Nova Prospekt pt. 13
"... hey, don't leave me behind!" you protest, jogging a few steps to catch up with Kyouko and Yuma. The murk closes in around you, the oppressively intense smell of ozone and plastic heavy on the air.
You catch up to them, eyeing Kyouko. It's pretty obvious that Kyouko didn't want to talk about this with Yuma, and so it's equally obvious that Kyouko wants a pause from the conversation for now. That's fine, you can deal with that.
Witch hunt first.
"Is it just me or is it a bit quiet?" you ask. "Where the hell are all the Familiars?"
"It's quiet," Yuma agrees. "Too quiet."
"Could be worse," you say, grinning at Yuma. Someone's been watching lots of TV. "Could be too loud."
Yuma shudders theatrically, and Kyouko's hand lands on her head, ruffling grass-green hair gently.
"Don't get distracted," Kyouko says. "Because...?"
"Distraction kills," Yuma answers obediently, smiling at Kyouko.
"And now would be a perfect time for an attack," you murmur, pushing out with your Grief senses... but there's nothing, other than the pervasive haze.
Kyouko snorts, and hefts her spear over her shoulder. "Not seein' Familiars now just means a big wave later."
You nod along, hiding a smile. Kyouko flips you a middle finger behind her back, where Yuma can't see it. You laugh cheerfully, letting the sound ring out through the gloom of the Barrier. She's only proving your point for you, when you actually get around to making it.
Kyouko stiffens, going totally still. Her head twitches to the side, crimson ponytail swaying, and Yuma stops too, hefting her mace.
Not to be outdone, you draw your hammer form beneath your coat, shining, filigreed steel light in your hand. You stare out into the murk, straining your eyes and ears and senses and trying to see. It's a pity Homura isn't with you, because a flare or two would be great right about now. It takes you a moment to hear what caught Kyouko's attention.
A low, mechanical buzz, warbling up and down. You feel it more than anything, thrumming so low at the edge of your hearing it's barely there - but it doesn't seem to be getting louder, either. Or softer.
Kyouko relaxes after a second, catching Yuma's eye and nodding in that direction.
"Weird Witch," you note as Yuma starts jogging in that direction, mace bouncing on her shoulder.
"Eh," Kyouko says with a shrug. You both keep pace with Yuma, flanking her on either side and leaving a trail of footprints in pure, unblemished white across the ink-dark ground. "Seen weirder."
Your Grief cloud rolls over an abrupt lack of-
"Floor!" you bark, reaching forward for Yuma - but you're far too slow. She squawks, pitching forward with arms wheeling, and then Kyouko blurs, spear suddenly slammed point-first into the ground as support. She snatches for Yuma with her other hand, grabbing hold just as your Grief solidifies into a wall.
"Bitch," Kyouko mutters, glaring down at her feet as she reels Yuma back in. Rather, glaring at the unseen cliff edge hidden by the swirling haze.
It's not like a drop would hurt a magical girl with any kind of experience, but who knows what might be at the bottom of said fall?
"S-sorry," Yuma mutters. She's shaking a little.
"Don't be," Kyouko says, scanning the murk surrounding you. "Learn from the mistake, yeah?"
"Y-yes," Yuma says, taking a deep breath and straightening. She steps closer to Kyouko, wrapping her arms around the older girl's waist in a brief hug. Kyouko rests a hand on her shoulder, but doesn't look away from her inspection of the Barrier.
"We gotta go down, anyway," Kyouko mutters at last, cracking her neck from side to side. She retrieves a battered package of pocky from her pocket, offering it around. You take one, and so does Yuma.
"Ugh," you mutter. "Yeah, I figured as much. Wanna ride?"
"Just jump, you pansy," Kyouko says, clapping you firmly on the back, pocky stick dangling from her mouth. "C'mon, Yuma!"
Both of them leap forward, weapons slung low and ready. You crunch up the rest of your pocky stick in a few quick bites, and follow them off the edge. Kyouko's a lot more experienced than you are, you suppose, and you'd decided to let her lead on this hunt, so you'll follow her lead. But you still think that it would be safer to ride a Grief platform down or something.
The three of you plunge through the smoke, the hazy air stinging your eyes and snapping your coat out straight behind you. Kyouko and Yuma are just a little further down beneath you, arms and legs spread-eagled. And then-
Light.
