemed to roll through her body. She threw her arms around your neck for support, bowed over by the force of it, unable to contain it.
She looked up into your eyes, smiling warmly, shaking her head in mock disappointment.
"I missed you so much," she said, then leaned in. Her soft lips met yours, and you just about melted into her arms, leaning back involuntarily in an invitation for her to catch you. God, how had you gone so long without this?
"Me too," you muttered against her lips. She pulled back, still grinning.
"You can be such an idiot sometimes," she said warmly. That was high praise; it meant you'd done something foolish for all the right reasons.
"Okay, but in my defence, I forgot about roaming charges, so I couldn't look up directions on my phone, so-"
Before you could finish, she pulled you in for another kiss, with something akin to desperation. Your fingers dug into the fabric at her back, hanging on for dear life, dragging the collar down to expose the pale skin of her neck. You leaned in, grazing your teeth greedily along the curve to her shoulder, even as her hands fumbled against your sides.
"Not fair, all the buckles…" she complained, giving up and pushing you down by your shoulders. You let yourself fall into your back, overjoyed as she straddled you and leaned in, her top falling open to-
There was a very pronounced electronic click-whirrrrr from somewhere behind her, and you both stopped dead. You glanced past Sage to see a young, wide-eyed woman in a suit standing in front of the rooftop door. She had an unlit cigarette in one hand and a bright yellow flip phone held out in the other. Staring.
Not knowing what else to do, you waved. The shutter sound played again, and a dark look went over Sage's face.
"Don't hurt her," you reminded her.
"I won't!" she assured you, swirling a finger casually in the air. Behind her, the woman stumbled as the wrist holding her phone was suddenly wrapped in string. "I'm just going to get her to delete it."
"Tell her we'll take a proper selfie with her if she does!" you insisted, watching as the hapless office lady pulled against the immovable cord. Butterfly Sage sighed, fixed her top, and stood up, saying something rapid-fire. You caught maybe three words in the entire conversation between them as you sat up and smoothed out your skirt.
The strings fell away from the woman's wrist, and Sage waved you over with a begrudging expression to take up position with the office lady and smile for the camera. She raced back inside, her cigarette forgotten, and you glanced out over the side of the building.
"We should go somewhere quieter, before she gets her friends," you suggested eagerly, then paused. "Um… but maybe not your apartment."
"Why not?" she asked. You took a deep breath to steel yourself; this would be a serious sacrifice.
"Because… Sage, we really need to talk. About the last year, about… so much." You took a deep breath, then leaned against her shoulder. "…and if we go somewhere with that much privacy, um…" You trailed off wiith the clink of your armoured fingers as blush overtook your face. She smiled.
"We wouldn't do much talking, huh?" she summarized. You nodded, glad she'd spared you the need to spell it out. "That's fair. And… yeah."
You put a hand on her shoulder, trying to get her attention, so she could see you smiling. You were hurt, really hurt, you were maybe even a little mad, but you couldn't show that. It was hard, putting your feeling aside that way, but if you started crying, she'd just do whatever it took to make you stop, and you had to be better than that.
"Yeah. Here, I think I know a spot. Private, but not too private."
The sun was beginning to sink down out of the sky when the two of you sat; you'd maybe got distracted, taken the long way. You'd settled at the top of one of the supporting arches on Tokyo Tower, maybe three stories off the ground, kicking your feet out in the evening breeze. The tower's position on a hill meant the view from the west facing arch let you see through the wall of tall apartments into an area of smaller buildings, walled in again by more highrises.
"Where do you live, exactly?" you asked, and Butterfly Sage pointed out into the mass of buildings.
"You can't quite see it, but see the building with the green roof?" she asked. You leaned over to follow the path of her finger, squinting at the buildings on the far side of the highway. The sun was beginning to intrude on your view, but the light had never bothered you, not in this form.
"... nope."
"To the left of the big building with the curved side, there?" she elaborated.
"... don't see that either."
"Really? It's just to the right and down from the big octagonal building, right in front of the road," she continued. You spotted that building, at least, jutting out from the tiny blocks around it and casting a long shadow across the buildings. You followed her instructions from there, squinting across the distance.
"Okay, I see it now!"
"Between those two, little white building," she concluded proudly. "It's very nice."
"Cool! And where's this school you've been going to?" you asked excitedly.
"Oh, that's behind us, on the far side of the palace," she said. You turned and walked along the beam until you could see past the spine of the tower; gazing past the dark splotch of the trees around the palace. "You probably can't see it from here, but it's only about half an hour by train."
"Wow," you said uselessly. "That's pretty much the same as my trip to USF, neat!"
"But you're just going a couple blocks over," she said. You paused, trying to work out the distance, glancing back and forth and comparing it to the views you'd had above Sunset District. You held out a thumb and used the method Esmé taught you, measuring building by building in one direction, then the other, alternating eyes and measuring the jump.
"Well, it looks like about four klicks to the palace, and it's about four miles to school in a straight line, so it's the same distance, I think?" you guessed. Sage frowned, took a deep breath, and shook her head.
"Ward, a kilometer is less than a mile," she said, sounding like she was regretting every syllable.
"Right, so how many kilometers is a klick?" you asked, remeasuring just to be sure.
"... you said you wanted to talk?" Ward offered, and you gave up on your estimations and sat back down, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
"Yeah, we really gotta. I…" You choked back your feelings, trying to focus on what was important. "I know it's not easy, but I need you to… talk to me. Tell me what's going on. You promised, remember?"
She stared out over the cityscape, biting her lip, her free hand twisting up in the shimmering fabric of her skirt. Butterfly Sage was a lot of things; a paragon of self-control and self-discipline, a fearless Knight, driven and beautiful. But she wasn't much for sharing.
It took her a long time before she could talk.
"I can't tell you everything, I... not yet," she began. It was very, very hard not to snap and demand she at least tell you anything.
"It's okay," you assured her, and her hand balled into a fist.
"It's not. Ward, I… Some stuff happened. It's… I'm sorry," she managed, then she stopped. She slipped her hand from your grip, sat up straight, and breathed. Eyes closed, moving her hands in time. Three breaths. "Some… some things came up at the funeral. Really, I… I had to come visit my aunt and get answers. That's why I said I was staying an extra week, okay?"
You nodded, laying your hand out in your lap as an invitation. She took another deep breath.
"I… I can't go into it. I need…" she trailed off. "I'm sorry."
You sighed. That… really wasn't good enough, and it hurt that it wasn't, because she was trying. You weren't sure why this was so hard for her; you had the opposite problem, you had to learn slowly and painfully not to overshare. You always figured it was just as hard in the other direction, but that excuse was wearing thinner and thinner.
She used to be better at this.
"Which aunt was this?" you asked, probing for any information at all.
"Aunt Keiko," Sage said. "The one you met."
"Oh! The scary lady," you said without thinking. Sage let out the saddest little laugh you thought you'd ever heard. "Sorry, that's just how I remember her!"
She'd been very stern, extremely strict about not letting either of you out of her sight, and had been very short with both of you, which had stood out a lot compared to the cheerful, laid-back Grampa Okamoto. You probably carried a bit of resentment in no small part because she kept coming and 'checking in' on the two of you at night, which had probably contributed somewhat to the two of you hitting the snooze button on your gay awakening.
"... well, she's very nice. She gave me a place to stay while I thought things over," Sage explained. You watched her face closely, watching her eyes flick back and forth as she thought hard about something. You saw the moment she shifted gears, redirecting the conversation to something she could handle, though away from what you weren't sure. "Remember before I left in 2010, I had to do all that paperwork?"
"Yeah, something about your birthday?" It was hard not to remember; you'd just moved in together at the time, and she'd spent a few evenings with copies of the printout and a laptop for reference, painstakingly redoing her work over and over to get all the characters right. "I can't remember exactly why."
"I didn't tell you," she admitted. "You can't have dual citizenship after 21. A green card's kind of a grey area. The form was me affirming my citizenship, and promising to renounce any others."
"Oh. But… wait, you don't have any other citizenship, that's why you have a green card," you pointed out.
"As I said, a bit of a grey area. And, uh… next year I have to renew that, and it's… delicate. If I get in trouble, if Team Butterfly stuff comes out, if we… get married…" She paused at that last one, sighing. "Eventually somebody's going to send me a letter. Some bureaucrat who doesn't know a thing about me is going to ask me to choose who I am, and I'll have to answer."
You looked away, out over the cityscape. You didn't know how to respond; it wasn't something you'd ever thought about. Every branch of your family had been in America for generations. The closest ties you had was your grandma Hama (Grandhama, to be formal), and when you'd asked her about Japan as a little kid, she'd said it was crowded and poor and everything had burnt down, bad enough she'd lied about her age and got married to a GI to get out. She'd usually then joke that if they tried to send her back she'd nail her feet to the floor, ha!
But it was very abstract to you; the closest it had come to real was researching the time a grandfather you'd never met had spent in an internment camp for a class project. And even that hadn't made you feel any less American; in fact, you were pretty sure being angry about the way America had treated your ancestors was just about the most American thing you could be.
The sun was starting to descend low now, dipping behind clouds, painting the sky in pink and orange as it dove for the horizon. The wind was getting colder.
"So you were trying to figure out your answer?" you guessed finally, turning to look at her. She nodded, slowly, not meeting your eyes. "Did you?"
She nodded again, slowly, reluctantly. Oh.
"Okay," you said finally, your voice small.
"That's why I stayed, went to school here, as long as I could. I'd stay if it weren't for you," she said. "I didn't know how to… explain any of this. I was scared I'd tell you and you'd freak out."
"So you didn't, and just let me freak out on my own," you said, the words escaping before you could stop them.
"I'm sorry," she replied. "I… I kept putting it off, settling on an answer, telling myself I just needed one more week to think about it."
"And if you stayed just a few weeks longer, you wouldn't even have to make the choice. Somebody behind a desk would make it for you," you summarized.
"I'm an idiot," she said, and you took her hand again, squeezing tight.
"Yeah. You are," you said sadly. "Do you still love me?"
"Yes," she replied. This was instant, unhesitating, something she could share. "Every time we called, I-"
She paused as somebody shouted below, and you glanced down to see a little black and white police car parked under the tower, alongside a small collection of gawking spectators. How long had they been there?
One of the two cops raised a bullhorn and yelled something about staying put, and something about…
"...Lift car?" you asked Sage.
"Yeah, like a cherrypicker. They think we're stuck," she said, then stood up to project her voice. The two had a conversation that was surprisingly followable even with your extremely limited Japanese. Something like:
We're okay! You still have to get down! It's fine really! Something about… cosplayers? We're not cosplayers! What? I said-
"-fuck this," Sage muttered, then jumped. There was a collective gasp and screams from below, before she landed deftly on an invisible string and raised her hands out. Ta-dah!
There was a stunned silence from below, and conversation you couldn't hear between some of the officers. You did catch somebody saying something about American superheroes. One of them handed the metaphone to another, who stepped up in front of the small crowd.
"What'd he say?" you asked. Something about children.
"He says we should still get down, we're setting a bad example for kids," Butterfly Sage explained, walking the staircase of strings back to your perch.
"Oh, yeah, he's right though," you admitted. "Kids do look up to us." Literally, you were three stories up.
"Kids in San Francisco looked up to us. Like ten years ago. These kids probably don't even know about us," Sage retorted.
"That little girl has a Butterfly Heart backpack," you pointed out triumphantly. "See, we are a bad example! What if she tries to climb up here and be like her heroes?"
"... who the hell is selling those backpacks and why aren't we getting paid," Sage muttered, giving you a hand to help you up. "I… I'm sorry, Ward. I get if you can't forgive me, I really do."
You glanced down at the crowd, then back to her. She looked like you felt, and you knew she'd never get over crying in front of a crowd.
"Hey. Take me to your place," you said, smiling. You weren't exactly sure what you were planning, not really, but this had been hard for you and for her, and it was promising to get harder. But she needed comfort, and you did too, and as frustrating and hurtful as this was, you did love her so, so much. If she was ending things, then you were going to get through this breakup together.
"You sure?" she asked. "After everything?"
"I"m sure."
If she could put this off for a year, you could put it off for a night.
Two kiicks of night-time cityscape, whatever that was, disappeared under your racing feet. It had always been difficult to stay sad like this, sailing through the air, just one or two steps carrying you a hundred meters across the city.
Sage grabbed your hand and redirected you toward a building, a balcony nine stories up, and you threaded the needle perfectly, landing and stepped down lightly off the railing. She leaned over the edge, still holding your hand, and you joined her, staring down into the street below.
"Wow. This is like, fancy-fancy," you said, scanning the buildings below. "You got a balcony and everything."
"Yeah," she said, looking nervous. "So, I, uh… the place is a bit…"
You reached up and clutched your necklace, taking a deep, steadying breath and closing your eyes. The weight seemed to return to the world as the armour fell away, vanishing around you with a soft shimmer. When you opened your eyes, Sage was gone; there was Kimiyo, in person, for the first time in a year, and your heart soared all over again. She was wearing that stiff, strangely formal outfit she'd settled on, a grey blouse and black skirt cut severe and angular, long hair in a half-updo, secured in a little double loop. Nothing like how she used to present herself, yet just as beautiful.
"Kimmy, your standards for what a mess is are inhuman," you retorted, turning to the door. Kimiyo shrugged apologetically and reached for the door, sliding it open and quickly removing her shoes before stepping inside. You stopped yourself just at the threshold and did the same, gleefully retrieving your airplane slippers from your backpack and sliding them on. Prepared!
Kimiyo stalked across the room and hit the light, and a dull light began to build in the compact fluorescents on the ceiling, slowly revealing her room. You recognized this room from her calls, and in fact, there was her laptop on a tiny little desk. Strung across the ceiling were strings with watercolours hung up to dry. There was a chair.
And nothing else.
"Wow. This place is… way bigger than I imagined," you admitted, looking around. Kimiyo said the place was small, but it didn't feel small. With nothing in it, it felt bigger than home, and those two doors looked like they led into bedrooms. "Wait, you didn't tell me you had roommates?"
"I don't," she said, sounding confused.
"... how much do you pay for rent?" you followed up.
"I… don't. My Aunt is letting me stay here," she admitted. "She owns the place."
"Oh, it's a condo. That's handy," you said.
"... no, like, she owns the building," Kimiyo clarified.
Oh.
Kimiyo's family were always 'rich', but her dad was, like, a super big deal computer engineer guy, so it really wasn't surprising that she had a fancy big house in Forest Hill with cool cars and a pool and all the new game consoles. But it had, over the years, dawned on you that Kimiyo's family had real money even before her dad took a job in Silicon Valley.
Kimiyo would just say her family owned 'a construction company', and for many years you'd taken that to mean it the way Riley's husband Grant owned 'a construction company' of five full-time workers and a rotating cast of contractors, all of whom Riley silently loathed. It… might be bigger than that.
Your best guess for why she was gone so long had been some kind of wacky inheritance drama, and honestly, if she stood to inherit a kabillion yen from her kindly old grandfather, all was instantly forgiven.
"Well, uh, rent went up again back home, so like… I get it," you joked weakly, looking around the place. It did not look like somewhere a person had lived for a year, there was nothing. The little kitchen area had a drying rack with one plate, one bowl, and one glass. An umbrella, hat, and coat were hung in an otherwise empty closet by the door when you and Kimiyo dropped your shoes off. "Okay, speaking of renting, if you did have to pay rent-"
"90,000 yen a month," she said. You paused in the hall as you thought about that, trying to remember what you paid for the 5000 yen bills as Kimiyo pulled out her phone and tapped something in. "About eight-fifty."
"FUCK OFF," you snapped. "Oh my god! No."
"I know."
"We're paying 28 hundred now and it's gonna go up more," you cried, feeling like you were hyperventilating. You had to lean against the wall for support. "Oh God, how do I move here? I could, like, relatives-"
"Not how it works," Kimiyo countered. Right, otherwise she wouldn't be in this situation.
"Marry me?" you asked.
"Can't," Kimiyo said simply. Fair, you were about to break up.
"Fuck! I… completely understand wanting to stay here, Jesus," you said, cradling your head in your hands. Eight fifty… your mom charged you more rent than that.
"As I said, if it weren't for you, I'd stay," she said sadly.
"No shit. If they tried to send me back, I'd nail my feet to the floor," you recited without thinking, barely aware what she was saying. Eight-fifty. A month. In San Francisco that wouldn't get you a coffin.
You followed her dumbly as she slid open one of the doors to what must be her bedroom, and that's when it really hit you. There was a closet in the corner, open, but empty. Her travel suitcase was sitting atop a low table with her bedding on the lower shelf, her clothes folded neatly inside it. The airline tag was still hanging off the handle.
This didn't look like the home of somebody who planned to stay. This was somebody who woke up every morning ready to sleep in another bed tomorrow. Somebody who was telling herself every night here would be her last.
"Kimmy?" you said quietly. She turned from the suitcase; she was getting out and unspooling her power cable to plug in her phone.
"Yes?"
You thought about it. Unsure what to ask, unsure what the point of asking even was. You felt so torn, none of this felt real. You were prepared for her to slam the door in your face, and you were prepared for her to apologize and explain everything and to tear the clothes off each other in a whirlwind of passion. You weren't prepared for awkward, and in retrospect that was stupid. What else would it be?
She carefully resumed unwinding the cable, and laid her phone down on the table, still clearly expecting you to say something. You finally found the words.
"I still love you too," you said finally.
You regretted saying it almost immediately. You did love her, so, so much, but you knew the thing a good person would do, a hero would do, the thing Butterfly Ward would do, is let the person they love go so they could be happy. That's what love is, right? Giving without expectation, wanting somebody else to be happy more? Anything else was just selfishness.
What would saying that accomplish except make her feel even worse? Wasn't this hard enough for her?
"I'm sorry," you added. She shook her head, smiling.
"It's okay. It's going to be okay," she said, moving to your side. "Hey, look at me. I'm so sorry, but I'm here. It's going be okay, I'll make it up to yo-"
You kissed her again. It was selfish and stupid and desperate, but she was right there and you needed her so badly. It wasn't fair to have a last night together without knowing that's what it was; you could, at least, have this.
She leaned against it immediately, pressed against you, gripping the straps of your travel backpack and pulling you against her. As fiercely desperate as you and far more focused, pulling the bag off your arms, grabbing at the front of your shirt, her lips never leaving yours. Her hands snaked around your back-
"New bra, front clasp," you managed.
