Nova Prospekt pt. 16
You make a faintly disgusted face at the time as you make your way over to the staircase. Too little time to do anything substantial, and yet just enough time to be annoying to wait it out. You could chat with someone, of course, but you'd have to cut it short, and you could detour to Warehouse-kun and experiment on stuff, but you wouldn't have much time there, either.
Well, whatever. You've got a little time to play around, you suppose.
You make it to the roof and dither for a second. You'd wanted to try to jump back across the river, just to see how much you've improved since that first time, but... You've got an idea.
You bounce on your toes for a moment, glancing down at the hotel before changing your mind. Slightly. Not here, you think, where Kyouko can probably sense it and complain. Rather, you take off over the rooftops, bounding over Kasamino.
Y'know, it's awfully convenient how many tall buildings there are here in Mitakihara and Kasamino. Densely packed, too. It's honestly ridiculously convenient for you, and you vaguely wonder how magical girls in less populated cities manage.
You drop into a tumble atop what looks like an office building, bleeding momentum to a halt. That's far enough, you think, which means it's time for Science. Not too much, though, since you've got a deadline.
Your wings. Your wings are darkest despair and congealed nightmare, a slice of the deepest horror carved from the sky. But...
Do they have to be?
You close your eyes and call on hope. Because you know, bone deep, you're here to help. It's an uphill battle ahead of you, yeah. Not because you can't do it, but because you don't want to force people into it. That's not what helping is. You don't want to fight people. You just want to get to what's important, what everyone would always need to do in the end: sit down and talk.
You can do it. You have friends. And it's taken you time to learn that. You have friends who can help. You've managed to inspire Sayaka, inspire Homura. Kyouko's back there, thinking things through, because of what you said to her.
And Mami.
You stumbled, in the beginning. But now... now you're beginning to find stability, find the way in which you fit together in each other's lives.
Hope.
Together, with everyone. Hope for a brighter future, hope that you can fix things. Hope that you can break the system and fix it anew, hope that you can stop magical girls from becoming Witches.
You inhale. It's almost a physical sensation, buoyant and light and suffusing all through your body. And why shouldn't it work just as well for your wings?
When you open your eyes, the air around you shimmers. These aren't your wings of despair. High-arching, ephemeral wings made of white feathers - not pure white, and not quite feathers. They're more... the suggestions of feathers, feather-shaped, elongated ovals that start pure white and fade to transparent, slowly coruscating rainbow in a way that you can't even tell where they end and where open air begins, and held together by no visible means.
You smile, and twist from side to side. Your wings flex and swing smoothly with your shoulders, leaving faint aftertrails that drag through the air... And keep going, a weird momentum to them that swings you around just a bit more until you're facing west. West-west-north.
Hunh.
You try to swing away, but the wings resist the motion. Almost as if they're trying to keep you facing west... back to Mitakihara. Which makes sense. Hope. And your hope for the future is with your friends. It's about people. It's always about people.
Who are you to argue with your hope? You take wing.
...
You don't take wing.
Because, uh. The wings don't actually seem to work. Or maybe they don't work the same way as they do the Grief wings. You scowl and strain, trying to figure out how to fly with these, but whatever instinct you had for controlling Grief, you definitely don't have them for these. It's also probably something you'd need to practice to figure out, if anything.
Which is in turn probably terribly symbolic in many ways that are intensely aggravating and that you're not going to think about now since you're on a schedule, so there.
Instead, for now, you dismiss the wings and form more familiar ones, nightmare cutting across the skies. And this time you do take wing, thundering wingbeats carrying you aloft, headed home.
You let your thoughts drift, ideas and thoughts bubbling, filtering through your consciousness as you fly. Heh, bubbles. There's an idea. You let Grief bubble out behind you, impossibly thin membranes billowing into dozens, hundreds of balloons full of air. A twist of thought shoves them sideways into your storage dimension, and you release the air into the hungry vacuum.