Brilliant, emerald green blazes all around you, leaving starry spots across your vision . You can just barely see Yuma and Kyouko whirling impossibly mid-air, mace and spear lashing out blindly. There's nothing around them, but they don't know that. But you can sense the real attack coming.
"Incoming, below!" you yell. Your Grief coalesces and sweeps into blades, a sphere bulging to meet the leaping forms. Almost human sized in your Grief senses, swift, fluttering things streaking upwards to meet you.
You slash through one, then three, then six, and there are dozens, hundreds of them boiling up towards your little group. Kyouko's spear flicks out, deadly fast to weave a deadly field of steel. Yuma's mace whirls through the gaps, Yuma somehow finding purchase on thin air to push off and strike with inexorable force. The pattern shifts at some unseen signal between the duo, Kyouko kicking off the air. Yuma meets her halfway, her mace meeting the flat of Kyouko's blade with a chime. The shockwave ripples through the air, blasting back the Familiars in a burst of green.
They're humanoid.
The Familiars, that is. You fall, an unending plunge through smokey air and endless onslaught of things boiling upward to meet you. None of them come close to you, with your Grief blades thinning the herd and Kyouko and Yuma further below - but you keep your hammer ready and a careful eye out. Distraction kills, after all.
Humanoid, paper-thin Familiars. In fact, they look papery, black and white and grey replicas of... you. You and Kyouko and Yuma in sketchy monochrome and flapping paper. They swarm towards you, slicing through the air as if hurled by something below.
The next wave of Familiars ride a blast of heat. Not hot enough to hurt, but hot enough to make your skin feel tight, and hot enough to intensify the acrid burn as you inhale.
And finally, finally-
"Floor!" you warn.
"Yeah, yeah!" Kyouko snaps back, her attention not wavering from the oncoming tide of Familiars. Her ponytail snaps out straight behind her, her spear continuing to dance. It cracks into whipping chains there and crunching through a sweeping slash there, not a single Familiar even coming close to her.
Yuma falls, and fights by her side, a deadly shadow to her adoptive sister. Her mace doesn't have as many tricks as Kyouko's does, but she makes up for the lack of flair with raw power, smashing and crushing everything that she can reach with spinning strikes.
She draws her mace back a split second before hitting the ground, pulling in magic. And with a cry, she smashes a powerful, overhead strike into the ground. The shockwave blasts across the floor, shimmering green waves rippling forth. The ground shatters beneath her blow, cracks streaking across it like breaking glass.
"Again!" Kyouko barks, landing a hair behind Yuma. She lands spear-first, the steel crunching through the ground, and-
It doesn't just shatter like glass, it is glass. You slam to a landing, a flare of magic absorbing the impact just as Kyouko whirls her spear overhead and strikes again. Familiars swarm towards you, streaking into the air and swooping down towards you, but this time, this time, you're ready to meet them.
Grief blades slash through the horde as Yuma and Kyouko hammer the ground, mace and spear in counterpoint rhythm. You glare out at the haze, the smoke, and the oncoming Familiars, orchestrating a thousand different blades slicing through the air and Familiars with equal impunity.
The floor gives way with a crunch. You stagger and let yourself fall backwards, a quick step shifting your balance so that you can catch yourself on the short drop below, ducking beneath what you realise is soot-covered glass. You slide in beside Kyouko and Yuma, Grief blades still weaving a defense from the horde of Familiars.
Kyouko exhales hard, glaring first at the darkness surrounding you and the floor-now-ceiling of shattered glass. Weak light filters in through the hole, barely illuminating the low 'ceiling' of the space you find yourself in. You'd almost call it a crawlspace, but there's just enough room for you to stand upright.
"Christ," she mutters.
"Mmh," you agree vaguely. The Familiars are petering out. Finally. "You two OK?"
"Yuma is OK!" Yuma says, nodding vigorously.
"Yep," Kyouko grumbles, scowling at the darkness like it personally offended her. She touches a hand to her Soul Gem, frowning. "The Witch..."
Her head twitches to the side.
Scuttling feet. A lot of scuttling feet, completely silent in the dark. A millipede. A very, very big millipede, bearing down on you like a freight train. It's about the length of a freight train, too.
"Yuma!" Kyouko barks, pointing with her spear. You see Yuma's teeth flash in the dark as she raises her weapon overhead.
Magic flares as Yuma brings her mace down with a shout. Shockwaves crash across the ground, brilliant green forcing the smog back. It illuminates a nightmarish form of glinting metal and far, far too many legs shrouded by a roiling mantle of black strips, moments before the shockwave hits.