-to your front, the plastic clasp giving a little snap. Then she wiggled out of your arms, grinning madly as she stared. Then she shook her head, as if freeing herself from a trance, and leaned down to pulled out her futon and the mat and, with shaking hands.
"Not to besmirch cultural whatsits…" you said, breathing hard. "-but this seems way less conducive to this than just, like, a bed." Without looking, she pointed a finger at you and swirled, the ropes looping around your wrists individually and pulling them out in front of you before politely tying themselves into a knot.
"Quiet," she said, laying out the duvet.
"Yes ma'am," you responded, face hot and smiling widely. She placed the last pillow, then the ropes untied themselves with a little swish of her finger… only for the improvised cuffs to pull you forward onto the mattress with an irresistible force. They pulled all the way up over your head and twisted around one another, forcing you to turn onto your back.
She was kneeling beside you, retying your wrists together with a little figure eight motion, looking at you the way a spider probably looked at a fly in her web.
"I seem to recall a lot of promises you made over the last year, Butterfly Ward," she said, grinning. You suddenly fully turned around on the stupid secretary getup, evil businesslady was really doing it for you. "Isn't that right?"
"There's… there's a blindfold in my bag," you told her. Looking pleasantly surprised, she unzipped it and drew out the little sleep mask, still in its plastic bag. "Perks of Premium Economy, right?"
"Oh! I'm glad you remembered my advice," she said, tearing the bag open. Haha, yes, you definitely remembered whatever advice that had been. "Now where were we?"
"Something about how you'll never get away with this?" you suggested, basking in her joy as she looped the mask over your head. You didn't want this to end, you wanted anything else, but if this was it, then you should indulge.
"Honestly, I didn't think I would," she said. Then the world went dark as she pulled down the mask, and you felt the heat of her lips against your neck.
At the apex of your last jump, as you broke out into the sunlight, you flipped upright again. You let the pull of gravity draw you down again, landing atop the building with the neat footwork of a gymnast. You opened your eyes, breathing out, smiling.
There, over the sea of buildings, was the spire of the red and white tower. Between you and the next set of buildings was an eight-lane road. A big jump even for you.
You raced for the rail, stepped up onto it, and jumped. A bit more forcefully this time, the paint on the steel railing scraped away by your heeled sabaton, and then you were hanging in the air, high above the streets, weightless. Behind you, trailing dancing, shimmering light, was a mirage of orange and black wings.
You landed and rolled on the rooftop opposite, up on your feet, sprinting again. Up and over, feet barely grazing the tiles, the slightest force able to send your feather-light form racing on faster and faster. You laughed as a cluster of air conditioning fans blew you up onto a higher roof like a leaf on a breeze, as you raced up the sloped side of a tall hotel and slid down the other side, throwing yourself across the road. Ascending higher still as you raced up the inner corner of an L-shaped building, racing along and over the ductwork, touching the next building with just a single step before rocketing up and onto a raised beam holding a facade at the top of the next tower.
You'd never done this somewhere else, somewhere so different. The closely packed blocky buildings and their tangles of ductwork, on and on unbroken, was a novel playground, and it had been years since you'd been out like this, racing the wind, free.
Being Butterfly Ward had brought you so much pain. But it had also brought you this, and you could never begrudge that.
You kept the tower to your right, your north, moving along the edge of the highway. Your destination was just ahead, a straight shot, just past where the road forked; you could see it. You raced along the uneven rooftops and jumped up, crossing over toward a dark grey monolith with delightfully climbable looking balconies, up and up floor after floor until the roof. Another skyscraper, this one with a circular top, loomed just ahead, and you threw yourself across the impossible distance between them, falling short but stepping up the corner balconies like a staircase.
You saw her as you were descending the other side. She was perched atop a radio aerial atop a blocky office building, standing tall and bold and beautiful, the bow held down and her fingers on the string. The wash of emotions almost made you stumble as you landed, your knees weak, face warm, barely able to form the sound of her name.
"Butterfly Sage," you said, in barely more than a whisper. She nodded.
"Butterfly Ward," she acknowledged, nodding. She stepped out off the post, descending the rapidly reweaving staircase that formed itself in the air ahead of every step, her hand still on her bow and her eyes locked with yours. She looked different then when you last saw her; the loose black top and red skirt were frayed, the surface of the lacquered armour cracked like shattered porcelain. The dark makeup around her eyes was thick and roughly-applied, and her hair blew loose in the wind.
You expected her to say something else, but she didn't. She just stood there, eyes scanning the horizon, guarded, defensive. She had an arrow notched, and despite yourself you recoiled, your shield fluttering into shape on your arm. Her eyes snapped to yours and the string was drawn back, just an inch, and instinctively, you put your shield up and centred her in the loophole.
Her hand trembled as she drew the bow back.
"I…" she started, her face contorted with emotion, but then she finished her draw, the twisting strands forming the arrow coming to a sharp point. She was pulling her head away, torn between not wanting to look and an inability to avoid it. You'd come close, circling each other, close enough you bet she could put that arrow through your loophole. close enough it still might not stop you in time.
But she didn't want to be here. You could see it. She was scared, confused, she didn't understand what was happening any more than you. She didn't come here to threaten you, nor you her, but… all she knew was the enemy was back, and Butterfly Ward was here, and she knew more than anyone how easily friends could be subverted.
You don't know when she stopped trusting you, but you also knew you had to start trusting her.
You lowered your shield, letting it fold away, and stood up straight, the arrow pointed at your heart. She was breathing hard, eyes watering, and with great effort, she relaxed the bowstring, then let it fall from her grip. It dissolved back into frayed scraps before it hit the floor, and she collapsed to her knees after it.
You were at her side in an instant, arms around her, face pressed to hers as you held her as tight as you could. After a moment, you felt her arms around you in turn, nestling her head against your cheek, smearing a hot tear between you. You weren't sure which of you it had belonged to, but it felt right to share it.
"Why are you here?" she muttered against your ear.
"I told you I was coming," you reminded her, and she shook her head.
"I mean, you. Transformed," she said. "I felt it in the strings, I thought… her forces were already here, or-"
"Oh." You sighed. Right. "No, I just got lost. This was faster."
"... what?" she breathed. You winced.
"I got confused by all the signs at the train station, you know?"
She pulled back from the hug, staring at you.
"Ward, there's English on them. There's arrows," she said softly. You nodded sheepishly, a gauntleted hand going to the back of your neck as you broke into a guilty smile.
"I know," you admitted with a shrug. "I'm not very good at reading that either, I think."
The laughter overtook her slowly, starting her in her chest as a vibration that seemed to roll through her body. She threw her arms around your neck for support, bowed over by the force of it, unable to contain it.
She looked up into your eyes, smiling warmly, shaking her head in mock disappointment.
"I missed you so much," she said, then leaned in. Her soft lips met yours, and you just about melted into her arms, leaning back involuntarily in an invitation for her to catch you. God, how had you gone so long without this?
"Me too," you muttered against her lips. She pulled back, still grinning.
"You can be such an idiot sometimes," she said warmly. That was high praise; it meant you'd done something foolish for all the right reasons.
"Okay, but in my defence, I forgot about roaming charges, so I couldn't look up directions on my phone, so-"
Before you could finish, she pulled you in for another kiss, with something akin to desperation. Your fingers dug into the fabric at her back, hanging on for dear life, dragging the collar down to expose the pale skin of her neck. You leaned in, grazing your teeth greedily along the curve to her shoulder, even as her hands fumbled against your sides.
"Not fair, all the buckles…" she complained, giving up and pushing you down by your shoulders. You let yourself fall into your back, overjoyed as she straddled you and leaned in, her top falling open to-
There was a very pronounced electronic click-whirrrrr from somewhere behind her, and you both stopped dead. You glanced past Sage to see a young, wide-eyed woman in a suit standing in front of the rooftop door. She had an unlit cigarette in one hand and a bright yellow flip phone held out in the other. Staring.
Not knowing what else to do, you waved. The shutter sound played again, and a dark look went over Sage's face.
"Don't hurt her," you reminded her.
"I won't!" she assured you, swirling a finger casually in the air. Behind her, the woman stumbled as the wrist holding her phone was suddenly wrapped in string. "I'm just going to get her to delete it."
"Tell her we'll take a proper selfie with her if she does!" you insisted, watching as the hapless office lady pulled against the immovable cord. Butterfly Sage sighed, fixed her top, and stood up, saying something rapid-fire. You caught maybe three words in the entire conversation between them as you sat up and smoothed out your skirt.
The strings fell away from the woman's wrist, and Sage waved you over with a begrudging expression to take up position with the office lady and smile for the camera. She raced back inside, her cigarette forgotten, and you glanced out over the side of the building.
"We should go somewhere quieter, before she gets her friends," you suggested eagerly, then paused. "Um… but maybe not your apartment."
"Why not?" she asked. You took a deep breath to steel yourself; this would be a serious sacrifice.
"Because… Sage, we really need to talk. About the last year, about… so much." You took a deep breath, then leaned against her shoulder. "…and if we go somewhere with that much privacy, um…" You trailed off wiith the clink of your armoured fingers as blush overtook your face. She smiled.
"We wouldn't do much talking, huh?" she summarized. You nodded, glad she'd spared you the need to spell it out. "That's fair. And… yeah."
You put a hand on her shoulder, trying to get her attention, so she could see you smiling. You were hurt, really hurt, you were maybe even a little mad, but you couldn't show that. It was hard, putting your feeling aside that way, but if you started crying, she'd just do whatever it took to make you stop, and you had to be better than that.
"Yeah. Here, I think I know a spot. Private, but not too private."
🦋
The sun was beginning to sink down out of the sky when the two of you sat; you'd maybe got distracted, taken the long way. You'd settled at the top of one of the supporting arches on Tokyo Tower, maybe three stories off the ground, kicking your feet out in the evening breeze. The tower's position on a hill meant the view from the west facing arch let you see through the wall of tall apartments into an area of smaller buildings, walled in again by more highrises.
"Where do you live, exactly?" you asked, and Butterfly Sage pointed out into the mass of buildings.
"You can't quite see it, but see the building with the green roof?" she asked. You leaned over to follow the path of her finger, squinting at the buildings on the far side of the highway. The sun was beginning to intrude on your view, but the light had never bothered you, not in this form.
"... nope."
"To the left of the big building with the curved side, there?" she elaborated.
"... don't see that either."
"Really? It's just to the right and down from the big octagonal building, right in front of the road," she continued. You spotted that building, at least, jutting out from the tiny blocks around it and casting a long shadow across the buildings. You followed her instructions from there, squinting across the distance.
"Okay, I see it now!"
"Between those two, little white building," she concluded proudly. "It's very nice."
"Cool! And where's this school you've been going to?" you asked excitedly.
"Oh, that's behind us, on the far side of the palace," she said. You turned and walked along the beam until you could see past the spine of the tower; gazing past the dark splotch of the trees around the palace. "You probably can't see it from here, but it's only about half an hour by train."
"Wow," you said uselessly. "That's pretty much the same as my trip to USF, neat!"
"But you're just going a couple blocks over," she said. You paused, trying to work out the distance, glancing back and forth and comparing it to the views you'd had above Sunset District. You held out a thumb and used the method Esmé taught you, measuring building by building in one direction, then the other, alternating eyes and measuring the jump.
"Well, it looks like about four klicks to the palace, and it's about four miles to school in a straight line, so it's the same distance, I think?" you guessed. Sage frowned, took a deep breath, and shook her head.
"Ward, a kilometer is less than a mile," she said, sounding like she was regretting every syllable.
"Right, so how many kilometers is a klick?" you asked, remeasuring just to be sure.
"... you said you wanted to talk?" Ward offered, and you gave up on your estimations and sat back down, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.
"Yeah, we really gotta. I…" You choked back your feelings, trying to focus on what was important. "I know it's not easy, but I need you to… talk to me. Tell me what's going on. You promised, remember?"
She stared out over the cityscape, biting her lip, her free hand twisting up in the shimmering fabric of her skirt. Butterfly Sage was a lot of things; a paragon of self-control and self-discipline, a fearless Knight, driven and beautiful. But she wasn't much for sharing.
It took her a long time before she could talk.
"I can't tell you everything, I... not yet," she began. It was very, very hard not to snap and demand she at least tell you anything.
"It's okay," you assured her, and her hand balled into a fist.
"It's not. Ward, I… Some stuff happened. It's… I'm sorry," she managed, then she stopped. She slipped her hand from your grip, sat up straight, and breathed. Eyes closed, moving her hands in time. Three breaths. "Some… some things came up at the funeral. Really, I… I had to come visit my aunt and get answers. That's why I said I was staying an extra week, okay?"
You nodded, laying your hand out in your lap as an invitation. She took another deep breath.
"I… I can't go into it. I need…" she trailed off. "I'm sorry."
You sighed. That… really wasn't good enough, and it hurt that it wasn't, because she was trying. You weren't sure why this was so hard for her; you had the opposite problem, you had to learn slowly and painfully not to overshare. You always figured it was just as hard in the other direction, but that excuse was wearing thinner and thinner.
She used to be better at this.
"Which aunt was this?" you asked, probing for any information at all.
"Aunt Keiko," Sage said. "The one you met."
"Oh! The scary lady," you said without thinking. Sage let out the saddest little laugh you thought you'd ever heard. "Sorry, that's just how I remember her!"
She'd been very stern, extremely strict about not letting either of you out of her sight, and had been very short with both of you, which had stood out a lot compared to the cheerful, laid-back Grampa Okamoto. You probably carried a bit of resentment in no small part because she kept coming and 'checking in' on the two of you at night, which had probably contributed somewhat to the two of you hitting the snooze button on your gay awakening.
"... well, she's very nice. She gave me a place to stay while I thought things over," Sage explained. You watched her face closely, watching her eyes flick back and forth as she thought hard about something. You saw the moment she shifted gears, redirecting the conversation to something she could handle, though away from what you weren't sure. "Remember before I left in 2010, I had to do all that paperwork?"
"Yeah, something about your birthday?" It was hard not to remember; you'd just moved in together at the time, and she'd spent a few evenings with copies of the printout and a laptop for reference, painstakingly redoing her work over and over to get all the characters right. "I can't remember exactly why."
"I didn't tell you," she admitted. "You can't have dual citizenship after 21. A green card's kind of a grey area. The form was me affirming my citizenship, and promising to renounce any others."
"Oh. But… wait, you don't have any other citizenship, that's why you have a green card," you pointed out.
"As I said, a bit of a grey area. And, uh… next year I have to renew that, and it's… delicate. If I get in trouble, if Team Butterfly stuff comes out, if we… get married…" She paused at that last one, sighing. "Eventually somebody's going to send me a letter. Some bureaucrat who doesn't know a thing about me is going to ask me to choose who I am, and I'll have to answer."
You looked away, out over the cityscape. You didn't know how to respond; it wasn't something you'd ever thought about. Every branch of your family had been in America for generations. The closest ties you had was your grandma Hama (Grandhama, to be formal), and when you'd asked her about Japan as a little kid, she'd said it was crowded and poor and everything had burnt down, bad enough she'd lied about her age and got married to a GI to get out. She'd usually then joke that if they tried to send her back she'd nail her feet to the floor, ha!
But it was very abstract to you; the closest it had come to real was researching the time a grandfather you'd never met had spent in an internment camp for a class project. And even that hadn't made you feel any less American; in fact, you were pretty sure being angry about the way America had treated your ancestors was just about the most American thing you could be.
The sun was starting to descend low now, dipping behind clouds, painting the sky in pink and orange as it dove for the horizon. The wind was getting colder.
"So you were trying to figure out your answer?" you guessed finally, turning to look at her. She nodded, slowly, not meeting your eyes. "Did you?"
She nodded again, slowly, reluctantly. Oh.
"Okay," you said finally, your voice small.
"That's why I stayed, went to school here, as long as I could. I'd stay if it weren't for you," she said. "I didn't know how to… explain any of this. I was scared I'd tell you and you'd freak out."
"So you didn't, and just let me freak out on my own," you said, the words escaping before you could stop them.
"I'm sorry," she replied. "I… I kept putting it off, settling on an answer, telling myself I just needed one more week to think about it."
"And if you stayed just a few weeks longer, you wouldn't even have to make the choice. Somebody behind a desk would make it for you," you summarized.
"I'm an idiot," she said, and you took her hand again, squeezing tight.
"Yeah. You are," you said sadly. "Do you still love me?"
"Yes," she replied. This was instant, unhesitating, something she could share. "Every time we called, I-"
She paused as somebody shouted below, and you glanced down to see a little black and white police car parked under the tower, alongside a small collection of gawking spectators. How long had they been there?
One of the two cops raised a bullhorn and yelled something about staying put, and something about…
"...Lift car?" you asked Sage.
"Yeah, like a cherrypicker. They think we're stuck," she said, then stood up to project her voice. The two had a conversation that was surprisingly followable even with your extremely limited Japanese. Something like:
We're okay! You still have to get down! It's fine really! Something about… cosplayers? We're not cosplayers! What? I said-
"-fuck this," Sage muttered, then jumped. There was a collective gasp and screams from below, before she landed deftly on an invisible string and raised her hands out. Ta-dah!
There was a stunned silence from below, and conversation you couldn't hear between some of the officers. You did catch somebody saying something about American superheroes. One of them handed the metaphone to another, who stepped up in front of the small crowd.
"What'd he say?" you asked. Something about children.
"He says we should still get down, we're setting a bad example for kids," Butterfly Sage explained, walking the staircase of strings back to your perch.
"Oh, yeah, he's right though," you admitted. "Kids do look up to us." Literally, you were three stories up.
"Kids in San Francisco looked up to us. Like ten years ago. These kids probably don't even know about us," Sage retorted.
"That little girl has a Butterfly Heart backpack," you pointed out triumphantly. "See, we are a bad example! What if she tries to climb up here and be like her heroes?"
"... who the hell is selling those backpacks and why aren't we getting paid," Sage muttered, giving you a hand to help you up. "I… I'm sorry, Ward. I get if you can't forgive me, I really do."
You glanced down at the crowd, then back to her. She looked like you felt, and you knew she'd never get over crying in front of a crowd.
"Hey. Take me to your place," you said, smiling. You weren't exactly sure what you were planning, not really, but this had been hard for you and for her, and it was promising to get harder. But she needed comfort, and you did too, and as frustrating and hurtful as this was, you did love her so, so much. If she was ending things, then you were going to get through this breakup together.