And you do it again. And again, and again, and again, steadily bucketing air into your hammerspace. By the time you coast to a halt on the roof of Mitakihara, you're getting faintly worried. You're not sure the volume within your hammerspace is actually finite - the number of atoms you can readily count hasn't really gone up noticeably. Or maybe it's just really big.
And besides, it might be more practical to just wrap things in Grief to avoid explosive compression, rather than try and fill the entire space with air.
Still, you're here. Just a few minutes ahead of time, what with a leisurely flight and time spent experimenting on the way over, so you settle down on the sun-warmed bench to wait. You hum quietly, checking that you still have the lunchbox Mami made for you and kicking your legs against the floor.
You can all but feel the anticipation bubbling up through the roof as the clock ticks onwards, and you can't help but try and find Mami - but Mitakihara Middle School is huge. Big enough that Mami's out of your range. You're bored enough that you start trying to count atoms with Grief, wiggling nanoscale appendages into interatomic spaces.
Interminable minutes tick by until finally, finally, the bell rings, and the sound of thousands of chairs scraping against the floor echoes through the building, then the familiar cadence of class representatives leading their classes through thanking their teacher.
And there's Mami.
You bounce to your feet, eager smile rising to your face as you move to meet her at the entrance to the roof. Her footsteps pound up the stairwell, echoing and coming closer until she reaches the roof. You're right there to sweep her up into a tight hug, arms curling around her waist to lift her into the air.
She's laughing and clinging to you, golden eyes bright with joy as you take a step back, gently setting her down and sliding your arms down to her waist. You dart in to press a quick kiss to her cheek, beaming from ear to ear even as you blush.
"There," you say, tugging her over to the bench. She sits down beside you, hand cupping your cheek gently, and you're pretty sure if you smiled any harder the top of your head would fall off. "That's the first part of the installments to be paid."
"Your prompt repayment is greatly appreciated," Mami says gravely, managing to keep a straight face for all of two seconds before dissolving into delighted giggles. You can't help your own giggles, her laughter bright and infectious.
"How are you?" you ask, bumping your shoulder against hers.
"Much better now," Mami says with a warm smile. She burrows under your arm, pulling it around her shoulders. "I... today was easier."
"I'm glad," you say, returning the smile and hugging her a little tighter. "I'm glad you're happy."
"You make me happy," Mami says, smiling at you.
"And you make me happy, too," you say, tucking your head against hers. "And I'm really curious what you made me for lunch."
"You'll see soon!" Mami says.
You chuckle quietly as Mami snuggles closer, and you just... bask in the moment, the simple joy of being here with Mami and her happiness. You can sense your friends coming, too, if rather more sedately than Mami had arrived.
"Good afternoooon~" Sayaka calls as she arrives, Madoka and Hitomi a step behind. Homura walks side by side with Madoka, a quiet presence.
You beam at them. "Hey, everyone! How's the morning been?"
"Same old, same old," Sayaka says, plopping down onto the bench opposite yours. "Eh, Madoka?"
"Yeah!" Madoka says, sitting beside Sayaka and nudging her friend. Sayaka scoots over, followed by Madoka, who pats the newly opened space beside her while giving Homura a look. "We got our test results back today, too!"
"Even I did well!" Sayaka boasts, thumping her chest as she pops her lunchbox open.
"Sayaka, you normally do well on tests," Hitomi says. "When you aren't distracted by something, anyway. We all know that."
"Yeah, well, shut up," Sayaka says, pouting.
Madoka giggles, patting Sayaka's shoulder.
"How's your morning been, Sabrina?" Mami asks, smiling at you.
[] How do you answer?
[] What will you do after lunch?
[X] Manifest a few dozen hammers and store them around the outer edges of your hammerspace.
[X] Homura
-[X] You've got something you want to run by her after school... Also questions. Not urgent, though.
[X] Keep an ear open to what Sayaka and Madoka are up to at lunch.
[] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)
Slightly awkward place to cut it off, but I wanted to get an earlier night tonight. Aiming for a Thursday update!
Well, whatever. You've got a little time to play around, you suppose.
You make it to the roof and dither for a second. You'd wanted to try to jump back across the river, just to see how much you've improved since that first time, but... You've got an idea.
You bounce on your toes for a moment, glancing down at the hotel before changing your mind. Slightly. Not here, you think, where Kyouko can probably sense it and complain. Rather, you take off over the rooftops, bounding over Kasamino.
Y'know, it's awfully convenient how many tall buildings there are here in Mitakihara and Kasamino. Densely packed, too. It's honestly ridiculously convenient for you, and you vaguely wonder how magical girls in less populated cities manage.
You drop into a tumble atop what looks like an office building, bleeding momentum to a halt. That's far enough, you think, which means it's time for Science. Not too much, though, since you've got a deadline.
Your wings. Your wings are darkest despair and congealed nightmare, a slice of the deepest horror carved from the sky. But...
Do they have to be?
You close your eyes and call on hope. Because you know, bone deep, you're here to help. It's an uphill battle ahead of you, yeah. Not because you can't do it, but because you don't want to force people into it. That's not what helping is. You don't want to fight people. You just want to get to what's important, what everyone would always need to do in the end: sit down and talk.
You can do it. You have friends. And it's taken you time to learn that. You have friends who can help. You've managed to inspire Sayaka, inspire Homura. Kyouko's back there, thinking things through, because of what you said to her.
And Mami.
You stumbled, in the beginning. But now... now you're beginning to find stability, find the way in which you fit together in each other's lives.
Hope.
Together, with everyone. Hope for a brighter future, hope that you can fix things. Hope that you can break the system and fix it anew, hope that you can stop magical girls from becoming Witches.
You inhale. It's almost a physical sensation, buoyant and light and suffusing all through your body. And why shouldn't it work just as well for your wings?
When you open your eyes, the air around you shimmers. These aren't your wings of despair. High-arching, ephemeral wings made of white feathers - not pure white, and not quite feathers. They're more... the suggestions of feathers, feather-shaped, elongated ovals that start pure white and fade to transparent, slowly coruscating rainbow in a way that you can't even tell where they end and where open air begins, and held together by no visible means.
You smile, and twist from side to side. Your wings flex and swing smoothly with your shoulders, leaving faint aftertrails that drag through the air... And keep going, a weird momentum to them that swings you around just a bit more until you're facing west. West-west-north.
Hunh.
You try to swing away, but the wings resist the motion. Almost as if they're trying to keep you facing west... back to Mitakihara. Which makes sense. Hope. And your hope for the future is with your friends. It's about people. It's always about people.
Who are you to argue with your hope? You take wing.
...
You don't take wing.
Because, uh. The wings don't actually seem to work. Or maybe they don't work the same way as they do the Grief wings. You scowl and strain, trying to figure out how to fly with these, but whatever instinct you had for controlling Grief, you definitely don't have them for these. It's also probably something you'd need to practice to figure out, if anything.
Which is in turn probably terribly symbolic in many ways that are intensely aggravating and that you're not going to think about now since you're on a schedule, so there.
Instead, for now, you dismiss the wings and form more familiar ones, nightmare cutting across the skies. And this time you do take wing, thundering wingbeats carrying you aloft, headed home.
You let your thoughts drift, ideas and thoughts bubbling, filtering through your consciousness as you fly. Heh, bubbles. There's an idea. You let Grief bubble out behind you, impossibly thin membranes billowing into dozens, hundreds of balloons full of air. A twist of thought shoves them sideways into your storage dimension, and you release the air into the hungry vacuum.
And you do it again. And again, and again, and again, steadily bucketing air into your hammerspace. By the time you coast to a halt on the roof of Mitakihara, you're getting faintly worried. You're not sure the volume within your hammerspace is actually finite - the number of atoms you can readily count hasn't really gone up noticeably. Or maybe it's just really big.