Spectacularly.
The Witch tumbles, forward momentum turned into a slide. Legs flail and scrape at the air, segments of the thing spinning wildly about as the thing skids across the ground, folding on itself.
And then Kyouko's there, spear blurring. She strikes low, sweeping in with one spear she slams under its head and drives it up, hooked under its featureless, rounded head.
"C'mon!" she screams in defiance, letting go of that spear and leaping clear over a squirming loop of the Witch. She just barely slips between the Witch's body and the ceiling, manifesting another spear.
Yuma charges, and you follow on her heels, hammer ready. She hits first as the Witch flails in your direction, smaller shockwaves rippling through the body of the creature. You stick close, hammer ready - but unused.
Grief answers your call, blades hammering into its blank face. They bite deep into metallic carapace, carving chunks out of it, and Kyouko follows up with a spear driven into the cracks.
The Witch thrashes and squirms and flails, smokey soot blasting from its shroud. You dive under a scything loop of the Witch. Razor sharp legs slash past your face, and you respond in kind with the spike of your hammer. You drive it deep into its body, gouging and dragging a tear open. Choking, acrid haze spills from the creature, and you dart away with your nose burning.
Behind you, Yuma pounds another shockwave blast into the Witch. Crackling bursts thunder through the Witch, blowing off entire segments from the inside.
"Again!" Kyouko barks, and Yuma yells wordlessly in response, rearing back to slam another blow into the Witch. And another, and another, and that finally does it.
The Witch's body gives way with a crunch, Yuma's mace cleaving right through to bury itself in the ground. You can feel its death, reverberating through the Barrier as reality starts to waver and collapse.
You shudder as the world reasserts itself, carpet under your shoes and dim, institutional fluorescent light shining from above. You gulp down lungfuls of fresh -fresher- air, a relief after the choking smog of the Barrier. A clatter nearby is the Grief Seed falling to the carpet, balanced on its point.
"That sucked," you mutter, looking around at what seems to be an office corridor. Empty, thank goodness, and judging by the dust thick on the wilted potted plants, the entire floor's unused.
"Suck it up," Kyouko grunts back, rolling her shoulders. Yuma's slumped against the nearest source of support -a photocopier- tired, but beaming happily at you and Kyouko.
"That's the problem. That Barrier sucked," you grumble. "Anyway, cleansing?"
Kyouko glares half-heartedly at you before shrugging. "Whatever. Hit me."
You grin, and raise a hand theatrically before clenching it. With the motion, you pull Grief from Kyouko and Yuma's Soul Gems, cleansing your own for good measure. Kyouko sighs, and inspects her Soul Gem closely for a moment.
"Squirt? You good?" Kyouko asks.
"Yuma is good!" Yuma says happily, beaming at Kyouko and walking over to latch onto her leg.
"You did great on the hunt," Kyouko says, ruffling her hair. "Let's go kick back at the hotel."
"OK!" Yuma chirps.
Kyouko glances at you, eyebrow raised. "Comin'?"
"Yup, yup," you say, smiling. "I'm coming."
You make your way out of the building. Kyouko takes the lead, climbing up the stairway and exiting via the roof. From there, it's a bounding path over the skyscrapers of Kasamino to a glittering hotel building -a different one from last time- and down to an opulently furnished hotel suite.
You're pretty sure they've been staying here for a bit, judging by how messy the living room is already. And the blanket fort you can spy through the door, piled up against the bed and walled in with pillows.
Kyouko throws herself on the plush carpet, limbs splayed wide. "Go take a bath, squirt?"
"OK!" Yuma says, glancing between you and Kyouko before beaming and bouncing off towards the shower.
You throw yourself down on the remarkably comfortable sofa in the living area, wiggling to get comfortable. Kyouko keeps an eye on the bathroom door, and when the sound of running water starts up, she levers herself off the floor and grabs a chair. She reverses it and sits straddling it, raising an eyebrow.
"Honestly, you pretty much made my point for me," you say with a grin. "Look. It's not just about getting Yuma away from her shitsack of a mother. That's part of it, yeah, but it's also that her being with you is good for her. You care about her, and you're the first person to care about her. You're important to her, and shock and horror, she cares about you. She trusts you, and-"
You pause, glancing back at the bathroom door and confirming with your Grief sense to make doubly sure that Yuma's not listening in.