"You sure?" she asked. "After everything?"
"I"m sure."
If she could put this off for a year, you could put it off for a night.
🦋
Two kiicks of night-time cityscape, whatever that was, disappeared under your racing feet. It had always been difficult to stay sad like this, sailing through the air, just one or two steps carrying you a hundred meters across the city.
Sage grabbed your hand and redirected you toward a building, a balcony nine stories up, and you threaded the needle perfectly, landing and stepped down lightly off the railing. She leaned over the edge, still holding your hand, and you joined her, staring down into the street below.
"Wow. This is like, fancy-fancy," you said, scanning the buildings below. "You got a balcony and everything."
"Yeah," she said, looking nervous. "So, I, uh… the place is a bit…"
You reached up and clutched your necklace, taking a deep, steadying breath and closing your eyes. The weight seemed to return to the world as the armour fell away, vanishing around you with a soft shimmer. When you opened your eyes, Sage was gone; there was Kimiyo, in person, for the first time in a year, and your heart soared all over again. She was wearing that stiff, strangely formal outfit she'd settled on, a grey blouse and black skirt cut severe and angular, long hair in a half-updo, secured in a little double loop. Nothing like how she used to present herself, yet just as beautiful.
"Kimmy, your standards for what a mess is are inhuman," you retorted, turning to the door. Kimiyo shrugged apologetically and reached for the door, sliding it open and quickly removing her shoes before stepping inside. You stopped yourself just at the threshold and did the same, gleefully retrieving your airplane slippers from your backpack and sliding them on. Prepared!
Kimiyo stalked across the room and hit the light, and a dull light began to build in the compact fluorescents on the ceiling, slowly revealing her room. You recognized this room from her calls, and in fact, there was her laptop on a tiny little desk. Strung across the ceiling were strings with watercolours hung up to dry. There was a chair.
And nothing else.
"Wow. This place is… way bigger than I imagined," you admitted, looking around. Kimiyo said the place was small, but it didn't feel small. With nothing in it, it felt bigger than home, and those two doors looked like they led into bedrooms. "Wait, you didn't tell me you had roommates?"
"I don't," she said, sounding confused.
"... how much do you pay for rent?" you followed up.
"I… don't. My Aunt is letting me stay here," she admitted. "She owns the place."
"Oh, it's a condo. That's handy," you said.
"... no, like, she owns the building," Kimiyo clarified.
Oh.
Kimiyo's family were always 'rich', but her dad was, like, a super big deal computer engineer guy, so it really wasn't surprising that she had a fancy big house in Forest Hill with cool cars and a pool and all the new game consoles. But it had, over the years, dawned on you that Kimiyo's family had real money even before her dad took a job in Silicon Valley.
Kimiyo would just say her family owned 'a construction company', and for many years you'd taken that to mean it the way Riley's husband Grant owned 'a construction company' of five full-time workers and a rotating cast of contractors, all of whom Riley silently loathed. It… might be bigger than that.
Your best guess for why she was gone so long had been some kind of wacky inheritance drama, and honestly, if she stood to inherit a kabillion yen from her kindly old grandfather, all was instantly forgiven.
"Well, uh, rent went up again back home, so like… I get it," you joked weakly, looking around the place. It did not look like somewhere a person had lived for a year, there was nothing. The little kitchen area had a drying rack with one plate, one bowl, and one glass. An umbrella, hat, and coat were hung in an otherwise empty closet by the door when you and Kimiyo dropped your shoes off. "Okay, speaking of renting, if you did have to pay rent-"
"90,000 yen a month," she said. You paused in the hall as you thought about that, trying to remember what you paid for the 5000 yen bills as Kimiyo pulled out her phone and tapped something in. "About eight-fifty."
"FUCK OFF," you snapped. "Oh my god! No."
"I know."
"We're paying 28 hundred now and it's gonna go up more," you cried, feeling like you were hyperventilating. You had to lean against the wall for support. "Oh God, how do I move here? I could, like, relatives-"
"Not how it works," Kimiyo countered. Right, otherwise she wouldn't be in this situation.
"Marry me?" you asked.
"Can't," Kimiyo said simply. Fair, you were about to break up.
"Fuck! I… completely understand wanting to stay here, Jesus," you said, cradling your head in your hands. Eight fifty… your mom charged you more rent than that.
"As I said, if it weren't for you, I'd stay," she said sadly.
"No shit. If they tried to send me back, I'd nail my feet to the floor," you recited without thinking, barely aware what she was saying. Eight-fifty. A month. In San Francisco that wouldn't get you a coffin.
You followed her dumbly as she slid open one of the doors to what must be her bedroom, and that's when it really hit you. There was a closet in the corner, open, but empty. Her travel suitcase was sitting atop a low table with her bedding on the lower shelf, her clothes folded neatly inside it. The airline tag was still hanging off the handle.
This didn't look like the home of somebody who planned to stay. This was somebody who woke up every morning ready to sleep in another bed tomorrow. Somebody who was telling herself every night here would be her last.
"Kimmy?" you said quietly. She turned from the suitcase; she was getting out and unspooling her power cable to plug in her phone.
"Yes?"
You thought about it. Unsure what to ask, unsure what the point of asking even was. You felt so torn, none of this felt real. You were prepared for her to slam the door in your face, and you were prepared for her to apologize and explain everything and to tear the clothes off each other in a whirlwind of passion. You weren't prepared for awkward, and in retrospect that was stupid. What else would it be?
She carefully resumed unwinding the cable, and laid her phone down on the table, still clearly expecting you to say something. You finally found the words.
"I still love you too," you said finally.
You regretted saying it almost immediately. You did love her, so, so much, but you knew the thing a good person would do, a hero would do, the thing Butterfly Ward would do, is let the person they love go so they could be happy. That's what love is, right? Giving without expectation, wanting somebody else to be happy more? Anything else was just selfishness.
What would saying that accomplish except make her feel even worse? Wasn't this hard enough for her?
"I'm sorry," you added. She shook her head, smiling.
"It's okay. It's going to be okay," she said, moving to your side. "Hey, look at me. I'm so sorry, but I'm here. It's going be okay, I'll make it up to yo-"
You kissed her again. It was selfish and stupid and desperate, but she was right there and you needed her so badly. It wasn't fair to have a last night together without knowing that's what it was; you could, at least, have this.
She leaned against it immediately, pressed against you, gripping the straps of your travel backpack and pulling you against her. As fiercely desperate as you and far more focused, pulling the bag off your arms, grabbing at the front of your shirt, her lips never leaving yours. Her hands snaked around your back-
"New bra, front clasp," you managed.
-to your front, the plastic clasp giving a little snap. Then she wiggled out of your arms, grinning madly as she stared. Then she shook her head, as if freeing herself from a trance, and leaned down to pulled out her futon and the mat and, with shaking hands.
"Not to besmirch cultural whatsits…" you said, breathing hard. "-but this seems way less conducive to this than just, like, a bed." Without looking, she pointed a finger at you and swirled, the ropes looping around your wrists individually and pulling them out in front of you before politely tying themselves into a knot.
"Quiet," she said, laying out the duvet.
"Yes ma'am," you responded, face hot and smiling widely. She placed the last pillow, then the ropes untied themselves with a little swish of her finger… only for the improvised cuffs to pull you forward onto the mattress with an irresistible force. They pulled all the way up over your head and twisted around one another, forcing you to turn onto your back.
She was kneeling beside you, retying your wrists together with a little figure eight motion, looking at you the way a spider probably looked at a fly in her web.
"I seem to recall a lot of promises you made over the last year, Butterfly Ward," she said, grinning. You suddenly fully turned around on the stupid secretary getup, evil businesslady was really doing it for you. "Isn't that right?"
"There's… there's a blindfold in my bag," you told her. Looking pleasantly surprised, she unzipped it and drew out the little sleep mask, still in its plastic bag. "Perks of Premium Economy, right?"
"Oh! I'm glad you remembered my advice," she said, tearing the bag open. Haha, yes, you definitely remembered whatever advice that had been. "Now where were we?"
"Something about how you'll never get away with this?" you suggested, basking in her joy as she looped the mask over your head. You didn't want this to end, you wanted anything else, but if this was it, then you should indulge.
"Honestly, I didn't think I would," she said. Then the world went dark as she pulled down the mask, and you felt the heat of her lips against your neck.
Special thanks to @Adastra for beta reading some parts of this update.
Last edited:
November 11th, 2004
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Content Warnings
This chapter takes place during a school lockdown drill.
Mind control. A non-consensual kiss. Injury and the threat of death.
This chapter takes place during a school lockdown drill.
Mind control. A non-consensual kiss. Injury and the threat of death.
November 11th, 2004
Eve closed the door as quickly as she could without slamming it, her hand going to where a lock would be, if this were a sensible place to hide. Whimpering, she turned to press her back to the door, her hand reaching to her neck to fish out the butterfly necklace.Kimiyo was there, standing in the middle of the bathroom, something glinting in her hand.
"Eve, what the hell are you doing here? Get back to class!" Kimiyo hissed, hastily withdrawing her hand to her pocket. "It's not safe."
"I-I was looking for you!" Eve stammered, glancing over her shoulder as if the door weren't in the way. They both stopped, listening to footsteps echoing on the tile outside. Kimiyo moved slowly toward the corner of the room, watching her friend closely, weighing her options.
"Stay quiet. Don't cry," Kimiyo whispered. Eve nodded, trying and mostly failing to get her breathing under control. "It's going to be okay."
Some of the footsteps were getting closer. Not all of them, but some. There were muted voices.
"They're coming," Eve said. She reached back to her necklace, pointing to one of the stalls with her other, shaking hand. "Kimmy, hide in there, don't come out no matter what, okay?"
Kimiyo looked at her in confusion, then caught a glimpse of the gold around her friend's neck. She'd seen the necklace, of course, Eve had been so proud; Kimiyo had no idea how she'd come by such an heirloom, but was certain she didn't know what it really was, she hadn't felt the same power Kimiyo had felt when she lifted her from her mother's jewellery box.
There was no way it was her. Eve and Ward couldn't be more different.
Kimiyo took a deep breath, the way her mother taught her, to calm and center herself. Eve was trying to comfort herself with her good luck charm, that was all. The magic would protect her identity so long as nobody saw her transform, it would make excuses, her own mother couldn't recognize her. Maybe being in the stall would be enough to keep the secret.
She was about to move when there was a bang from the door opposite, the boy's bathroom, being shoved open. Eve and Kimiyo jumped on the spot, and Eve shrieked involuntarily. Something slammed against the door.
As one, the two girls thrust their hands in the air.
"For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
"Unmei no Ito yo, Waga o Michibike! Henshin!"
Twin novas of light burnt in the tiny room, amber and crimson drowning out the sickly white light of humming fluorescents. Floating in the void as the dress tailored itself around her and the armour panels slid into place, Eve forced her eyes open against the overwhelming light and saw a second figure rising alongside her, a skirt and long wraparound top being woven thread by thread around her body. Their eyes met in the maelstrom as Eve reached out, and Butterfly Ward grasped the Razor tight in her gauntlets.
The world snapped back into place as Butterfly Ward's steel-plated heels and Butterfly Sage's split-toe boots touched the ground. They had just a moment to stare at each other in shock before the door burst open.
The creature that entered the room looked like a police officer, a woman in a navy blue uniform with yellow cuffs, a peaked cap askew on her head, but it was already changing. Its face was growing distorted, eyes black pits, teeth lengthening into steel fangs. Its head snapped to the side with an inhuman twitch.
"THE KNIGHTS ARE H-"
Butterfly Ward crashed shield-first into the creature, crushing the flimsy steel-wrapped door and tearing apart the metal and cinderblock of the door frame as the two were carried out into the hall. What was left of the demon's human guise was torn away by the friction of being dragged between the shield and the wall, the jagged steel of its body scraping paint and concrete with its passage.
Ward gave another shove that drove the awful thing an inch into the cinderblock wall, reared back her hand, and smashed her gauntlet through its razor maw. Molten steel splattered against her glasses, leaving wisps of smoke trailing off her skin.
She turned to face the footsteps behind her just in time to see another officer be wrapped in a dozen red cords and get pulled full-force against what was left of the wall, the impact leaving behind the false flesh around its skull in the indent. Then she felt something rake against the armour on her shoulder, sparks flying; the demon was still moving, forcing its way out from behind her shield with jerky, almost insectoid motions up the wall. Everything human about it was long-gone; it was just a hateful spur of twisted shrapnel, its maw oozing red-hot slag.
It kicked hard against Ward's shield, sending her sliding across the floor, the vinyl floor tiles shattering with her passage. The demon threw itself across the hall and was met with Ward's shield, foam ceiling tiles jumping from their rests and crashing down around them in plumes of dust. Three rapid blows of the demon's claws shook the shield before one found purchase, a clawed finger hooking into the loophole and pulling down hard.
Ward was dragged down face-first into the demon's rising knee and staggered back, a crack in her glasses as she released her shield from her arm. She squared up, gauntlets raised defensively, and caught a brief glimpse of the second demon tearing off the strings binding it and diving through the door.
"Sage!" she called, then was forced back as her foe drove a claw for her face. They kept getting faster and tougher, better materials, smarter, more ruthless; an Umbra or Ardor would have fizzled by now, but this one didn't even seem slowed.
She caught its next jab by the wrist and twisted, stamping down on its foot so it couldn't move with it, and with an ear-splitting scream of rending metal the material twisted wrong at the elbow. She released the grip and drove another hard punch across the demon's ruined face, sending it sprawling.
She planted a knee onto its shoulder, drove her elbow into its neck to keep it there, and raised a hand.
"Dawn's Ray Touch!" she called. A ribbon of light danced around her outstretched palm, radiating from the amber gems. Motes of light billowed out between her fingers as she brought her hand into a fist, and promptly drove it directly through the small of the demon's back.
It didn't fall so much as splash into a puddle of burning liquid metal, fusing into the vinyl composite flooring. She recoiled, brushing the red-hot slag off her dress.
"Eewwwugh! Hot, fuck, ow!" She shook the last of the smoking fragments out of the knuckles of her gauntlets, the smouldering droplets hissing as they hit the floor.
There was a crash somewhere inside the bathroom, and Ward suddenly snapped back to reality. She raced to the door, snatching her shield up on the way, sliding across the broken floor and crashing against the wall. Her sabatons splashed across the rapidly forming puddle as she grabbed one of the loose ends of a floating string and pulled herself forward.
"Butterfly Sage!"
She threw herself into a flying slam that drove the metallic demon off the prone figure. The two of them crashed through the wall and spilled through the drywall on the other side; there were screams and a clatter of panic as Mr. Wilkenson's chemistry class, sheltering in the corner of the room, recoiled from the newcomers.
Ward drew back, alternating impacts from her gauntlet and the edge of the shield, over and over, long past the point the clang of metal on metal had become the dull thuds of impacts against the thick concrete floor. She stopped, breathing hard, face stained with tears and ash as she looked up and around the classroom. Three dozen stunned, horrified sophomores and one slack-jawed teacher stared back.
"Sorry about the wall," Ward said weakly, picking herself up, the liquid metal dripping away in sheets. She glanced back at Sage, stirring weakly on the tile, on the other side of two layers of cinderblocks and insulation foam.
"What's happening?" somebody asked; a lot of people had, but this was the first time the words registered as words. She tried to form an explanation; it's not a lockdown drill, it's a harvest, moving through the halls, spreading anxiety and fear and dread for when this might happen for real, searching lockers for butterfly necklaces. Taking pieces of everyone here, pieces they might never get back.
She couldn't form the words and couldn't spare the time. She turned and ducked back through the wall, squeezing through the space made by her shield to Sage's side. There was a small red cloud swirling in the film of water that had built up on the floor, and Ward felt a wave of nausea.
"Sage? Are you okay?" Ward asked, sinking to her side. Butterfly Sage looked at her, eyes focusing slowly as she blinked.
"I'm fine. Just cut my leg," she hissed. "I saw two more of them at the office, I think, and Thornheart. Other side of the school, third story. Go, I'm right behind you." Ward didn't move, not until Sage pushed her away. "Go! Stop being such an idiot, people need you!"
Ward stumbled back, shaken, but nodded and began to move. She raced out through the hall, crashing through the doors to the stairway without bothering to open them, up the stairs four at a time in bounding strides. Second story, third story, the door crashing off its hinges as she spilled out into the hall.
They were on her immediately. She threw her shield in the path of the first and the second crashed into her legs, sending her end over end. She rolled into it with a grace she couldn't exactly account for and sprang back up, slapping aside one of the false officer's blows and crashing her shield into its chest. A bladed claw scraped off the black plate of her cuirass and she gave ground, leaping back down the hall and landing lightly, anything to keep from being surrounded.
The two metallic, skeletal monsters advanced, shedding the last of their human cladding. Behind them, dressed in a fine suit, was a man who, despite the magic that blurred his identity, was surely Prince Thornheart, watching with an amused smile playing on his lips.
Subtly, behind her shield, Ward gently pulled at the hilt of the Razor. The lock at the top of the scabbard held firm. Not today, it seemed.
The first demon launched itself forward and Ward pirouetted aside, letting it stumble past. She completed the twirl by bringing the edge of her shield into the knees of the second; it tumbled upside down and clattered hard against the lockers. The metal doors crumpled like aluminum cans, and a bang accompanied a combination lock shearing from the impact.
Ward turned to face her first opponent just in time to see it stumble and collapse forward, a slip of silver withdrawing from its chest and drawing a perfect line at neck height. The decapitated monster melted in a pillar of acrid smoke as Prince Rose stepped around it, pulling his cape clear of the flames as he bowed.
"Apologies for my tardiness, Butterfly Ward," he said, smiling warmly. A fuzzy, warm joy sparked in Ward's chest as her mysterious protector elegantly whipped his sword aside to clear the molten metal clinging to it and took up position beside her. His confident smile made her feel invincible.
The last demon snarled, charged, and came apart in an instant, caught between sword and shield.
"Ward, leave Thornheart to me," Prince Rose said, flicking his sword neatly across the reaching, grasping claw of the dissolving creature without taking his eyes off the man in the suit. "Not that I doubt you, but we have history."
"You again. Who are you!" the man called, tearing his suit aside and allowing Prince Thornheart to emerge from the scraps, falchion in hand.
Ward sent a questioning glance to Prince Rose.