And besides, it might be more practical to just wrap things in Grief to avoid explosive compression, rather than try and fill the entire space with air.
Still, you're here. Just a few minutes ahead of time, what with a leisurely flight and time spent experimenting on the way over, so you settle down on the sun-warmed bench to wait. You hum quietly, checking that you still have the lunchbox Mami made for you and kicking your legs against the floor.
You can all but feel the anticipation bubbling up through the roof as the clock ticks onwards, and you can't help but try and find Mami - but Mitakihara Middle School is huge. Big enough that Mami's out of your range. You're bored enough that you start trying to count atoms with Grief, wiggling nanoscale appendages into interatomic spaces.
Interminable minutes tick by until finally, finally, the bell rings, and the sound of thousands of chairs scraping against the floor echoes through the building, then the familiar cadence of class representatives leading their classes through thanking their teacher.
And there's Mami.
You bounce to your feet, eager smile rising to your face as you move to meet her at the entrance to the roof. Her footsteps pound up the stairwell, echoing and coming closer until she reaches the roof. You're right there to sweep her up into a tight hug, arms curling around her waist to lift her into the air.
She's laughing and clinging to you, golden eyes bright with joy as you take a step back, gently setting her down and sliding your arms down to her waist. You dart in to press a quick kiss to her cheek, beaming from ear to ear even as you blush.
"There," you say, tugging her over to the bench. She sits down beside you, hand cupping your cheek gently, and you're pretty sure if you smiled any harder the top of your head would fall off. "That's the first part of the installments to be paid."
"Your prompt repayment is greatly appreciated," Mami says gravely, managing to keep a straight face for all of two seconds before dissolving into delighted giggles. You can't help your own giggles, her laughter bright and infectious.
"How are you?" you ask, bumping your shoulder against hers.
"Much better now," Mami says with a warm smile. She burrows under your arm, pulling it around her shoulders. "I... today was easier."
"I'm glad," you say, returning the smile and hugging her a little tighter. "I'm glad you're happy."
"You make me happy," Mami says, smiling at you.
"And you make me happy, too," you say, tucking your head against hers. "And I'm really curious what you made me for lunch."
"You'll see soon!" Mami says.
You chuckle quietly as Mami snuggles closer, and you just... bask in the moment, the simple joy of being here with Mami and her happiness. You can sense your friends coming, too, if rather more sedately than Mami had arrived.
"Good afternoooon~" Sayaka calls as she arrives, Madoka and Hitomi a step behind. Homura walks side by side with Madoka, a quiet presence.
You beam at them. "Hey, everyone! How's the morning been?"
"Same old, same old," Sayaka says, plopping down onto the bench opposite yours. "Eh, Madoka?"
"Yeah!" Madoka says, sitting beside Sayaka and nudging her friend. Sayaka scoots over, followed by Madoka, who pats the newly opened space beside her while giving Homura a look. "We got our test results back today, too!"
"Even I did well!" Sayaka boasts, thumping her chest as she pops her lunchbox open.
"Sayaka, you normally do well on tests," Hitomi says. "When you aren't distracted by something, anyway. We all know that."
"Yeah, well, shut up," Sayaka says, pouting.
Madoka giggles, patting Sayaka's shoulder.
"How's your morning been, Sabrina?" Mami asks, smiling at you.
[] How do you answer?
[] What will you do after lunch?
[X] Manifest a few dozen hammers and store them around the outer edges of your hammerspace.
[X] Homura
-[X] You've got something you want to run by her after school... Also questions. Not urgent, though.
[X] Keep an ear open to what Sayaka and Madoka are up to at lunch.
[] Write-in (word count limit: 150 words)
=====
Slightly awkward place to cut it off, but I wanted to get an earlier night tonight. Aiming for a Thursday update!
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