"-after the kind of abuse she's experienced? That trust is earned, Kyouko," you say, lowering your voice to be triply sure. "Also, can I say? You're doing a fantastic job teaching her, you know. Which is, in and of itself, another point - she's a magical girl. She needs someone who understands the life, that she can trust. That's you, Kyouko."
"Cut the flattery," Kyouko growls, looking away.
"It's not flattery," you say. "You mean the world to her, and that's my entire point. It's not about her deserving better. She does, and so do you, but if you're looking for an excuse to cut her out of your life - then forget it, Kyouko. She does deserve better, and like it or not, that's you. If you want her to have a stable home, to go to school, then I've got ideas and possibilities I can lay out for you. Heck, her grandparents are an option, as far as 'not shitheads' goes. It's a possibility."
You fall silent, licking your lips. This is the time for Kyouko to respond, if she wants to. But she just glares at you with a belligerently pensive look, arms folded on the back of the chair and chin propped on her arms.
"Yuma deserves a better life," you say. "And so do you. A package deal. And what I want? I want to help. I'm paying you to teach Sayaka not just because you're probably the best teacher for her but also because I don't want you to have to scrabble for a life."
You sigh, leaning back and frowning at the ceiling.
"Thing is, like I said, I've... pretty much hit the limit of how much I can help you unless you're willing to accept more," you say softly. "I'd really like it if you could just tell me."
There's a long pause. You hold it, fighting the urge to fill the silence with chatter. Let Kyouko think about it, let her digest it and come to her own conclusions. She's not Mami, she's not Homura. You don't need to babble at her.
"Christ you are disgustingly nice," Kyouko mutters. "I don't want charity."
And that... that's open ended. She doesn't want charity, but that doesn't mean-
She gets up abruptly, an explosive motion that almost knocks the chair over. You meet Kyouko's eyes as she stands, but she looks away, meandering over to the fridge and grabbing two bottles from the fridge. She tosses one to you, and you catch it.
"A better life," Kyouko says with a sigh, cracking her bottle open and taking a gulp. "What do you even need in return, huh?"
[] How do you answer Kyouko? (word count limit: 150 words)
I'm hoping to end this segment with Kyouko in about one or two updates. I'm also planning to try and update on my Wednesday, so we'll see which of these actually happen.
You catch up to them, eyeing Kyouko. It's pretty obvious that Kyouko didn't want to talk about this with Yuma, and so it's equally obvious that Kyouko wants a pause from the conversation for now. That's fine, you can deal with that.
Witch hunt first.
"Is it just me or is it a bit quiet?" you ask. "Where the hell are all the Familiars?"
"It's quiet," Yuma agrees. "Too quiet."
"Could be worse," you say, grinning at Yuma. Someone's been watching lots of TV. "Could be too loud."
Yuma shudders theatrically, and Kyouko's hand lands on her head, ruffling grass-green hair gently.
"Don't get distracted," Kyouko says. "Because...?"
"Distraction kills," Yuma answers obediently, smiling at Kyouko.
"And now would be a perfect time for an attack," you murmur, pushing out with your Grief senses... but there's nothing, other than the pervasive haze.
Kyouko snorts, and hefts her spear over her shoulder. "Not seein' Familiars now just means a big wave later."
You nod along, hiding a smile. Kyouko flips you a middle finger behind her back, where Yuma can't see it. You laugh cheerfully, letting the sound ring out through the gloom of the Barrier. She's only proving your point for you, when you actually get around to making it.
Kyouko stiffens, going totally still. Her head twitches to the side, crimson ponytail swaying, and Yuma stops too, hefting her mace.
Not to be outdone, you draw your hammer form beneath your coat, shining, filigreed steel light in your hand. You stare out into the murk, straining your eyes and ears and senses and trying to see. It's a pity Homura isn't with you, because a flare or two would be great right about now. It takes you a moment to hear what caught Kyouko's attention.
A low, mechanical buzz, warbling up and down. You feel it more than anything, thrumming so low at the edge of your hearing it's barely there - but it doesn't seem to be getting louder, either. Or softer.
Kyouko relaxes after a second, catching Yuma's eye and nodding in that direction.
"Weird Witch," you note as Yuma starts jogging in that direction, mace bouncing on her shoulder.
"Eh," Kyouko says with a shrug. You both keep pace with Yuma, flanking her on either side and leaving a trail of footprints in pure, unblemished white across the ink-dark ground. "Seen weirder."