"... history he doesn't remember. It's complicated."
"Okay," Ward said, backing away. She didn't think she should, a hero shouldn't back down from a fight, but she knew she was missing something.
Prince Rose raised his sabre in salute, drawing back into a low stance, and Prince Thornheart matched the gesture, his blade resting on his shoulder as he circled. They spent some time pacing, watching, neither side moving, waiting for a cue.
When they moved, it was a blur, even to her. Steel and silver traced the air in complex patterns, back and forth, step and counter-step, a beautiful and horrid dance. It wasn't like the movies, no flourishes or leaps or spins, no roars of effort, none of the power and momentum she'd come to associate with fighting. Just a steady metronome of metal glancing off metal, clack-clack-clack, stepping in perfect time. Rapid movement inside a swirl of billowing capes.
She did spot the moment, the mistake, as it happened. An angle wrong, a blade inside instead of outside, and a drop of red glistening in the air as the very tip of Prince Rose's sword found the smallest gap in Thornheart's armour. It was nearly gentle.
One Prince stumbled and fell, tangled in his cloak, and the other stood, sword poised to thrust, and waited.
"Yield," Prince Rose ordered. Prince Thornheart released his sword, raising his hands.
As the fabric fell away from his other hand, Ward saw the flash of mirrored glass a moment too late.
"Prince Rose-!" Ward cried, leaping to her feet. Racing across the hall, cold terror and grief settled in her chest. The Prince stood, locked in his victorious pose, sword and gaze held perfectly still as Prince Thornheart rose, drawing a dark knife from his belt. The slip of silver clattered to the floor, and Prince Rose slumped to after it.
Ward's hand was locked closed around her the hilt of the Razor, moments from drawing it into a strike, eyes locked with the endless depths of the mirror. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't look away, couldn't at least look at her Prince.
"Do not move, Butterfly Ward. Not a muscle," Prince Thornheart instructed. He lowered the mirror, a smile curling across his face as Butterfly Ward stayed in place, a statue. His hand, shaking slightly, came up and brushed her cheek, leaving a smear of his blood behind. "You have been very troublesome."
Ward fixed her eyes on her Prince, stirring weakly on the floor. The mirror suppressed even the shiver of disgust that fought and died at the base of her spine as he pressed his lips to hers.
He stood back, a foul smirk on his face, oblivious to the rope coiling in place behind him. He opened his mouth to say something, and the rope snapped around his neck.
Ward fell, muscles still not her own, but she pushed herself to her Prince with every ounce of her strength. She caught sight of a limping figure making her way up the hall, hand outstretched. The form of Prince Thornheart was dragged along the floor toward her, twisting desperately in his cloak. He grasped his falchion, fighting to his feet as the edge of his blade slipping under the coil binding his neck. One slice, and he would be free.
Then he stopped, eyes locked forward. Before him, reflecting his visage back, the silver mirror hung in a web of strings. The ropes creaked with tension as they pulled tighter.
"On your knees, Prince Thornheart," Butterfly Sage ordered.
There was a ruffle of fabric as Prince Rose threw up his cloak, and the scene vanished. When it settled, Butterfly Ward and Prince Rose were lying on the roof under the grey sky. Rain pattering against them in sheets, wind whipping across the roof as Butterfly Ward pulled her Prince into her arms.
"I'm okay, I'll be okay," Prince Rose gasped, reaching his hand to his side. He winced. "That's not great…"
"Prince Rose, hold on. I'll… pressure, pressure on the wound…" She desperately pressed her hand against the wound, eliciting a groan of pain from her Prince. "I'll pick you up, get you to a hospital, it doesn't look too bad, we can-"
"I-I must issue a correction. It's not the wound, it's what did it. Demon blade, like their constructs. Poison," he gasped, then smiled. "Of a sort. Nothing to harm you, but I'm… somewhat more mortal. I crafted those for her, last time. She must have found somebody else…"
Ward sagged hopeless across her Prince's chest. The words didn't make sense, but she got the important part.
"No… is there…" she asked.
"None that we have access to, I think," he said. "H-hey. Don't cry."
"D-don't? How am I supposed to do this without you?" she asked. A soft white glove, stained red, found her gauntlet, and she felt the caress of his fingers through the steel.
"You don't need me. You never did," he said. Ward glanced desperately around, for something, anything. Trying to think, cursing herself for being so stupid. Hating herself for being so stupid. "This was always… just a stupid dream."
"Hang on, I… I think-" she begged, trying to piece it together.
"W-Ward…" her Prince gasped. Like what demons are made of, the metal that hates, life without life. Of course it was poison, it was so antithetical to the world that it burnt away when her magic touched it. "May I beg… just one…"
Her Prince gripped the armour of her shoulder, head weak, slumping back.
"I'm so dumb," she muttered, the answer reaching her all at once. She gripped his shoulder with her free hand to pull him upright, steadying herself. "Bright Star Aura!"
As the nova roared to life around her, she sank down, and pressed her lips to his.
It was not pleasant. There was a coppery taste of blood. She pushed past it and held the kiss as long as she could stand, then pulled away, unwittingly lifting her other hand off the now-absent wound.
As Prince Rose sat up and slumped against her shoulder, she sighed in relief. That would have been really stupid and gross if it hadn't worked! She cradled her Prince's head in her hands, glad the rain would disguise the tears.
"Okay, well, now I know what to do next time you get hurt," she said with a smile. Of course she had healing kisses, that's made perfect sense. Next time Rose or Sage gets injured, she could kiss it better!
"I think I should prefer not being at death's door next time," Prince Rose complained weakly.
"Oh. Um… w-we could probably arrange something?" Ward managed, feeling her face go hot. Then she perked up. "Oh, Sage is hurt! I can-"
She shivered as she got a brief flash of the scene downstairs.
"... on second thought, that can wait."
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🦋 Chapter 4 - Hearts Moving (Part 1)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Content Warning: There's a short sex scene at the beginning.
Chapter 4 - Hearts Moving
The first thing you were aware of as you woke was her hot breath against your skin. It spread to an awareness of the heat everywhere your bodies touched, her fingers against your jawline, her thigh across yours, the expanse of bare skin against bare skin as she curled tight around you."Morning," she whispered in your ear, voice clear and soft. She was awake, had been awake for some time, but had stayed, like this, curled as close as possible. You felt her teeth nipping at your neck.
"Wut timesit?" you managed to articulate. She shifted up over to reach for her phone, which you greatly appreciated, and came back with the little leather case in hand, clicking the side button.
"It is 9:38, sleepyhead," she said. She glared at its little rapidly blinking green light for a moment, then set the phone down and nestled back around you. "That's probably my professors…."
You blinked groggily, shifting in place, your hands gliding along her back. Her encouraging intake of breath at the movement had you sliding your hands down her curves, along her hipbone, changing direction again. She sighed into your ear, nuzzling closer, goading you on. You traced a little circle along her flank, gently with the back of your fingernails, slow, steady motions right where she was sensitive. You should probably stop, but…
She rolled atop you, shifting a leg over yours, and you felt the press of her heat against your thigh at the same moment your lips touched. She was breathing heavily, her hair draped around your face, as tight to your body as possible so no heat could escape even in the sweltering apartment. Her eyes locked to yours, filled with the voracious need that had built in a year apart.
… you shouldn't, but who were you kidding? What little sense you could muster in the best of times was obliterated by the fire that look sparked, wanting her to want you, wanting to give in. You bent your knee, just slightly, and she hummed her approval against you as she ground her hips in.
"Oh, God. Evie…" She shuddered against you, her motions quickening, a hand sweeping into your hair as you melted into the thin mattress. You felt her leg jostling against your knee insistently, then her thigh rubbing against you in turn, the rolling of her hips pressing her leg into sensitive flesh. She caught your lips as your back arched, cutting off a gasp, her fingers tightening against your scalp to hold you in place. Your own arms just wrapped around her back, holding on for dear life. You were lying on the floor and still felt like you might fall.
There was no sense or technique to it, nothing but wild abandon, writhing heat. Her hand slipping from your hair to clutch at your breast, her motions quickening, fervent, desperate, fingernails digging into your shoulder. All the control, the self-discipline, the private, closed-off front, she was like that because there was something in her that smouldered red-hot and flared with the slightest gust, a passion and anger and love that looked like a supernova at moments like this. When you closed your eyes in this moment, surrendered to her, you could see the inferno in her heart, brighter than the morning sun. It flared in waves that coursed through her and into you everywhere her shivering flesh touched yours.
… you figured that people without ESP probably had their share of good sex, but you still pitied them a little for missing out on moments like these.
With clumsy motions, coordination lost to delirium, she braced herself over you, sweat dripping her from brow and beading along the curve of her neck as her fingers slipped inside you. She was hesitant, out of practice, but you were so close already it made little difference, clinging to her as she worked, whispering guidance and taunting in equal measure until you couldn't form the words anymore. The world collapsed into that one moment, and you lolled back against the pillow in a euphoric haze of tingling aftershocks.
After what felt like several hours without thought, your brain thoroughly pureed, you managed to find a word.
"... wowzers."
Kimiyo snorted back a laugh, poking your shoulder.
"Why did you say it like that! You ruined it!" she declared. Yes, good job, Eve. Probably, her last fond memory of you, and it'll be tainted forever by your complete lack of filter. Go-go gadget huge idiot.
Unable to muster a defense, you just pulled her a little closer, wondering when this would end, what it was going to be like. Yes, you'd been apart for nearly a year, but you spoke often, texted constantly, she was always going to be coming back at some point. You'd never actually asked her to come home, you understood she was dealing with stuff, and while you knew that was the right thing to do you kind of wish you'd done the wrong thing instead.
She kissed your cheek, then pawed out blindly for her phone, snagging the cable and bringing it up. The little green light blinked incessantly at her, and she spent a moment scanning and scrolling quickly, face pulled into a frown.
"... is that a new phone?" you asked stupidly. Considering she'd left with her old Razr and had maintained for years that smart phones were a wasteful gimmick, it obviously was.
"Yes, my aunt insisted on giving me it," she said, sounding a little annoyed. "I managed to talk her down to something more modest, but it's proven useful."
Coming from her, that was a five-star rating for whatever it was.
"Hey, Evie, do you have a return trip booked yet?" Kimiyo asked, rolling a bit to look at her phone more clearly. Oh. Here it was.
"Not yet, but don't worry, I'll…" you admitted, trailing off as Kimiyo pulled herself out of the covers, taking with her the comforting heat as she stood and stretched. You stared in rapt wonder at her, complex emotions and baser feelings warring. How did she look so good even walking away? She plucked a neatly folded housecoat out of her luggage and slipped it on, then slid the door open and vanished into the other room, closing it behind her.
You hung in that quiet moment, the feelings building and boiling and running up through you now that the terror of using them to manipulate somebody was gone. Terrified of making a sound, you rolled over and pressed your face into the pillow, feeling hot tears pool on the fabric against your eyes.
You hadn't cried in years, not properly. You couldn't let yourself. You were always the crybaby, the weak link, and after Esmé disappeared you'd fallen to pieces and forced your friends, you friends grieving just as much as you, to pick you up. It wasn't fair, you knew it wasn't fair, and the hollow feeling you'd felt when you realized it had haunted you so deeply it numbed something in you. Remembering that feeling had always been enough to crush the impulse.
If you started now, she'd hear. You put every bit of focus you had left into quiet, into focusing all the things you wanted to scream into thoughts that could be as loud as you wanted. You wished you were the kind of person who could ask her how could you do this to me? You called yourself an idiot and a fool for not demanding she come back with you immediately, for putting your foot down. You begged a god you didn't believe in for this not to be real, then cursed the closest thing to a god you knew of for letting this happen. She lied! She showed you it was all going to be okay and she lied!
Later, later you could cry. When you were at home and Amara was out doing Job and you were alone, you could set aside some tissues and curl up in bed and cry and cry like you used to and nobody would ever have to know. You weren't not crying, but it was muted, muffled, squeezed, acutely aware that last time you'd given into this, gripped by stupid teenaged rage and grief, you'd tried to pull the heart out of the world so they'd understand how much it hurt. She wouldn't be there to save you again.
You couldn't breathe, your nose was already running so much it was completely blocked, but you were terrified that if you pulled your face off the pillow nothing could stop the sound. You held out as long as you could, but the need for oxygen won out and you pulled back, gasping for air.
In the other room, Kimiyo's head snapped up from the laptop to the sound, and you buried your face back into the pillow in shame. She looked confused, concerned, glancing back down at the screen at a wall of text you couldn't understand and a counting timer before getting up, unplugging the laptop and taking it with her. No, no you fucked it up and now it was going to be harder and worse-
The door slid open, feet padding across the floor. You heard the clunk of the laptop being set down on the floor, and then she was at your side, her hand on your shoulder.
"Evie?" she asked.
Ask her to come with you. Demand she come with you. Stay here until she comes with you. Tell her how much it hurts. Make her tell you what's going on. Tell her how she's killing you.
You rolled over, hand over your eyes, and took a deep, ragged breath. You kept your forearm over your face, unable to meet her gaze.
"It's okay," you said, forcing down the selfish impulses and forcing yourself to say what you actually felt. "It's okay that it's over, I-I'm just glad you're going to be happy…"
"... Evie, what are you talking about?" she asked, her hand fishing for yours under the covers. You grasped it almost involuntarily, like a lifeline.
"I-I-I'm just glad for the time we had…" you continued, and even though you weren't looking with your eyes you still couldn't help see the three-step realization go over her face. Confusion to shock to…
"... Eve, you wonderful idiot, I'm not breaking up with you! I… God, why did you think-"
"Y-you said you had your answer, that's why you were going to school here and-" you started, and she rested her head in her free hand, a smile on her face despite the first tears forming in her eyes.
"Yes! I was going to school here because I wanted to learn as much as I could before I went back. I said I'd stay if it weren't for you. What did you think that meant?" she asked.
"That I was getting in the way," you admitted. "Making it harder for you. And you didn't want me here. Asking how long you'd have to put up with me-"
She stared, mouth hanging open.
"... Oh my God, no. Eve, it meant I'd choose you, if you'd let me. I… I couldn't believe you would, I thought I'd… I'd screwed up too badly but you just… you're too good for me, Evie, you always have been. I mean, you thought I was dumping you after all this and you started reassuring me."
The dark thought that she kind of did screw it up flitted over your brain and deflected off the part that was still trying to process how the hell you'd ended up here. She stroked a hand through your hair, and the feeling of her fingers against your scalp was finally enough for you to pull your forearm aside and meet her eyes; she was shaking her head, a tear on her cheek but a loving smile plastered on her face.
"Yeah…" you admitted. "I'm stupid."
"You're not stupid, idiot," Kimiyo said. "I'd be coming back with you anyway, but I'm staying aftward, I promise."
You stared stupidly.
"After we beat the Dark Queen? It'll be hard enough without Esmé, I have to be there," she continued. Oh, right. The world was in danger from something other than you and your stupid emotion powers. That had sort of slipped your mind.
"... yeah. I don't know how we'll do it without her," you said.
"Me either. But we have to try, right?" She glanced at the laptop. "Hold on, I need a second." You sat quietly as she tapped at the keyboard, the swirl of thoughts and fears and relief too large to parse. Then, she turned the laptop around and showed you the white blur of the screen.
"There, sorry, had to book before the timer ran out. Two tickets to San Francisco, tomorrow afternoon. I emailed Aunt Keiko and my professors last night so they know I'm leaving. See?"
You shook your head; you didn't see at all.
"No glasses," you said. She grabbed them and placed them on your face for you, stealing a quick kiss before shoving her MacBook under your nose. You sure still couldn't read it, but you saw your name in one of the fields and, well, a website with a big red airplane in the corner and a smiling stewardess lady and a yen sign with a nonsensical number of zeroes was enough context even for you.
"O-oh," you said lamely. "Okay. How'd you fill my passport stuff out?" Your bag with your passport was still untouched in the corner of the room.
"You showed me your new one when you got it," she explained, closing the laptop and setting it aside.
"That was, like, four years ago? Remind me not to tell you my social security number," you said. She rattled off a string of numbers without hesitation. Stupid perfect recall.
She smiled and shut her laptop, then you saw on her face the exact moment her next thought arrived, the scrunch of her nose as she pressed her lips together.
"… Evie, did you seriously think we were breaking up even after I brought you home?" she asked. You nodded, face going hot. "The sex wasn't a hint?"
"I dunno? My last breakup had a really passionate kiss in the rain atop the Golden Gate Bridge, I figured this was sorta like that," you explained. Her eyes narrowed.
"So what, did you spend all of last night thinking to yourself 'wow, she's definitely going down on me like she never wants to see me again?'"
"Um… alright, yes, it sounds silly when you put it like that…"
The two of you managed to get out of the apartment before noon, driven largely by the fact that events had conspired to prevent the two of you getting dinner the night before. Yes. Events.
"Why are you laughing?" Kimiyo asked you in the elevator.
"Events."
You followed her outside; it was a mild day, warmer than yesterday but with a sky completely blanketed in clouds. Once you got off the main areas, the streets were surprisingly quiet for such a big city, with few cars on the little one-way streets you were cutting through. Kimiyo led you on a surprisingly long walk through the city to a building tucked in near a train station, marked by just a small sign jutting out of the wall. You walked through the open door and down a short flight of stairs into a cute little café, its interior all dark wood and densely-packed photographs on the walls, with a distinct smell that reminded you of Kimiyo's parents house when you were kids. It took you a few seconds longer to place it.
"Are they allowed to do that?" you asked, gesturing subtly toward a man at the table near the door who was hunched over an ashtray, smoking as if that was a normal activity to do inside. You had vivid flashbacks of going to Pizza Hut as a little kid, passing through a lingering haze to the non-smoking section, and wondering what the streaks in the glass dividers were.
"Yes. I know, it's-"
"But second-hand smoke!" you said involuntarily, a childhood full of PSAs crashing through your brain. "Remember the one with the lady with the voice? I don't want a hole in my throat!"
"Eve, you'll be fine. They keep a window open in the back so there's airflow, we won't even notice in the back corner," she said, dragging you along to a chair and ushering you into the booth. You eventually gave up holding your breath and concluded that while there was in fact a nice little breeze, you suspected that Kimiyo might have gone a little noseblind by this point.
"Do they have wifi here?" you asked, pulling your still-deactivated phone out of your purse as you waited for your food. You carefully deactivated cell data before turning off airplane mode. "I should probably, like, tell Amara I'm not dead."