Your Grief cloud rolls over an abrupt lack of-
"Floor!" you bark, reaching forward for Yuma - but you're far too slow. She squawks, pitching forward with arms wheeling, and then Kyouko blurs, spear suddenly slammed point-first into the ground as support. She snatches for Yuma with her other hand, grabbing hold just as your Grief solidifies into a wall.
"Bitch," Kyouko mutters, glaring down at her feet as she reels Yuma back in. Rather, glaring at the unseen cliff edge hidden by the swirling haze.
It's not like a drop would hurt a magical girl with any kind of experience, but who knows what might be at the bottom of said fall?
"S-sorry," Yuma mutters. She's shaking a little.
"Don't be," Kyouko says, scanning the murk surrounding you. "Learn from the mistake, yeah?"
"Y-yes," Yuma says, taking a deep breath and straightening. She steps closer to Kyouko, wrapping her arms around the older girl's waist in a brief hug. Kyouko rests a hand on her shoulder, but doesn't look away from her inspection of the Barrier.
"We gotta go down, anyway," Kyouko mutters at last, cracking her neck from side to side. She retrieves a battered package of pocky from her pocket, offering it around. You take one, and so does Yuma.
"Ugh," you mutter. "Yeah, I figured as much. Wanna ride?"
"Just jump, you pansy," Kyouko says, clapping you firmly on the back, pocky stick dangling from her mouth. "C'mon, Yuma!"
Both of them leap forward, weapons slung low and ready. You crunch up the rest of your pocky stick in a few quick bites, and follow them off the edge. Kyouko's a lot more experienced than you are, you suppose, and you'd decided to let her lead on this hunt, so you'll follow her lead. But you still think that it would be safer to ride a Grief platform down or something.
The three of you plunge through the smoke, the hazy air stinging your eyes and snapping your coat out straight behind you. Kyouko and Yuma are just a little further down beneath you, arms and legs spread-eagled. And then-
Light.
Brilliant, emerald green blazes all around you, leaving starry spots across your vision . You can just barely see Yuma and Kyouko whirling impossibly mid-air, mace and spear lashing out blindly. There's nothing around them, but they don't know that. But you can sense the real attack coming.
"Incoming, below!" you yell. Your Grief coalesces and sweeps into blades, a sphere bulging to meet the leaping forms. Almost human sized in your Grief senses, swift, fluttering things streaking upwards to meet you.
You slash through one, then three, then six, and there are dozens, hundreds of them boiling up towards your little group. Kyouko's spear flicks out, deadly fast to weave a deadly field of steel. Yuma's mace whirls through the gaps, Yuma somehow finding purchase on thin air to push off and strike with inexorable force. The pattern shifts at some unseen signal between the duo, Kyouko kicking off the air. Yuma meets her halfway, her mace meeting the flat of Kyouko's blade with a chime. The shockwave ripples through the air, blasting back the Familiars in a burst of green.
They're humanoid.
The Familiars, that is. You fall, an unending plunge through smokey air and endless onslaught of things boiling upward to meet you. None of them come close to you, with your Grief blades thinning the herd and Kyouko and Yuma further below - but you keep your hammer ready and a careful eye out. Distraction kills, after all.
Humanoid, paper-thin Familiars. In fact, they look papery, black and white and grey replicas of... you. You and Kyouko and Yuma in sketchy monochrome and flapping paper. They swarm towards you, slicing through the air as if hurled by something below.
The next wave of Familiars ride a blast of heat. Not hot enough to hurt, but hot enough to make your skin feel tight, and hot enough to intensify the acrid burn as you inhale.
And finally, finally-
"Floor!" you warn.
"Yeah, yeah!" Kyouko snaps back, her attention not wavering from the oncoming tide of Familiars. Her ponytail snaps out straight behind her, her spear continuing to dance. It cracks into whipping chains there and crunching through a sweeping slash there, not a single Familiar even coming close to her.
Yuma falls, and fights by her side, a deadly shadow to her adoptive sister. Her mace doesn't have as many tricks as Kyouko's does, but she makes up for the lack of flair with raw power, smashing and crushing everything that she can reach with spinning strikes.
She draws her mace back a split second before hitting the ground, pulling in magic. And with a cry, she smashes a powerful, overhead strike into the ground. The shockwave blasts across the floor, shimmering green waves rippling forth. The ground shatters beneath her blow, cracks streaking across it like breaking glass.
"Again!" Kyouko barks, landing a hair behind Yuma. She lands spear-first, the steel crunching through the ground, and-
It doesn't just shatter like glass, it is glass. You slam to a landing, a flare of magic absorbing the impact just as Kyouko whirls her spear overhead and strikes again. Familiars swarm towards you, streaking into the air and swooping down towards you, but this time, this time, you're ready to meet them.
Grief blades slash through the horde as Yuma and Kyouko hammer the ground, mace and spear in counterpoint rhythm. You glare out at the haze, the smoke, and the oncoming Familiars, orchestrating a thousand different blades slicing through the air and Familiars with equal impunity.
The floor gives way with a crunch. You stagger and let yourself fall backwards, a quick step shifting your balance so that you can catch yourself on the short drop below, ducking beneath what you realise is soot-covered glass. You slide in beside Kyouko and Yuma, Grief blades still weaving a defense from the horde of Familiars.
Kyouko exhales hard, glaring first at the darkness surrounding you and the floor-now-ceiling of shattered glass. Weak light filters in through the hole, barely illuminating the low 'ceiling' of the space you find yourself in. You'd almost call it a crawlspace, but there's just enough room for you to stand upright.
"Christ," she mutters.
"Mmh," you agree vaguely. The Familiars are petering out. Finally. "You two OK?"
"Yuma is OK!" Yuma says, nodding vigorously.
"Yep," Kyouko grumbles, scowling at the darkness like it personally offended her. She touches a hand to her Soul Gem, frowning. "The Witch..."
Her head twitches to the side.
Scuttling feet. A lot of scuttling feet, completely silent in the dark. A millipede. A very, very big millipede, bearing down on you like a freight train. It's about the length of a freight train, too.
"Yuma!" Kyouko barks, pointing with her spear. You see Yuma's teeth flash in the dark as she raises her weapon overhead.
Magic flares as Yuma brings her mace down with a shout. Shockwaves crash across the ground, brilliant green forcing the smog back. It illuminates a nightmarish form of glinting metal and far, far too many legs shrouded by a roiling mantle of black strips, moments before the shockwave hits.
Spectacularly.
The Witch tumbles, forward momentum turned into a slide. Legs flail and scrape at the air, segments of the thing spinning wildly about as the thing skids across the ground, folding on itself.
And then Kyouko's there, spear blurring. She strikes low, sweeping in with one spear she slams under its head and drives it up, hooked under its featureless, rounded head.
"C'mon!" she screams in defiance, letting go of that spear and leaping clear over a squirming loop of the Witch. She just barely slips between the Witch's body and the ceiling, manifesting another spear.
Yuma charges, and you follow on her heels, hammer ready. She hits first as the Witch flails in your direction, smaller shockwaves rippling through the body of the creature. You stick close, hammer ready - but unused.
Grief answers your call, blades hammering into its blank face. They bite deep into metallic carapace, carving chunks out of it, and Kyouko follows up with a spear driven into the cracks.
The Witch thrashes and squirms and flails, smokey soot blasting from its shroud. You dive under a scything loop of the Witch. Razor sharp legs slash past your face, and you respond in kind with the spike of your hammer. You drive it deep into its body, gouging and dragging a tear open. Choking, acrid haze spills from the creature, and you dart away with your nose burning.
Behind you, Yuma pounds another shockwave blast into the Witch. Crackling bursts thunder through the Witch, blowing off entire segments from the inside.
"Again!" Kyouko barks, and Yuma yells wordlessly in response, rearing back to slam another blow into the Witch. And another, and another, and that finally does it.
The Witch's body gives way with a crunch, Yuma's mace cleaving right through to bury itself in the ground. You can feel its death, reverberating through the Barrier as reality starts to waver and collapse.
You shudder as the world reasserts itself, carpet under your shoes and dim, institutional fluorescent light shining from above. You gulp down lungfuls of fresh -fresher- air, a relief after the choking smog of the Barrier. A clatter nearby is the Grief Seed falling to the carpet, balanced on its point.
"That sucked," you mutter, looking around at what seems to be an office corridor. Empty, thank goodness, and judging by the dust thick on the wilted potted plants, the entire floor's unused.
"Suck it up," Kyouko grunts back, rolling her shoulders. Yuma's slumped against the nearest source of support -a photocopier- tired, but beaming happily at you and Kyouko.