Kimiyo raised her phone. "There's a 7-11," she said. This non-sequitur dovetailed into the discovery of public networks from not one, but two nearby 7-11s. You managed to connect to the nearest, and, after Kimiyo guided you through signing up, you had thirty whole minutes of wifi that wouldn't cost you ten thousand dollars a second!
There was a Skype message waiting from Amara with a twitter link and "👍". The tweet contained an embedded link to CNN's website, with a picture of two familiar figures sitting on the red trusses of the arch on Tokyo Tower.
"Hey Kimmy, we made the news!" you said, turning the phone around. She gave a little smile and glanced back at her phone, and you watched as the smile slowly disappeared.
"... yeah, we did," she said, turning her own phone around to show NHK Online with another picture; in this one Ward was standing up and clearly walking along the trusses, glancing behind her, while Sage was staring off into the sky, the wind playing at her hair. "Which we should have been more careful about."
"Why?"
"Because this is about government statements calling for calm, the TYO losing a bunch of value, and an emergency service mobilization. The police are looking for the Butterfly Knights to assess what kind of danger the city is in," she said, scrolling on. Deeper in the article were other, more familiar pictures; San Francisco burning, the Golden Gate bridge sagging and dipping into the sea, the famous picture of Butterfly Heart standing in Lombard Street, molten metal running in rivers around her, dark red pixelated mosaic covering what was left of the National Guard and unlucky civilians caught in the way.
".... oh. Fuck," you said.
"It makes sense. If a couple reclusive American superheroes suddenly show up in Tokyo after years of absence…" Kimiyo said, trailing off.
"It probably means there's a bunch of Godzillas on their way, yeah," you agreed. "It's not fair, it's not like we're the danger. We're the anti-danger."
"Yes, and much like antimatter, it's not fun to be nearby when danger and anti-danger meet," Kimiyo concluded. "We should probably go tell somebody it's going to be okay."
"After we eat!" you added.
"After we eat."
🦋 Chapter 4 - Hearts Moving (Part 2)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
You made a point to try and keep conversation light and off of Knight business during your late breakfast. You asked about her art and extracted a promise that she'd show you everything she'd done, and that led to her mentioning that she'd been living off of art commissions.
"What? That's amazing!" you exclaimed. She'd always wanted to be a professional artist!
"Slow down, it's nothing special. I don't have many costs to cover here, not having to pay rent and all," she said, then leaned in to smile, as if to avoid getting caught. "It is pretty cool though."
"What sort of stuff have you been drawing?"
"Fanart, mostly," she said. You gestured for her to continue talking, and she actually squared up her shoulders like she was physically bracing herself first. "So… there's this swimming anime…"
"Go on…"
"It has, well, a bit of a following in some online communities I'm in, and I sort of have a knack for drawing the main characters…" she continued. "There's boys and, well, there's shipping..."
"Ah!" you said, the pieces coming together. You grinned; this was delicious. "Lemme guess, you've been doing yaoi commissions for a bunch of fujoshi, huh?"
"It seriously hurts my soul that the only Japanese you know is fandom words," Kimiyo replied.
"It's not the only words I know! Anyway, I notice that's not a no…" you pointed out. Her knuckles tightened around her mug.
"It's not all I draw! I've been doing my urban landscapes, they're very respectable!" she insisted, sitting back with a huff. "In any case, if I want to make rent in San Francisco I'm going to need to get a real job instead."
"Drawing boys kissing is absolutely a real and extremely vital job," you said, taking a sip from your own coffee and trying not to let it show that it was still slightly too hot. "The bedrock of society, to be honest. Thank you for your service."
"Shut up," she grumbled, though the corner of her mouth was being pulled upward in an involuntary smile.
"Never. Though, like, it's still kinda weird to me you're so into that-"
"I'm not into-"
"-when, you know, lesbian. Like, speaking as a retired bisexual-"
"-what does that even mean-"
"-obviously I have a professional interest in the field-"
"-that's what I have! You're an amateur!"
"-but I still don't know what you get out of it," you concluded.
"Money," Kimiyo huffed, then sighed as you kept up your steely glare. "And it's a playground for romantic and sexual power dynamics you don't really get in stories with women, okay?"
"There's that minor in gender studies!" you said triumphantly. "Still, I'm glad, even if it wasn't enough for anything. Though I'm surprised you had to, didn't you say you got some kind of inheritance?"
She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped and nodded.
"More or less," she said. "But it wasn't very much, it only just covered tuition."
"Oh. You'd sort of made it sound like, you know, you wouldn't have to worry at all," you said.
"I know. I just didn't want you to worry about me."
"Well, unfortunately I like you a lot and I'm going to worry," you said, sighing. She lied. That hurt. "Still, I'm glad at least school got covered and you still don't have to join us peasants in the misery of student loans."
Oh, that was maybe too snarky; she retracted into her chair and pulled her mug up to cover her mortified expression. Kimiyo's parents had covered her architecture degree at UC Berkeley out of pocket, a fact Kimiyo had always been both grateful for and extremely ashamed about.
"Sorry, that was mean. Besides, who am I to call myself a peasant?" You joked, putting a hand to your chest in your best dramatic pose, which also highlighted the fact you were wearing your favourite bright pink PRINCESS shirt. It was a joke that was only going to get funnier the more often you got to wear it before your coronation.
There, that got a smile.
"No, I'm sorry, I should have said more. It's…" She paused, closing her eyes, that same slow, measured intake of breath. "Technically, I was on the will, but I won't be getting any of it. My Aunt gave me a bit of money as… compensation, sort of."
"What do you mean? They cut you out? Can they do that?" you pushed. She wavered.
"It's complicated…" she started, then clenched her hand as anger flared. "I don't know if I'm cut out, I don't know fucking anything. I'm not talking to any of them except my Aunt, and she's not talking with them either. But there's no point fighting it."
You reached gently across the table and took her hand.
"Bad, huh?" you said, trying to give her an out if it was too much or sympathy if it wasn't.
"I can't," she said simply. You nodded.
"And, like, whatever, right? You're going to be so much richer than them anyway, just you watch," you promised, squeezing her hand.
"Why, that sounds a little like nepotism, your Highness," Kimiyo recited.
"Well, yeah, I'm going to be so corrupt. Just the worst. Your salary is going to single-handedly drive ruinous hyperinflation and destroy the planetary economy, alright?" you said, grinning so widely your cheeks hurt. "You thought my economics degree was so I could be a better ruler? We're gonna get paid."
"We do deserve it," she said, pointing at the back of your phone. "The IP rights alone!"
You thought hard on it, hand on your chin.
"I dunno if IP rights are the right term, like, the Butterfly Knights are public figures. But it might violate our right to publicity," you said. "I think the argument is probably that the Butterfly Knights are not, like, legally private individuals because of our unknown identity, and the copyright is to a set of associated fictional personas. It's not unprecedented."
"...what?" Kimiyo asked.
"Amara and I looked it up. Legally speaking, 'Butterfly Knights' and all our names are pretty much the property of a company in LA called Eclipse Media Holdings, which really sounds like a Dark Queen front but looks like just a super boring licensing company. Technically they don't, like, own own us, but they did all the cute anime-y drawings of us in the 2000s and made that comic book, so our public image and personas are kinda constructions of this company and they own that. So anyone could make a Butterfly Knights thing, but this-" You pointed to your phone case, "-is Eclipse Media."
"We should go kill them," Kimiyo said flatly.
"We should not do that," you retorted.
"Jennifer Fucking Lawrence."
"You make a strong argument, but we agreed we're not going to have a death penalty," you said. She pouted. "We agreed."
"Fine," Kimoyo said through gritted teeth.
You finished eating, Kimiyo insisting on paying to your immense relief, and then followed her out into the streets. The day hadn't gotten any less overcast, though the sun peeking through the rolling clouds looked quite striking above the city.
"Where are we going?" you asked, as Kimiyo scanned her phone for directions.
"There's a police station just-" she started, but stopped as you crossed your arms. "Really?"
"When have cops ever been helpful to us?" you asked. "I don't wanna get shot at again."
"These aren't American cops. The only gun they have are these little revolvers, they're… they're…," she trailed off. You held your ground, and you could see her internal war between national pride and her actual politics. "...they're incredibly xenophobic and part of a dysfunctional legal system that values quiet and high conviction rates above justice, alright fine. City Hall?"
"Sounds good to me," you agreed, following her into an alley. The two of you ducked behind a parked moped, checking both ways for witnesses, and you couldn't help but smile at her as you drew your necklace out. The large amber gems in yours and the dozens of tiny rubies in hers shimmered in the diffused light.
"Been a minute, huh?"
"Yeah, it has," she agreed, reaching out to you. Your fingers intertwined as you both raised your hands.
"For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
"Unmei no Ito yo, Waga o Michibike! Henshin!"
Minato City Hall was not far; once you ran out of rooftops, you ran the rest of the way along the guardrail of a narrow elevated road before cutting across a park and then you were there. The building was a modest, blocky bifurcated building with recessed continuous windows, and the pillar holding up the awning above the entrance was wrapped in a giant no smoking sign you were silently grateful for.
The two of you landed softly on the awning and dropped down in front of a man who was just leaving; the poor guy turned about as white as his shirt and stared as you pushed past him. You made your way inside, stopping in the expansive lobby as Butterfly Sage scanned the large sign and trying not to feel too embarrassed by the people stopping in their tracks to gawk. A man in a suit at the far end of the lobby took off down the hall in a sprint.
"This way," Sage instructed, and you climbed up a flight of stairs to a small waiting area where three people were sitting, watching for their number. She stepped up to the little desk at the end, and you made out the basics of her greeting and the secretary's bewildered "Wait, who are you?"
It took a few repetitions, including an extremely high-powered eyeroll and the insistent repetition of Butterfly Sage in English, before the secretary picked up a phone and silently gestured to take a ticket. You pulled a stub and sat down, smiling at the old man across from you as the secretary whispered urgently into her phone.
"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" you asked Sage. She shrugged, patted her costume for her phone, then sighed and began playing cat's cradle in mid-air to pass the time.
Behind the desk, the secretary got up and hurried off, her chair spinning slightly in place, and a man down the hall peeked his head out a door in what he probably thought was a subtle glance. Somewhere above you, you felt the vague dance of conversation, panic, and frantic phone calls being made. A bald man in a suit burst through a door demanding to know what was going on.
"I think they're taking this kind of seriously," you whispered. "The guy at the door there is armed."
"Mhmm."
One of the ways you were different from Eve is that Eve in this position wouldn't be thinking about exits, about which way to hold her shield to cover Sage and avoid ricochets, about ways out. She might, but not with the same speed and awareness, the same instinct. For all that the two of you shared so much, history and feelings and a perspective, you existed so she didn't have to internalize that kind of killer instinct.
There was an argument upstairs. You couldn't follow the words, but you gathered they were trying to decide who to send to get you out of the lobby and out of sight. Somebody got volunteered. You narrated to Sage, watching her eyes flick across the invisible strings as she followed the connections being woven between them and the two of you.
"Honestly, you'd think we were the bad guys," Sage muttered.
"Well, we do sort of upend the whole monopoly on violence thing just by existing," you pointed out. "I think Weber would probably say something like how us just existing is a challenge to their legitimacy, subverting the rational-legal basis of authority via vulgar power, you know?"
"What? Who?" Sage asked.
"Uh… Mmmm… Mark… Max..? Max Weber. He was an old dude, and like, I think he'd need to come up with a fourth kind of authority for magical superpowered royalty," you explained. The elevator dinged and a nervous twentysomething man in a suit stepped out, his awkward movements betraying his nerves nearly as much as the sheen of sweat clinging to his face. "I think that's for us."
"Um, Butterfly Ward, Butterfly Sage?" the man said, stopped a respectable distance away. "Please come this way." You stood and followed him through a door into a small, windowless conference room with a long square table; you took seats, your gauntlets clunk-ing as you rested them on the table. The man jumped at the sound.
"Sorry!"
"N-no, it's fine. Can I get you anything?" the man asked. You paused to think.
"Could I get a snack?"
The man bowed and left with stiff, jolting steps, like he was a stop-motion puppet, the door closing with a resounding thud behind him.
"You just ate," Sage pointed out.
"Yeah, but that barely counts," you retorted. "Who do you think we'll talk to?"
"No idea. The mayor, maybe?"
The door burst back open and the young man reemerged and, with the kind of delicate, extended-arm motions one might associate with arming explosives, placed a bright orange package of a candy you'd never seen before on the table before stepping back. HI-CHEW. You peeled it open, quite a feat in gauntlets, and popped a little white-and-orange piece in your mouth.
"... oooh!" you said, immediately going to unwrap another. "Uh, arigato! These are amazing!"
There was a brisk knock at the door, and the man opened it to reveal a procession of serious looking people in suits who filed in one after another and took a seat on the other side; six total, with about twice that people lining the far wall. The nervous young man was ushered out by a man whose bearing screamed plain-clothed cop, and he darted out; you saw him collapse against the wall in giddy relief after the door closed.
"Butterfly Knights, I am Kozue Kimoto, Deputy Director of Public Relations for Minato City. This is Mayor Takei, Superintendent Chikae of the Tokyo Metropolitian blah blah, blah blah blah…" Your brain completely zoned out as the man continued introducing people, telling you about how a translator was listening in, on and on. Did you take your meds at breakfast?
"Did I take my meds at breakfast?" you whispered.
"Yes," Sage hissed back. Huh. Maybe it hadn't kicked in yet.
"... would like to inquire what brings you to Tokyo?" Deputy Relationsman Kimoto concluded.
"We're just visiting," you said, putting on your best smile.
"Pardon?"
"You heard her. Visiting," Sage repeated, crossing her arms and sitting back. "I'm showing her around the city." You could just hear the buzzing voice of the translator in the earpieces around the room.
"Ah. Well, typically, we require visitors to have a visa and to come through immigration control to… avoid incidents like this. Your appearance was very irresponsible; people in the city are very worried."
"Well, they don't need to be. Nobody is in any danger," Sage said. There was a rapid, hushed exchange between Superintendent Chikae and Director Kimoto, and you glanced at Sage, whose exaggerated frown told you all you needed to know.
"Well, I mean, Tokyo isn't in any particular danger more than any other place," you said. Sage kicked you lightly under the table. "I-I mean, nobody is ever completely safe, but we're not expecting anything bad, so really you're actually safer than average with us here."
That didn't seem to reassure them. Somebody was yelling at somebody else on a phone four stories above you. A helicopter took off across the city.
"Look, after what happened last time, we're not keen on governments getting in the way while we work, so if something were happening, we'd tell you so you could stay clear," Sage emphasized. "Seriously, do you need us to go on TV and tell everyone that things are okay?"
"Oh, can we? I'm a natural at it," you said brightly. "That's what the guy said when I did those PSAs. We could do one of those! Butterfly Ward Says everything's cool, and don't do a drugs!"
Another whispered conversation. Sage huffed, listening in, her hand tapping against her thigh impatiently. They seemed to come to a conclusion.
"If you can wait for a few hours, we could call a press conference-" the man offered.
"We don't do those. Get a phone camera or something and do it right now, but we're not talking to the media," Sage said sternly.
"It went really bad last time," you added.
"But you understand that people want answers, right? The last time any of you showed up, tens of thousands of people died. You have already cost quite a lot of money in emergency preparations," Kimoto said, sounding quite calm.
"Technically, nobody died for good," you interjected.
"Even so, you've caused serious panic and unrest, and we need… ah, we're asking you for help in keeping public order. People are scared, they will have questions, and you owe it to them to answer them," he concluded. That… sounded really reasonable. You unwrapped the last Hi-Chew and stuck it in your mouth as you thought, glancing at Sage. She didn't look happy, and you could tell she was looking for permission to talk so you wouldn't end up being overly-agreeable again.
You nodded your approval as you smoothed the empty candy wrapped on the table. She had a good sense for these things.
"Look. We understand your concern, but frankly, while I think it's reasonable we owe people information, we don't owe you anything specific. We've done nothing but protect people, we aren't a danger to anyone. Frankly, if you want to start talking about owing-"
"Sage, dear," you managed around a mouthful of mango-flavoured candy, indicating with your gauntlet to take it down a notch. She did her little breathing exercise, eyes closed.
"-it will not be very productive. In short; we took time out of our day to come and see you to reassure people; we had plans today. So you will go get a camera crew in here. I will write the questions they ask us, we'll do your interview. No other reporters, no other questions. We are leaving in an hour, one way or another," Sage finished.
One of them muttered something under his breath, and Sage snapped something back rapid-fire that didn't sound polite. The man was clearly taken aback, the colour draining from his face. In the lobby, a man in a camouflage uniform, still breathing a bit heavily from having rushed inside, heard something over the headset he'd just put on and said something else into his walkie-talkie; it woulda been really cool if ESP came with subtitles. A sweaty hand tightened on the grip of a rifle as a pair of doors opened into the overcast sunlight.
There was a brief knock on the door, and you all turned in time to see the nervous guy from before re-enter, something colourful bundled in his hands. He placed down about a dozen packets of Hi-Chew before retreating like he was worried the room might catch fire.
"C-can we get you tea o-or-" he started, and the bald mayorguy waved him out of the room. He managed an incredible combination door-open-bow-run that you doubted you could have pulled off even with your inhuman grace.
Shrugging, you selected the strawberry package and pulled it open.
"I think that's fair. There's more city I want to see, and we haven't got a ton of time," you said calmly, fumbling with the wrapper. "Like, I don't want people to panic, and you've been really polite, but it sorta feels like you're trying to guilt us a bit and that sucks. We didn't do anything wrong."
"You entered the country unlawfully," Deputy Director Kimoto said.
"Nope. Went through customs and everything. They even took my fingerprints," you said, then paused. "I probably shouldn't have told you that."
"It's fine," Sage said. You glanced down at your gauntleted hands and laughed.
"Right! Did they take yours, Sage?" you asked, before popping another Hi-Chew in your mouth. Why was raspberry blue?
"They don't do it for citizens," she said. After a moment's pause, there was a murmur around the room.
"You're a citizen?" DDK asked.
"Yes, one who will be leaving in fifty-five minutes" she said, pointing up at the clock. Then she sighed, waving her hand slightly; eight humming black strings appeared, fanning out to either side of the door. "Who are these people and why are they ready to try and kill us?"
"Oh, they're like, army guys. Or maybe fancy police guys, I'm not sure. There's more outside," you said. On the other side of the door, two of the masked troopers who presumably had a better command of English turned in unison toward the wall, pulling their weapons against their chests involuntarily. "They showed up about five minutes ago, an officer told them something and they got all nervous. See, it's that thing, we upset the monopoly on violence so they're trying to feel in control, y'know?"
The mayor said something nervously to another figure in the room, who looked confused.
"I'm guessing nobody told you, huh? The National Guard did the same thing to Mayor Newsom in 2006," you said sympathetically.
You set the blue raspberry down and contemplated the choice between grape and peach. The first time a police officer had shot at you, you'd been terrified. The second time, you'd been annoyed. At this point, you were just kind of embarrassed for them. You settled on peach, and ripped the top of the wrapper open.
"I see," Sage said, shaking her head in disappointment. "Well, please send those men home and get a camera crew instead, or else we're leaving, right now. As we don't want to hurt anyone, we'll be going through the walls."
There was a brief exchange of radios in the rooms around you, and the black strings unravelled and fell apart as the men outside pulled back, their hands not leaving their weapons. The tension in the room was starting to get to you; you didn't do a lot of social interaction as yourself, and you hadn't intended for this to become a standoff.
You wormed another peach candy out of the wrapper.
"Does anyone want one? They're really good."
"What? That's amazing!" you exclaimed. She'd always wanted to be a professional artist!
"Slow down, it's nothing special. I don't have many costs to cover here, not having to pay rent and all," she said, then leaned in to smile, as if to avoid getting caught. "It is pretty cool though."
"What sort of stuff have you been drawing?"
"Fanart, mostly," she said. You gestured for her to continue talking, and she actually squared up her shoulders like she was physically bracing herself first. "So… there's this swimming anime…"
"Go on…"
"It has, well, a bit of a following in some online communities I'm in, and I sort of have a knack for drawing the main characters…" she continued. "There's boys and, well, there's shipping..."
"Ah!" you said, the pieces coming together. You grinned; this was delicious. "Lemme guess, you've been doing yaoi commissions for a bunch of fujoshi, huh?"
"It seriously hurts my soul that the only Japanese you know is fandom words," Kimiyo replied.
"It's not the only words I know! Anyway, I notice that's not a no…" you pointed out. Her knuckles tightened around her mug.
"It's not all I draw! I've been doing my urban landscapes, they're very respectable!" she insisted, sitting back with a huff. "In any case, if I want to make rent in San Francisco I'm going to need to get a real job instead."
"Drawing boys kissing is absolutely a real and extremely vital job," you said, taking a sip from your own coffee and trying not to let it show that it was still slightly too hot. "The bedrock of society, to be honest. Thank you for your service."
"Shut up," she grumbled, though the corner of her mouth was being pulled upward in an involuntary smile.
"Never. Though, like, it's still kinda weird to me you're so into that-"
"I'm not into-"
"-when, you know, lesbian. Like, speaking as a retired bisexual-"
"-what does that even mean-"
"-obviously I have a professional interest in the field-"
"-that's what I have! You're an amateur!"
"-but I still don't know what you get out of it," you concluded.
"Money," Kimiyo huffed, then sighed as you kept up your steely glare. "And it's a playground for romantic and sexual power dynamics you don't really get in stories with women, okay?"
"There's that minor in gender studies!" you said triumphantly. "Still, I'm glad, even if it wasn't enough for anything. Though I'm surprised you had to, didn't you say you got some kind of inheritance?"
She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped and nodded.
"More or less," she said. "But it wasn't very much, it only just covered tuition."
"Oh. You'd sort of made it sound like, you know, you wouldn't have to worry at all," you said.
"I know. I just didn't want you to worry about me."
"Well, unfortunately I like you a lot and I'm going to worry," you said, sighing. She lied. That hurt. "Still, I'm glad at least school got covered and you still don't have to join us peasants in the misery of student loans."
Oh, that was maybe too snarky; she retracted into her chair and pulled her mug up to cover her mortified expression. Kimiyo's parents had covered her architecture degree at UC Berkeley out of pocket, a fact Kimiyo had always been both grateful for and extremely ashamed about.
"Sorry, that was mean. Besides, who am I to call myself a peasant?" You joked, putting a hand to your chest in your best dramatic pose, which also highlighted the fact you were wearing your favourite bright pink PRINCESS shirt. It was a joke that was only going to get funnier the more often you got to wear it before your coronation.
There, that got a smile.
"No, I'm sorry, I should have said more. It's…" She paused, closing her eyes, that same slow, measured intake of breath. "Technically, I was on the will, but I won't be getting any of it. My Aunt gave me a bit of money as… compensation, sort of."
"What do you mean? They cut you out? Can they do that?" you pushed. She wavered.
"It's complicated…" she started, then clenched her hand as anger flared. "I don't know if I'm cut out, I don't know fucking anything. I'm not talking to any of them except my Aunt, and she's not talking with them either. But there's no point fighting it."
You reached gently across the table and took her hand.
"Bad, huh?" you said, trying to give her an out if it was too much or sympathy if it wasn't.
"I can't," she said simply. You nodded.
"And, like, whatever, right? You're going to be so much richer than them anyway, just you watch," you promised, squeezing her hand.
"Why, that sounds a little like nepotism, your Highness," Kimiyo recited.
"Well, yeah, I'm going to be so corrupt. Just the worst. Your salary is going to single-handedly drive ruinous hyperinflation and destroy the planetary economy, alright?" you said, grinning so widely your cheeks hurt. "You thought my economics degree was so I could be a better ruler? We're gonna get paid."
"We do deserve it," she said, pointing at the back of your phone. "The IP rights alone!"
You thought hard on it, hand on your chin.
"I dunno if IP rights are the right term, like, the Butterfly Knights are public figures. But it might violate our right to publicity," you said. "I think the argument is probably that the Butterfly Knights are not, like, legally private individuals because of our unknown identity, and the copyright is to a set of associated fictional personas. It's not unprecedented."
"...what?" Kimiyo asked.
"Amara and I looked it up. Legally speaking, 'Butterfly Knights' and all our names are pretty much the property of a company in LA called Eclipse Media Holdings, which really sounds like a Dark Queen front but looks like just a super boring licensing company. Technically they don't, like, own own us, but they did all the cute anime-y drawings of us in the 2000s and made that comic book, so our public image and personas are kinda constructions of this company and they own that. So anyone could make a Butterfly Knights thing, but this-" You pointed to your phone case, "-is Eclipse Media."
"We should go kill them," Kimiyo said flatly.
"We should not do that," you retorted.
"Jennifer Fucking Lawrence."
"You make a strong argument, but we agreed we're not going to have a death penalty," you said. She pouted. "We agreed."
"Fine," Kimoyo said through gritted teeth.
You finished eating, Kimiyo insisting on paying to your immense relief, and then followed her out into the streets. The day hadn't gotten any less overcast, though the sun peeking through the rolling clouds looked quite striking above the city.
"Where are we going?" you asked, as Kimiyo scanned her phone for directions.
"There's a police station just-" she started, but stopped as you crossed your arms. "Really?"
"When have cops ever been helpful to us?" you asked. "I don't wanna get shot at again."
"These aren't American cops. The only gun they have are these little revolvers, they're… they're…," she trailed off. You held your ground, and you could see her internal war between national pride and her actual politics. "...they're incredibly xenophobic and part of a dysfunctional legal system that values quiet and high conviction rates above justice, alright fine. City Hall?"
"Sounds good to me," you agreed, following her into an alley. The two of you ducked behind a parked moped, checking both ways for witnesses, and you couldn't help but smile at her as you drew your necklace out. The large amber gems in yours and the dozens of tiny rubies in hers shimmered in the diffused light.
"Been a minute, huh?"
"Yeah, it has," she agreed, reaching out to you. Your fingers intertwined as you both raised your hands.
"For the Kaleidoscope Crown! Transform!"
"Unmei no Ito yo, Waga o Michibike! Henshin!"
🦋
Minato City Hall was not far; once you ran out of rooftops, you ran the rest of the way along the guardrail of a narrow elevated road before cutting across a park and then you were there. The building was a modest, blocky bifurcated building with recessed continuous windows, and the pillar holding up the awning above the entrance was wrapped in a giant no smoking sign you were silently grateful for.
The two of you landed softly on the awning and dropped down in front of a man who was just leaving; the poor guy turned about as white as his shirt and stared as you pushed past him. You made your way inside, stopping in the expansive lobby as Butterfly Sage scanned the large sign and trying not to feel too embarrassed by the people stopping in their tracks to gawk. A man in a suit at the far end of the lobby took off down the hall in a sprint.
"This way," Sage instructed, and you climbed up a flight of stairs to a small waiting area where three people were sitting, watching for their number. She stepped up to the little desk at the end, and you made out the basics of her greeting and the secretary's bewildered "Wait, who are you?"
It took a few repetitions, including an extremely high-powered eyeroll and the insistent repetition of Butterfly Sage in English, before the secretary picked up a phone and silently gestured to take a ticket. You pulled a stub and sat down, smiling at the old man across from you as the secretary whispered urgently into her phone.
"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" you asked Sage. She shrugged, patted her costume for her phone, then sighed and began playing cat's cradle in mid-air to pass the time.
Behind the desk, the secretary got up and hurried off, her chair spinning slightly in place, and a man down the hall peeked his head out a door in what he probably thought was a subtle glance. Somewhere above you, you felt the vague dance of conversation, panic, and frantic phone calls being made. A bald man in a suit burst through a door demanding to know what was going on.
"I think they're taking this kind of seriously," you whispered. "The guy at the door there is armed."
"Mhmm."
One of the ways you were different from Eve is that Eve in this position wouldn't be thinking about exits, about which way to hold her shield to cover Sage and avoid ricochets, about ways out. She might, but not with the same speed and awareness, the same instinct. For all that the two of you shared so much, history and feelings and a perspective, you existed so she didn't have to internalize that kind of killer instinct.
There was an argument upstairs. You couldn't follow the words, but you gathered they were trying to decide who to send to get you out of the lobby and out of sight. Somebody got volunteered. You narrated to Sage, watching her eyes flick across the invisible strings as she followed the connections being woven between them and the two of you.
"Honestly, you'd think we were the bad guys," Sage muttered.
"Well, we do sort of upend the whole monopoly on violence thing just by existing," you pointed out. "I think Weber would probably say something like how us just existing is a challenge to their legitimacy, subverting the rational-legal basis of authority via vulgar power, you know?"
"What? Who?" Sage asked.
"Uh… Mmmm… Mark… Max..? Max Weber. He was an old dude, and like, I think he'd need to come up with a fourth kind of authority for magical superpowered royalty," you explained. The elevator dinged and a nervous twentysomething man in a suit stepped out, his awkward movements betraying his nerves nearly as much as the sheen of sweat clinging to his face. "I think that's for us."
"Um, Butterfly Ward, Butterfly Sage?" the man said, stopped a respectable distance away. "Please come this way." You stood and followed him through a door into a small, windowless conference room with a long square table; you took seats, your gauntlets clunk-ing as you rested them on the table. The man jumped at the sound.
"Sorry!"
"N-no, it's fine. Can I get you anything?" the man asked. You paused to think.
"Could I get a snack?"
The man bowed and left with stiff, jolting steps, like he was a stop-motion puppet, the door closing with a resounding thud behind him.
"You just ate," Sage pointed out.
"Yeah, but that barely counts," you retorted. "Who do you think we'll talk to?"
"No idea. The mayor, maybe?"
The door burst back open and the young man reemerged and, with the kind of delicate, extended-arm motions one might associate with arming explosives, placed a bright orange package of a candy you'd never seen before on the table before stepping back. HI-CHEW. You peeled it open, quite a feat in gauntlets, and popped a little white-and-orange piece in your mouth.
"... oooh!" you said, immediately going to unwrap another. "Uh, arigato! These are amazing!"
There was a brisk knock at the door, and the man opened it to reveal a procession of serious looking people in suits who filed in one after another and took a seat on the other side; six total, with about twice that people lining the far wall. The nervous young man was ushered out by a man whose bearing screamed plain-clothed cop, and he darted out; you saw him collapse against the wall in giddy relief after the door closed.
"Butterfly Knights, I am Kozue Kimoto, Deputy Director of Public Relations for Minato City. This is Mayor Takei, Superintendent Chikae of the Tokyo Metropolitian blah blah, blah blah blah…" Your brain completely zoned out as the man continued introducing people, telling you about how a translator was listening in, on and on. Did you take your meds at breakfast?
"Did I take my meds at breakfast?" you whispered.
"Yes," Sage hissed back. Huh. Maybe it hadn't kicked in yet.
"... would like to inquire what brings you to Tokyo?" Deputy Relationsman Kimoto concluded.
"We're just visiting," you said, putting on your best smile.
"Pardon?"
"You heard her. Visiting," Sage repeated, crossing her arms and sitting back. "I'm showing her around the city." You could just hear the buzzing voice of the translator in the earpieces around the room.
"Ah. Well, typically, we require visitors to have a visa and to come through immigration control to… avoid incidents like this. Your appearance was very irresponsible; people in the city are very worried."
"Well, they don't need to be. Nobody is in any danger," Sage said. There was a rapid, hushed exchange between Superintendent Chikae and Director Kimoto, and you glanced at Sage, whose exaggerated frown told you all you needed to know.
"Well, I mean, Tokyo isn't in any particular danger more than any other place," you said. Sage kicked you lightly under the table. "I-I mean, nobody is ever completely safe, but we're not expecting anything bad, so really you're actually safer than average with us here."
That didn't seem to reassure them. Somebody was yelling at somebody else on a phone four stories above you. A helicopter took off across the city.
"Look, after what happened last time, we're not keen on governments getting in the way while we work, so if something were happening, we'd tell you so you could stay clear," Sage emphasized. "Seriously, do you need us to go on TV and tell everyone that things are okay?"
"Oh, can we? I'm a natural at it," you said brightly. "That's what the guy said when I did those PSAs. We could do one of those! Butterfly Ward Says everything's cool, and don't do a drugs!"
Another whispered conversation. Sage huffed, listening in, her hand tapping against her thigh impatiently. They seemed to come to a conclusion.
"If you can wait for a few hours, we could call a press conference-" the man offered.
"We don't do those. Get a phone camera or something and do it right now, but we're not talking to the media," Sage said sternly.
"It went really bad last time," you added.
"But you understand that people want answers, right? The last time any of you showed up, tens of thousands of people died. You have already cost quite a lot of money in emergency preparations," Kimoto said, sounding quite calm.
"Technically, nobody died for good," you interjected.
"Even so, you've caused serious panic and unrest, and we need… ah, we're asking you for help in keeping public order. People are scared, they will have questions, and you owe it to them to answer them," he concluded. That… sounded really reasonable. You unwrapped the last Hi-Chew and stuck it in your mouth as you thought, glancing at Sage. She didn't look happy, and you could tell she was looking for permission to talk so you wouldn't end up being overly-agreeable again.
You nodded your approval as you smoothed the empty candy wrapped on the table. She had a good sense for these things.
"Look. We understand your concern, but frankly, while I think it's reasonable we owe people information, we don't owe you anything specific. We've done nothing but protect people, we aren't a danger to anyone. Frankly, if you want to start talking about owing-"
"Sage, dear," you managed around a mouthful of mango-flavoured candy, indicating with your gauntlet to take it down a notch. She did her little breathing exercise, eyes closed.
"-it will not be very productive. In short; we took time out of our day to come and see you to reassure people; we had plans today. So you will go get a camera crew in here. I will write the questions they ask us, we'll do your interview. No other reporters, no other questions. We are leaving in an hour, one way or another," Sage finished.
One of them muttered something under his breath, and Sage snapped something back rapid-fire that didn't sound polite. The man was clearly taken aback, the colour draining from his face. In the lobby, a man in a camouflage uniform, still breathing a bit heavily from having rushed inside, heard something over the headset he'd just put on and said something else into his walkie-talkie; it woulda been really cool if ESP came with subtitles. A sweaty hand tightened on the grip of a rifle as a pair of doors opened into the overcast sunlight.
There was a brief knock on the door, and you all turned in time to see the nervous guy from before re-enter, something colourful bundled in his hands. He placed down about a dozen packets of Hi-Chew before retreating like he was worried the room might catch fire.
"C-can we get you tea o-or-" he started, and the bald mayorguy waved him out of the room. He managed an incredible combination door-open-bow-run that you doubted you could have pulled off even with your inhuman grace.
Shrugging, you selected the strawberry package and pulled it open.
"I think that's fair. There's more city I want to see, and we haven't got a ton of time," you said calmly, fumbling with the wrapper. "Like, I don't want people to panic, and you've been really polite, but it sorta feels like you're trying to guilt us a bit and that sucks. We didn't do anything wrong."
"You entered the country unlawfully," Deputy Director Kimoto said.
"Nope. Went through customs and everything. They even took my fingerprints," you said, then paused. "I probably shouldn't have told you that."
"It's fine," Sage said. You glanced down at your gauntleted hands and laughed.
"Right! Did they take yours, Sage?" you asked, before popping another Hi-Chew in your mouth. Why was raspberry blue?
"They don't do it for citizens," she said. After a moment's pause, there was a murmur around the room.
"You're a citizen?" DDK asked.
"Yes, one who will be leaving in fifty-five minutes" she said, pointing up at the clock. Then she sighed, waving her hand slightly; eight humming black strings appeared, fanning out to either side of the door. "Who are these people and why are they ready to try and kill us?"
"Oh, they're like, army guys. Or maybe fancy police guys, I'm not sure. There's more outside," you said. On the other side of the door, two of the masked troopers who presumably had a better command of English turned in unison toward the wall, pulling their weapons against their chests involuntarily. "They showed up about five minutes ago, an officer told them something and they got all nervous. See, it's that thing, we upset the monopoly on violence so they're trying to feel in control, y'know?"
The mayor said something nervously to another figure in the room, who looked confused.
"I'm guessing nobody told you, huh? The National Guard did the same thing to Mayor Newsom in 2006," you said sympathetically.
You set the blue raspberry down and contemplated the choice between grape and peach. The first time a police officer had shot at you, you'd been terrified. The second time, you'd been annoyed. At this point, you were just kind of embarrassed for them. You settled on peach, and ripped the top of the wrapper open.