"That's the problem. That Barrier sucked," you grumble. "Anyway, cleansing?"
Kyouko glares half-heartedly at you before shrugging. "Whatever. Hit me."
You grin, and raise a hand theatrically before clenching it. With the motion, you pull Grief from Kyouko and Yuma's Soul Gems, cleansing your own for good measure. Kyouko sighs, and inspects her Soul Gem closely for a moment.
"Squirt? You good?" Kyouko asks.
"Yuma is good!" Yuma says happily, beaming at Kyouko and walking over to latch onto her leg.
"You did great on the hunt," Kyouko says, ruffling her hair. "Let's go kick back at the hotel."
"OK!" Yuma chirps.
Kyouko glances at you, eyebrow raised. "Comin'?"
"Yup, yup," you say, smiling. "I'm coming."
You make your way out of the building. Kyouko takes the lead, climbing up the stairway and exiting via the roof. From there, it's a bounding path over the skyscrapers of Kasamino to a glittering hotel building -a different one from last time- and down to an opulently furnished hotel suite.
You're pretty sure they've been staying here for a bit, judging by how messy the living room is already. And the blanket fort you can spy through the door, piled up against the bed and walled in with pillows.
Kyouko throws herself on the plush carpet, limbs splayed wide. "Go take a bath, squirt?"
"OK!" Yuma says, glancing between you and Kyouko before beaming and bouncing off towards the shower.
You throw yourself down on the remarkably comfortable sofa in the living area, wiggling to get comfortable. Kyouko keeps an eye on the bathroom door, and when the sound of running water starts up, she levers herself off the floor and grabs a chair. She reverses it and sits straddling it, raising an eyebrow.
"Honestly, you pretty much made my point for me," you say with a grin. "Look. It's not just about getting Yuma away from her shitsack of a mother. That's part of it, yeah, but it's also that her being with you is good for her. You care about her, and you're the first person to care about her. You're important to her, and shock and horror, she cares about you. She trusts you, and-"
You pause, glancing back at the bathroom door and confirming with your Grief sense to make doubly sure that Yuma's not listening in.
"-after the kind of abuse she's experienced? That trust is earned, Kyouko," you say, lowering your voice to be triply sure. "Also, can I say? You're doing a fantastic job teaching her, you know. Which is, in and of itself, another point - she's a magical girl. She needs someone who understands the life, that she can trust. That's you, Kyouko."
"Cut the flattery," Kyouko growls, looking away.
"It's not flattery," you say. "You mean the world to her, and that's my entire point. It's not about her deserving better. She does, and so do you, but if you're looking for an excuse to cut her out of your life - then forget it, Kyouko. She does deserve better, and like it or not, that's you. If you want her to have a stable home, to go to school, then I've got ideas and possibilities I can lay out for you. Heck, her grandparents are an option, as far as 'not shitheads' goes. It's a possibility."
You fall silent, licking your lips. This is the time for Kyouko to respond, if she wants to. But she just glares at you with a belligerently pensive look, arms folded on the back of the chair and chin propped on her arms.
"Yuma deserves a better life," you say. "And so do you. A package deal. And what I want? I want to help. I'm paying you to teach Sayaka not just because you're probably the best teacher for her but also because I don't want you to have to scrabble for a life."
You sigh, leaning back and frowning at the ceiling.
"Thing is, like I said, I've... pretty much hit the limit of how much I can help you unless you're willing to accept more," you say softly. "I'd really like it if you could just tell me."
There's a long pause. You hold it, fighting the urge to fill the silence with chatter. Let Kyouko think about it, let her digest it and come to her own conclusions. She's not Mami, she's not Homura. You don't need to babble at her.
"Christ you are disgustingly nice," Kyouko mutters. "I don't want charity."
And that... that's open ended. She doesn't want charity, but that doesn't mean-
She gets up abruptly, an explosive motion that almost knocks the chair over. You meet Kyouko's eyes as she stands, but she looks away, meandering over to the fridge and grabbing two bottles from the fridge. She tosses one to you, and you catch it.
"A better life," Kyouko says with a sigh, cracking her bottle open and taking a gulp. "What do you even need in return, huh?"
[] How do you answer Kyouko? (word count limit: 150 words)
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I'm hoping to end this segment with Kyouko in about one or two updates. I'm also planning to try and update on my Wednesday, so we'll see which of these actually happen.
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