"I see," Sage said, shaking her head in disappointment. "Well, please send those men home and get a camera crew instead, or else we're leaving, right now. As we don't want to hurt anyone, we'll be going through the walls."
There was a brief exchange of radios in the rooms around you, and the black strings unravelled and fell apart as the men outside pulled back, their hands not leaving their weapons. The tension in the room was starting to get to you; you didn't do a lot of social interaction as yourself, and you hadn't intended for this to become a standoff.
You wormed another peach candy out of the wrapper.
"Does anyone want one? They're really good."
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🦋 Chapter 4 - Hearts Moving (Part 3)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Once agreements were made, you followed the poor nervous intern guy to an office with a window two more floors up, presumably so if you decided to leave you wouldn't do much structural damage. You suspected it was a break room; there was a small TV set to the news. You sat and watched, Sage translating for you when relevant but mostly just writing. Unsurprisingly, it was mostly about you.
"Hey, Obama's talking about us!" you said excitedly as the narrator dubbed over the President's statement. "Weird question, do you think we could meet with him? Like, as ourselves?"
"Do you think he could stop us if we wanted to?" Sage replied.
"I didn't mean in an X-Men 2 sorta way," you clarified, leaning over in your chair to see what Sage was writing. You read it over several times, nodding to yourself, before coming to your conclusion. "Yep, can't read a word. Whatsit say?"
"Not much, yet, I just got started. Let's get our story straight; why are we here? We need a good reason people will accept," she asked.
"I mean, why not the truth? Can't I just say I'm visiting my girlfriend?" you said. "My very, very pretty girlfriend who looks even better in costume now?"
Sage did this sorta combination blush-and-sigh thing and gosh, you'd missed it.
"I don't think that's a good idea," she muttered, leaning back.
"Hmm. Why not?" you asked pointedly. "Like, oh no, people might be weird about us?"
"Yeah."
"Sage, they're already super weird about us," you reminded her. "I know you've seen the websites."
She blushed.
"...yeah. It's just…" She paused. "You sure?"
You went to say something smart, and an incredibly stupid thought crushed it out of existence. You snorted back a laugh, and without even hearing it Sage already looked disappointed.
"What?"
"I just… maybe if they know we're a couple, they'll have us kiss in the movie!" you said excitedly.
"You know that's not going to happen. It'll be Prince Rose," Sage said bitterly.
"...Right," you said. "Yeah, probably. But maybe-"
"Ward, come on," she snapped, the two pieces of pen cracking in half. She stared at it a moment, then flicked it across the room.
"...is this why you're mad at her?" you asked quietly.
"I'm not mad. I'm…" She trailed off. "It's what it is."
"...I don't like when you say that," you muttered, before you could stop yourself. You could see her jaw moving, lips pursed. Thinking about it hard. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Her jaw set, and she closed her eyes. She swirled a finger gently in front of her, and as if she were plucking it out of the air, there was a red hemp string. It was floating, forming from nothingness under her finger and spreading out in both directions like a twisting, racing fire. One end ran through her chest; the other ran into yours.
She let out a long breath, then flicked her finger over, like she was turning the page of a book. You looked down to see a second string spin itself together, emerging like a ghost through your breastplate. Woven into the red fibre was an equal amount of spun gold. The string arced out, away from your chest, eastward, across the ocean.
She flicked her hand, and the strings disappeared.
"Oh," you said. You reached out and took her hand, leaning against her, squeezing tight. "You said you knew it didn't mean-"
"I know," she replied. Knowing something and feeling something wasn't the same thing. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"Bzzt! Wrong, it's okay to feelings," you insisted. "Right, that settles it. I'm saying I'm here for you. Because I am." She opened her mouth to protest, and you held up a finger. "Ah! Nope! Decision is final."
"Oh, is it?"
"Uh-huh. Which one of us is the princess again?"
"... pillow princess, maybe," she muttered. You snorted back an undignified laugh.
"Mean! Mean and unfair!"
You sorted out the remaining questions, then left her to write while you turned back to the TV. They cycled through some other stories that weren't about superheroes, but before long they were back in about the Butterfly Knights, catching up anyone who had been living under a rock for the last decade.
The footage in the compilation was largely of the aftermath; puddles of molten metal fused with asphalt, smashed up streets and buildings, ambulances and police cars crowding around in the morning. Most of the action caught was on security cameras or lucky amateurs, nothing more than flashing lights and shapes moving along rooftops. Clouds of smoke and dust.
The clearest footage they had was of you standing atop one of the pillars at the Palace of Fine Arts, autumn 2005, when Prince Hemlock had crashed that fancy music party. "This city prides itself on its culture, the envy of the world! I won't let you dispoil it! This is your last chance!"
Your moment was somewhat spoiled by all the screaming and the camera being knocked over as half the servers at the event tore off their skins to reveal those new chromium demons. Mercifully, if they had footage from when Spark broke out Pluvia Aqua Regia!, they weren't playing it.
Still, they got your good side too. A lot of that was still photos; that one of you protecting those two little kids was left on screen for some time. You were still proud of it, but you noticed something you hadn't before; you looked young. You barely looked older than the kids you were protecting. It hadn't felt that way at the time, being Butterfly Ward had made you feel grown-up and mature and powerful, but looking at it now, that was a picture of three children huddled behind a shield, surrounded by fire. The heat-blurred shapes on the far side were people, adults, unable to help.
"They just announced they have an exclusive interview with the Knights coming up," Sage added, after the TV cut back to the newsroom. You glanced out the window to see the red lights of a convoy of police cars coming up the road; that was probably for you.
You were summoned downstairs to the cleared-out lobby to meet with a camera crew who were clearly here on short notice, led by a serious-looking reporter with short hair who was the first person you'd seen all day who didn't seem scared or in awe.
"Is it just the two of you?" she asked, frowning. Her accent was somewhere between what Kimiyo's parents had sounded like when you were a kid and a kinda vaguely British-y inflection, which threw your brain for a loop.
"Yep, just us," you confirmed. "Hi! I'm Butterfly Ward, and this is Butterfly Sage. You… probably knew that."
The reporter gave her name, and you listened as hard as you could but tragically not a single syllable stuck in your brain. She looked back and forth between you, as if assessing you for some quality you weren't quite sure of.
"You know, there's not a lot of good pictures of you, Sage," she said finally. For good reason; Sage was never really a front-line fighter, and she also never really had much patience with the media. "Your costume is very… interesting. What inspired it?"
What a dumb question. She was an awesome shrine maiden samurai (with extra bows, of both the ribbon and arrow-shooty variety), the same way you were a cool knight that was also a Disney princess (with extra bows, though only the ribbon kind). It wasn't exactly subtle!
"Thanks?" Sage replied, holding her arms out as if to show it off and letting the sleeves fan out. The frayed fabric and holes made you both wince; she was obviously pretty embarrassed by the state of it. "I didn't exactly design it, though. It's, like, magical?"
"Metaphorical. Or metaphysical. One of those," you added helpfully.
"Mhmm. I'll take your word for it," she said, sounding skeptical.
"It also used to look way better. We've been through some stuff," you cut in hastily. You didn't exactly understand the processes behind why your costumes changed, though back in the day it had usually corresponded to you getting stronger in some way. Sage's cracked lacquer and worn cloth didn't bode well on that front.
Self-consciously, you held up your gauntlet to check your own reflection, and got your answer in the fact the surface was too dull to make out anything but a vague blob of flesh tone against the background.
The reporter had a short conversation with her camera operator, then directly you over to a section of wood-panelled wall with a poster in the background. The reporter stepped back, looking like she was thinking hard about something. She was staring, leaning in close to get the camera's perspective.
"Tada no kosupure mitai. Amari Amerika-jin rashiku nai ne," she muttered to her camera operator. Whatever that was, she probably intended it to be quieter than she said it.
"Oh, fuck off," Sage whispered, before picking back up with a sarcastic drawl. "Jā, Jenifā Rōrensu o yobimasu ka?"
"...ah, sorry, ignore me," the reporter replied with a wave, her voice strained. You had just enough context to know she was attempting not to burst into flames from mortification. After a moment, she looked back up at Sage, clearly thinking hard. "Eeto… Batafurai Wādo wa Nihongo ga hanasemasu ka?"
Oh, this one you knew! Speak is hanasu and that was your name, so…
"Um… chotto hanasu… dekimasu?" you replied. Pretty sure that's how that verb verbed.
Sage sighed heavily.
"Ano ne, kanojo wa madamada. Watashi ga yaru yo," she said. You didn't need to understand the words to hear her disappointment.
"...Well, no need, the network said the interview would have to be in English. We already have translators standing by," the reporter said finally. "Ready?"
To your shock, the interview went off without issue, without even much surprise. You got through the questions Sage prepared and even one or two extras (she was feeling generous), then you told your nervous handler to get you a path to the roof so you wouldn't have to face any reporters. The two of you skipped several buildings down to a hotel, slipped onto the balcony of an empty room, and detransformed. You walked out the front door to the street opposite like you were guests, hand in hand.
It was a lovely half-hour walk back to Kimiyo's apartment from there, even taking a wide berth around the confused mass of police and JSDF troops cluttering up the road. You cut across a park, gawking at the looming Buddhist temple, then a long stretch under the unnecessary shade of the highway. It was hardly the most scenic, though the sheer novelty still had you looking in every direction.
As you reentered the narrow streets of Azabu-Jūban, you spotted a cute little place you were fairly sure was a restaurant type dealie up a set of stairs, drawn by the pretty paper lanterns hung in the windows. Kimiyo huffed and explained it was an izakaya, and not a very good one. It was expensive and pretentious and gentrified and-
"Like Izakaya Sozai up the street?" you asked excitedly.
"No. Well, okay, yes, but instead of buying drinks you sort of buy time alongside a meal, and they keep bringing drinks out throughout," Kimiyo explained automatically, pleased to Culture at you. She realized her mistake the moment she finished the sentence, her eyes going wide with terror, but you'd already grabbed her hand to pull her across the street.
The izakaya was, essentially, a short white hallway with cute little tables, and as it was before their rush they had seats for you. Kimiyo wasn't lying about it being expensive; an hour and a half of all-you-could-drink, plus meal, would cost about fifty dollars. Given some of the booze on offer, that was a bit steep, but fairly-
"... it's for two people, though," Kimiyo said, unable to let the misconception pass despite herself. You did some quick napkin math and grinned to yourself as you calculated exactly how much you'd need to drink to get your money's worth and then some.
"By my calculations, we'll effectively have half-priced drinks compared to back home in just one point eight whiskey sours or three beers," you said confidently.
"I long for the days when you hated math."
You didn't exactly stumble out, leaving just as the regular crowd was arriving; you weren't the lightweight you once were, and to your shock, neither was Kimiyo. However, it wouldn't be accurate to say you were as coordinated and graceful as you might have been, which for Kimiyo meant she occasionally leaned against you, and for you meant you tripped over your own feet twice on the way down the street.
At Kimiyo's wise insistence, you stopped by a run-down little convenience store to get something non-alcoholic to drink. The door played a cute little jingle that instantly made you think of the Pokemon Centre from the gameboy game, and Kimiyo had to drag you away from, in sequence, canned coffee ("But the Boss is so handsome! Who is he?"), a shelf of manga, a row of gacha machines, and a little puppy-themed makeup bag so you could finally leave with nothing but a pair of iced teas.
Across the street was a small park, empty after dark. You walked through it and ended up settling on the swings together, checking the time on the little standing clock in the middle. Seven thirtyish. You fumbled with the cap of your drink and kicked your legs out.
"You okay Kimmy?" you asked. She was sitting glumly, looking around.
"Yeah. I'll be alright," she dismissed.
"Aha! That means you aren't alright right now," you declared. "Hmmm. Anxious about leaving?"
"A bit, but it's okay. I think I need it behind me before I can figure out how I feel, can we talk about that later?" she asked. You smiled and nodded; at least she did want to talk about it at some point, and her deflection contained genuine self-assessment. Progress!
"Hmm. Family stuff? Your grampa dying and stuff?" you asked. "I mean, I barely knew the guy, but I was still sad when-"
"No," she said, with a finality that made you stop in your tracks. Okay, sore subject. Even after a year. What the hell had happened?
Out of other topics, you turned to the one that you knew would be hard for you too.
"Are you worried about our friends?"
She took a sip of her drink, screwed the cap shut, and set it down, leaning back in the swing with her legs out to balance her.
"Always," she said. "Different kinds of worrying, though."
"Yeah…" you agreed. To your surprise, she kept talking; maybe the booze was beating whatever anti-emotional-honesty gland had her brain in a stranglehold.
"Brigid's really sick."
"I figured," you admitted. "I've talked to her about it. She says she has it under control, whatever it is, and that I shouldn't worry about it."
Kimiyo frowned, leaning further back. Her hair almost touched the sand.
"Of course. Why would a genius like her listen to us little people, huh? What do we know?" she spat. "Just the fact we're worried for her means there's nothing to worry about, probably."
"I dunno if that's fair," you said, knowing that it was, unfortunately, probably exactly what was happening.
"Sure. But she's lying, a lot. Her schedule doesn't make any sense, she can't keep track of anything she's said before. She drops out of contact for days at a time and then pretends she was just busy, but you ask her later and she can't remember what she was doing, or mixes them up. I don't think she's up for this."
You'd suspected something like that, but it was very easy to doubt yourself, to question your memory of events and the order of things. But you couldn't doubt Kimiyo's memory; if she said something happened, it was as good as video proof.
"We'll be going to her next. We'll get it figured out," you assured her. She sighed.
"Good," she said, then groaned. "And then fucking Riley."
"I know," you agreed.
"... do we even need her? What's she going to contribute at this point?"
"Hey, that's not fair! Yeah, she's down a leg, but she's still our strongest-"
"Bullshit," Kimiyo snapped. "When push came to shove she abandoned everything she was because it was too hard. Boo hoo, woe is me, I can't effortlessly walk all over everyone anymore so there's no point, time to find a patriarch to surrender to. The fuck happened to her?"
"I dunno," you confessed.
"Stupid question, what happened is she realized she didn't have to be a freak," Kimiyo continued, the rant having clearly built up over a long time. When she was a kid outbursts like this were a constant, but it had been a very long time since you'd heard anything like this from her. "Like, what a surprise, the pretty neurotypical white girl got cold feet the moment she actually had to face hardship she couldn't take off like a fucking costume."
"Cold foot," you said automatically, then clapped your hands over your mouth. Oh no!
"I… fuck off!" Kimiyo laughed. "I… I know I shouldn't say it, but I can't fucking stand her. I… I died for her, and she repaid me by killing herself and selling her corpse to that bastard."
You sighed. You didn't like hearing it, especially not in that language, but it was difficult to think of a disagreement that wouldn't also be a lie. You loved Riley, but it was, increasingly, in spite of who she was now. Love had hardships like that, you had to take the bad with the good, but it was hard to love somebody who hated herself that much.
You couldn't blame Kimiyo for her feelings, even if you'd never allow yourself to get to that point.
"We need her, though," was what you said eventually. Kimiyo grit her teeth and nodded, her hands tightening around the chains of the swing as she hung there.
"I know. Without Esmé we need everything we can get," Kimiyo said. She took a deep breath. "God, I'm such a fuckup."
"What?" you turned to look at her properly, still laying nearly horizontal in the swing, her face contorted with conflicted emotion.
"... you know how nobody… really remembers dying?" she said quietly. You nodded; Amara and Brigid and the Knights Errant had all died; bleeding out on a rooftop, broken against the street, torn apart by the horde. None of them could remember. They said it was just a blank spot in their memory, a feeling of cold, then warmth, how and when it all happened a blur. "I… I don't either, but I remember..."
She'd never talked about this. None of you really did.
"I remember her catching me," she said, leaning even further back, past horizontal, her arms straining. "I looked into her face, and I saw… I saw her realize what was happening. It broke her, and I don't think she ever got better."
"Kimmy…"
"She died because of me," she concluded, and let go of the chain, her head settling against the sand. "I don't want to go back. I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of what me dying will do to you, and I'm scared of you dying, and I'm scared that without her we won't make it."
You looked away, at your drink. Kimiyo had, over the years, opened up a little, even if she'd regressed when she was away. She used to be able to talk more freely about her emotions. But you'd never, ever heard her say she was scared.
"Hey," you said. "It's going to be okay. We beat her once, we'll do it again."
She nodded awkwardly.
"And besides!" you declared, swinging your legs out and letting it carry you out. "We know we're going to win, because I'm still going to be Queen! And lemme tell you, first thing? No more borders, passports, any of that silliness."
"I thought the first thing was student debt forgiveness, your Highness?" Kimiyo reminded you.
"Priorities change, babe. We'll have a palace here! Two palaces!" you said, gesticulating widely to show the scale of your imagined new homes. "You'll get to put that architecture degree to good use! And, and, of course, we'll have a quiet little apartment where we'll actually live. Right there!"
You pointed at a random building.
"In the spa?" Kimiyo asked.
"Above it! And yeah, we'll have a spa too," you said. You picked yourself up, swaying as you did, then offered her your hand.
That got a smile out of her.
Kimiyo's ability to pack up was supernatural. With the extra space afforded by her new messenger bag and your backpack, she managed to fit into her luggage literally every single thing she had acquired in Japan over the course of a year with Tetris-like precision. You could only assume that the bottom rows were in fact vanishing as she completed them, because you couldn't figure out how else somebody would pack away her futon, all her clothes, and a not-insignificant number of textbooks along with everything else.
You helped her take down her paintings off the clotheslines and pack them away in her portfolio carrier, one by one; several of the streets were familiar from your short walk, just rendered in dreamy watercolours and ink, all exaggerated blues and teals and pinks and oranges that captured the warmth and clutter. She painted mornings like the light was a liquid rushing down the streets, afternoons whose blue-green skies were realer than the real thing, nights where the dark was bright blue but the neon still leapt out. Her paintings of San Francisco were always lovely, but she'd pushed herself more here, more stylized, simpler and bolder, somehow saying more with less detail.
She could have recreated it like a photograph, exactly as it was, but you thought to yourself that she must have just as good a memory for how it felt to her.
She had a brief call with her Aunt to let her know she was leaving, placed the keys on the counter, and took one last look around the apartment before you headed out to the airport. You correctly navigated the train stations this time, made it through a much easier security process, and sat looking out a window at the runways, daydreaming as she sketched the planes and trucks and runway workers scurrying around outside.
Group 3 (that's you!) boarded and you were back in Premium Economy's roomy seats and up, off in the air. You ate and had your totally-noon-appropriate drink and failed to watch Frozen together, pausing frequently so Kimiyo could, in whispers, express her increasing ire with the snowman. The creepy Prince was maybe a bit close to home.
You fell asleep somewhere over the Pacific, hand-in-hand, holding on for dear life and never wanting to let her go again.
"Hey, Obama's talking about us!" you said excitedly as the narrator dubbed over the President's statement. "Weird question, do you think we could meet with him? Like, as ourselves?"
"Do you think he could stop us if we wanted to?" Sage replied.
"I didn't mean in an X-Men 2 sorta way," you clarified, leaning over in your chair to see what Sage was writing. You read it over several times, nodding to yourself, before coming to your conclusion. "Yep, can't read a word. Whatsit say?"
"Not much, yet, I just got started. Let's get our story straight; why are we here? We need a good reason people will accept," she asked.
"I mean, why not the truth? Can't I just say I'm visiting my girlfriend?" you said. "My very, very pretty girlfriend who looks even better in costume now?"
Sage did this sorta combination blush-and-sigh thing and gosh, you'd missed it.
"I don't think that's a good idea," she muttered, leaning back.
"Hmm. Why not?" you asked pointedly. "Like, oh no, people might be weird about us?"
"Yeah."
"Sage, they're already super weird about us," you reminded her. "I know you've seen the websites."
She blushed.
"...yeah. It's just…" She paused. "You sure?"
You went to say something smart, and an incredibly stupid thought crushed it out of existence. You snorted back a laugh, and without even hearing it Sage already looked disappointed.
"What?"
"I just… maybe if they know we're a couple, they'll have us kiss in the movie!" you said excitedly.
"You know that's not going to happen. It'll be Prince Rose," Sage said bitterly.
"...Right," you said. "Yeah, probably. But maybe-"
"Ward, come on," she snapped, the two pieces of pen cracking in half. She stared at it a moment, then flicked it across the room.
"...is this why you're mad at her?" you asked quietly.
"I'm not mad. I'm…" She trailed off. "It's what it is."
"...I don't like when you say that," you muttered, before you could stop yourself. You could see her jaw moving, lips pursed. Thinking about it hard. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Her jaw set, and she closed her eyes. She swirled a finger gently in front of her, and as if she were plucking it out of the air, there was a red hemp string. It was floating, forming from nothingness under her finger and spreading out in both directions like a twisting, racing fire. One end ran through her chest; the other ran into yours.
She let out a long breath, then flicked her finger over, like she was turning the page of a book. You looked down to see a second string spin itself together, emerging like a ghost through your breastplate. Woven into the red fibre was an equal amount of spun gold. The string arced out, away from your chest, eastward, across the ocean.
She flicked her hand, and the strings disappeared.
"Oh," you said. You reached out and took her hand, leaning against her, squeezing tight. "You said you knew it didn't mean-"
"I know," she replied. Knowing something and feeling something wasn't the same thing. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"Bzzt! Wrong, it's okay to feelings," you insisted. "Right, that settles it. I'm saying I'm here for you. Because I am." She opened her mouth to protest, and you held up a finger. "Ah! Nope! Decision is final."
"Oh, is it?"
"Uh-huh. Which one of us is the princess again?"
"... pillow princess, maybe," she muttered. You snorted back an undignified laugh.
"Mean! Mean and unfair!"
You sorted out the remaining questions, then left her to write while you turned back to the TV. They cycled through some other stories that weren't about superheroes, but before long they were back in about the Butterfly Knights, catching up anyone who had been living under a rock for the last decade.
The footage in the compilation was largely of the aftermath; puddles of molten metal fused with asphalt, smashed up streets and buildings, ambulances and police cars crowding around in the morning. Most of the action caught was on security cameras or lucky amateurs, nothing more than flashing lights and shapes moving along rooftops. Clouds of smoke and dust.
The clearest footage they had was of you standing atop one of the pillars at the Palace of Fine Arts, autumn 2005, when Prince Hemlock had crashed that fancy music party. "This city prides itself on its culture, the envy of the world! I won't let you dispoil it! This is your last chance!"
Your moment was somewhat spoiled by all the screaming and the camera being knocked over as half the servers at the event tore off their skins to reveal those new chromium demons. Mercifully, if they had footage from when Spark broke out Pluvia Aqua Regia!, they weren't playing it.
Still, they got your good side too. A lot of that was still photos; that one of you protecting those two little kids was left on screen for some time. You were still proud of it, but you noticed something you hadn't before; you looked young. You barely looked older than the kids you were protecting. It hadn't felt that way at the time, being Butterfly Ward had made you feel grown-up and mature and powerful, but looking at it now, that was a picture of three children huddled behind a shield, surrounded by fire. The heat-blurred shapes on the far side were people, adults, unable to help.
"They just announced they have an exclusive interview with the Knights coming up," Sage added, after the TV cut back to the newsroom. You glanced out the window to see the red lights of a convoy of police cars coming up the road; that was probably for you.
You were summoned downstairs to the cleared-out lobby to meet with a camera crew who were clearly here on short notice, led by a serious-looking reporter with short hair who was the first person you'd seen all day who didn't seem scared or in awe.
"Is it just the two of you?" she asked, frowning. Her accent was somewhere between what Kimiyo's parents had sounded like when you were a kid and a kinda vaguely British-y inflection, which threw your brain for a loop.
"Yep, just us," you confirmed. "Hi! I'm Butterfly Ward, and this is Butterfly Sage. You… probably knew that."
The reporter gave her name, and you listened as hard as you could but tragically not a single syllable stuck in your brain. She looked back and forth between you, as if assessing you for some quality you weren't quite sure of.
"You know, there's not a lot of good pictures of you, Sage," she said finally. For good reason; Sage was never really a front-line fighter, and she also never really had much patience with the media. "Your costume is very… interesting. What inspired it?"
What a dumb question. She was an awesome shrine maiden samurai (with extra bows, of both the ribbon and arrow-shooty variety), the same way you were a cool knight that was also a Disney princess (with extra bows, though only the ribbon kind). It wasn't exactly subtle!
"Thanks?" Sage replied, holding her arms out as if to show it off and letting the sleeves fan out. The frayed fabric and holes made you both wince; she was obviously pretty embarrassed by the state of it. "I didn't exactly design it, though. It's, like, magical?"
"Metaphorical. Or metaphysical. One of those," you added helpfully.
"Mhmm. I'll take your word for it," she said, sounding skeptical.
"It also used to look way better. We've been through some stuff," you cut in hastily. You didn't exactly understand the processes behind why your costumes changed, though back in the day it had usually corresponded to you getting stronger in some way. Sage's cracked lacquer and worn cloth didn't bode well on that front.
Self-consciously, you held up your gauntlet to check your own reflection, and got your answer in the fact the surface was too dull to make out anything but a vague blob of flesh tone against the background.
The reporter had a short conversation with her camera operator, then directly you over to a section of wood-panelled wall with a poster in the background. The reporter stepped back, looking like she was thinking hard about something. She was staring, leaning in close to get the camera's perspective.
"Tada no kosupure mitai. Amari Amerika-jin rashiku nai ne," she muttered to her camera operator. Whatever that was, she probably intended it to be quieter than she said it.
"Oh, fuck off," Sage whispered, before picking back up with a sarcastic drawl. "Jā, Jenifā Rōrensu o yobimasu ka?"
"...ah, sorry, ignore me," the reporter replied with a wave, her voice strained. You had just enough context to know she was attempting not to burst into flames from mortification. After a moment, she looked back up at Sage, clearly thinking hard. "Eeto… Batafurai Wādo wa Nihongo ga hanasemasu ka?"
Oh, this one you knew! Speak is hanasu and that was your name, so…
"Um… chotto hanasu… dekimasu?" you replied. Pretty sure that's how that verb verbed.
Sage sighed heavily.
"Ano ne, kanojo wa madamada. Watashi ga yaru yo," she said. You didn't need to understand the words to hear her disappointment.
"...Well, no need, the network said the interview would have to be in English. We already have translators standing by," the reporter said finally. "Ready?"
🦋
To your shock, the interview went off without issue, without even much surprise. You got through the questions Sage prepared and even one or two extras (she was feeling generous), then you told your nervous handler to get you a path to the roof so you wouldn't have to face any reporters. The two of you skipped several buildings down to a hotel, slipped onto the balcony of an empty room, and detransformed. You walked out the front door to the street opposite like you were guests, hand in hand.
It was a lovely half-hour walk back to Kimiyo's apartment from there, even taking a wide berth around the confused mass of police and JSDF troops cluttering up the road. You cut across a park, gawking at the looming Buddhist temple, then a long stretch under the unnecessary shade of the highway. It was hardly the most scenic, though the sheer novelty still had you looking in every direction.
As you reentered the narrow streets of Azabu-Jūban, you spotted a cute little place you were fairly sure was a restaurant type dealie up a set of stairs, drawn by the pretty paper lanterns hung in the windows. Kimiyo huffed and explained it was an izakaya, and not a very good one. It was expensive and pretentious and gentrified and-
"Like Izakaya Sozai up the street?" you asked excitedly.
"No. Well, okay, yes, but instead of buying drinks you sort of buy time alongside a meal, and they keep bringing drinks out throughout," Kimiyo explained automatically, pleased to Culture at you. She realized her mistake the moment she finished the sentence, her eyes going wide with terror, but you'd already grabbed her hand to pull her across the street.
The izakaya was, essentially, a short white hallway with cute little tables, and as it was before their rush they had seats for you. Kimiyo wasn't lying about it being expensive; an hour and a half of all-you-could-drink, plus meal, would cost about fifty dollars. Given some of the booze on offer, that was a bit steep, but fairly-
"... it's for two people, though," Kimiyo said, unable to let the misconception pass despite herself. You did some quick napkin math and grinned to yourself as you calculated exactly how much you'd need to drink to get your money's worth and then some.
"By my calculations, we'll effectively have half-priced drinks compared to back home in just one point eight whiskey sours or three beers," you said confidently.
"I long for the days when you hated math."
🦋
You didn't exactly stumble out, leaving just as the regular crowd was arriving; you weren't the lightweight you once were, and to your shock, neither was Kimiyo. However, it wouldn't be accurate to say you were as coordinated and graceful as you might have been, which for Kimiyo meant she occasionally leaned against you, and for you meant you tripped over your own feet twice on the way down the street.
At Kimiyo's wise insistence, you stopped by a run-down little convenience store to get something non-alcoholic to drink. The door played a cute little jingle that instantly made you think of the Pokemon Centre from the gameboy game, and Kimiyo had to drag you away from, in sequence, canned coffee ("But the Boss is so handsome! Who is he?"), a shelf of manga, a row of gacha machines, and a little puppy-themed makeup bag so you could finally leave with nothing but a pair of iced teas.
Across the street was a small park, empty after dark. You walked through it and ended up settling on the swings together, checking the time on the little standing clock in the middle. Seven thirtyish. You fumbled with the cap of your drink and kicked your legs out.
"You okay Kimmy?" you asked. She was sitting glumly, looking around.
"Yeah. I'll be alright," she dismissed.
"Aha! That means you aren't alright right now," you declared. "Hmmm. Anxious about leaving?"
"A bit, but it's okay. I think I need it behind me before I can figure out how I feel, can we talk about that later?" she asked. You smiled and nodded; at least she did want to talk about it at some point, and her deflection contained genuine self-assessment. Progress!
"Hmm. Family stuff? Your grampa dying and stuff?" you asked. "I mean, I barely knew the guy, but I was still sad when-"
"No," she said, with a finality that made you stop in your tracks. Okay, sore subject. Even after a year. What the hell had happened?
Out of other topics, you turned to the one that you knew would be hard for you too.
"Are you worried about our friends?"
She took a sip of her drink, screwed the cap shut, and set it down, leaning back in the swing with her legs out to balance her.
"Always," she said. "Different kinds of worrying, though."
"Yeah…" you agreed. To your surprise, she kept talking; maybe the booze was beating whatever anti-emotional-honesty gland had her brain in a stranglehold.
"Brigid's really sick."
"I figured," you admitted. "I've talked to her about it. She says she has it under control, whatever it is, and that I shouldn't worry about it."
Kimiyo frowned, leaning further back. Her hair almost touched the sand.
"Of course. Why would a genius like her listen to us little people, huh? What do we know?" she spat. "Just the fact we're worried for her means there's nothing to worry about, probably."
"I dunno if that's fair," you said, knowing that it was, unfortunately, probably exactly what was happening.
"Sure. But she's lying, a lot. Her schedule doesn't make any sense, she can't keep track of anything she's said before. She drops out of contact for days at a time and then pretends she was just busy, but you ask her later and she can't remember what she was doing, or mixes them up. I don't think she's up for this."
You'd suspected something like that, but it was very easy to doubt yourself, to question your memory of events and the order of things. But you couldn't doubt Kimiyo's memory; if she said something happened, it was as good as video proof.
"We'll be going to her next. We'll get it figured out," you assured her. She sighed.
"Good," she said, then groaned. "And then fucking Riley."
"I know," you agreed.
"... do we even need her? What's she going to contribute at this point?"
"Hey, that's not fair! Yeah, she's down a leg, but she's still our strongest-"
"Bullshit," Kimiyo snapped. "When push came to shove she abandoned everything she was because it was too hard. Boo hoo, woe is me, I can't effortlessly walk all over everyone anymore so there's no point, time to find a patriarch to surrender to. The fuck happened to her?"
"I dunno," you confessed.
"Stupid question, what happened is she realized she didn't have to be a freak," Kimiyo continued, the rant having clearly built up over a long time. When she was a kid outbursts like this were a constant, but it had been a very long time since you'd heard anything like this from her. "Like, what a surprise, the pretty neurotypical white girl got cold feet the moment she actually had to face hardship she couldn't take off like a fucking costume."
"Cold foot," you said automatically, then clapped your hands over your mouth. Oh no!
"I… fuck off!" Kimiyo laughed. "I… I know I shouldn't say it, but I can't fucking stand her. I… I died for her, and she repaid me by killing herself and selling her corpse to that bastard."
You sighed. You didn't like hearing it, especially not in that language, but it was difficult to think of a disagreement that wouldn't also be a lie. You loved Riley, but it was, increasingly, in spite of who she was now. Love had hardships like that, you had to take the bad with the good, but it was hard to love somebody who hated herself that much.
You couldn't blame Kimiyo for her feelings, even if you'd never allow yourself to get to that point.
"We need her, though," was what you said eventually. Kimiyo grit her teeth and nodded, her hands tightening around the chains of the swing as she hung there.
"I know. Without Esmé we need everything we can get," Kimiyo said. She took a deep breath. "God, I'm such a fuckup."
"What?" you turned to look at her properly, still laying nearly horizontal in the swing, her face contorted with conflicted emotion.
"... you know how nobody… really remembers dying?" she said quietly. You nodded; Amara and Brigid and the Knights Errant had all died; bleeding out on a rooftop, broken against the street, torn apart by the horde. None of them could remember. They said it was just a blank spot in their memory, a feeling of cold, then warmth, how and when it all happened a blur. "I… I don't either, but I remember..."
She'd never talked about this. None of you really did.
"I remember her catching me," she said, leaning even further back, past horizontal, her arms straining. "I looked into her face, and I saw… I saw her realize what was happening. It broke her, and I don't think she ever got better."
"Kimmy…"
"She died because of me," she concluded, and let go of the chain, her head settling against the sand. "I don't want to go back. I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of what me dying will do to you, and I'm scared of you dying, and I'm scared that without her we won't make it."
You looked away, at your drink. Kimiyo had, over the years, opened up a little, even if she'd regressed when she was away. She used to be able to talk more freely about her emotions. But you'd never, ever heard her say she was scared.
"Hey," you said. "It's going to be okay. We beat her once, we'll do it again."
She nodded awkwardly.
"And besides!" you declared, swinging your legs out and letting it carry you out. "We know we're going to win, because I'm still going to be Queen! And lemme tell you, first thing? No more borders, passports, any of that silliness."
"I thought the first thing was student debt forgiveness, your Highness?" Kimiyo reminded you.
"Priorities change, babe. We'll have a palace here! Two palaces!" you said, gesticulating widely to show the scale of your imagined new homes. "You'll get to put that architecture degree to good use! And, and, of course, we'll have a quiet little apartment where we'll actually live. Right there!"
You pointed at a random building.
"In the spa?" Kimiyo asked.
"Above it! And yeah, we'll have a spa too," you said. You picked yourself up, swaying as you did, then offered her your hand.
That got a smile out of her.
🦋
Kimiyo's ability to pack up was supernatural. With the extra space afforded by her new messenger bag and your backpack, she managed to fit into her luggage literally every single thing she had acquired in Japan over the course of a year with Tetris-like precision. You could only assume that the bottom rows were in fact vanishing as she completed them, because you couldn't figure out how else somebody would pack away her futon, all her clothes, and a not-insignificant number of textbooks along with everything else.
You helped her take down her paintings off the clotheslines and pack them away in her portfolio carrier, one by one; several of the streets were familiar from your short walk, just rendered in dreamy watercolours and ink, all exaggerated blues and teals and pinks and oranges that captured the warmth and clutter. She painted mornings like the light was a liquid rushing down the streets, afternoons whose blue-green skies were realer than the real thing, nights where the dark was bright blue but the neon still leapt out. Her paintings of San Francisco were always lovely, but she'd pushed herself more here, more stylized, simpler and bolder, somehow saying more with less detail.
She could have recreated it like a photograph, exactly as it was, but you thought to yourself that she must have just as good a memory for how it felt to her.
She had a brief call with her Aunt to let her know she was leaving, placed the keys on the counter, and took one last look around the apartment before you headed out to the airport. You correctly navigated the train stations this time, made it through a much easier security process, and sat looking out a window at the runways, daydreaming as she sketched the planes and trucks and runway workers scurrying around outside.
Group 3 (that's you!) boarded and you were back in Premium Economy's roomy seats and up, off in the air. You ate and had your totally-noon-appropriate drink and failed to watch Frozen together, pausing frequently so Kimiyo could, in whispers, express her increasing ire with the snowman. The creepy Prince was maybe a bit close to home.
You fell asleep somewhere over the Pacific, hand-in-hand, holding on for dear life and never wanting to let her go again.