- Location
- A Place Miserably Bereft of Cats
After having met up for breakfast and finding a certain someone missing, Mizore and Yukari were talking and walking the sunlight path back to the girl's dorms together. "I like it," Mizore said after a moment's contemplation. "Anything I can do to help?"
Yukari grinned, and if Mizore spent a fraction of the time with her that the Newspaper Club members did, she might have been intimidated by what it meant. "Actually, I was hoping you'd help me out. Of all the roles in this little adventure, yours is the --"
Yukari paused for a split-second of rumination, before nodding. "Actually, yeah, what I have in mind for you is both the easiest, and one of the most important parts of the job. It'd be waaaay harder to pull this off without your help."
As they approached a certain dorm, the pair could hear music -- and more than that, someone singing.
Stopping just short of the door, Mizore blinked. Even though the door muffled it enough to keep from clearly hearing the words... "Someone's having fun."
"Yeah," Yukari agreed, "but it's time to get to work now."
The young Witchling knocked on the door, to no response. After trying the knob and finding it locked, she then displayed a remarkable disregard for the resident's privacy by casting a magic spell to unlock it, before walking right in.
Mizore blinked, before letting out a soft whistle. "Even I'm usually not that blatant."
Yukari glanced back, one eyebrow raised. "Puh-lease. The only difference is that you care about getting caught, and on this occasion I don't."
Shrugging, Mizore then followed her partner in crime into the dorm, where they found an extremely animated pink-haired vampire, singing her heart out into a microphone, perfectly in sync with music coming out of a CD player/speaker system.
"LIGER SWORD! Cut through the sky with your holy blade~"
"Damn," Mizore whispered with more than a little awe, and a lot of sudden self-consciousness over her own singing ability.
"LIGER SLASH! Your roar is like a thundercrash~"
"I know!" Yukari whispered back.
"Burn with righteous fire, Liger, Liger, Liger..."
"...Wouldn't have guessed she was into anime," Mizore muttered.
Yukari, blinking at the statement, furrowed her brow in confusion. "She's not," she softly replied.
"Feel the wrath of Jushin Lig-- AAHHH!!!!"
Having turned around halfway through the lyric, Moka jumped back in fright at her unexpected visitors, stumbling over several bits of furniture and into a bookcase, before tumbling to the floor and causing a novel -- Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World -- to fall over and land on her head.
Suddenly sheepish over the chaos created by her forceful intrusion, Yukari tried not to hide under her really big hat. "....Moka, are you okay?"
There was a muffled chorus of ows coming from the floor, before Moka picked the open book off of her face, inspected it for damage, and delicately set it aside. With a loud sigh as she identified her guests, Moka shook her head. "You just startled me," she admitted. A moment later, a thought occurred to her, and the rose-haired vampire narrowed her eyes. "And what have I told you about breaking into my dorm, Yukari?"
The little girl's smile was far too innocent to be genuine. "That as long as it's me, it's okay?"
Unimpressed by the blatant lie, Moka huffed in annoyance before getting to her feet and inspecting the things she'd hit for damage.
Mizore blinked. Oh, right, that's partly my fault, too. "Anything broken?" she asked.
After several seconds of looking around and inspecting this-and-that, Moka let out another sigh, this one more of relief. "No, it doesn't look like it..."
Turning an annoyed glance to her 'guests', however, she muttered, "Although I'm going to have to re-record that later, now. That was Fine Arts homework, you know."
Now feeling genuinely bad instead of just awkward, Mizore shuffled a little bit. "You were singing in English," she observed. "Some kind of translation assignment or something?"
"Yeah," Moka said with a nod. "Mikazuki-sensei decided to combine a singing exam with English, saying that word-for-word lyric translations would ruin the song's flow, and you'd have to take some artistic license to keep the original feeling of the song while still making it work in another language. Honestly," she said with a small chuckle, "I got lucky, being able to pick my own song and language to translate it too. Tsukune got..."
On mentioning the boy's name, Moka's cheer instantly evaporated as she unwittingly reminded herself of the ongoing relationship drama.
An awkward couple of seconds later, Yukari spoke up. "Almost forgot why I came here! The pervert," she said in derisive reference to Gin, "decided that you need to redo your articles in next week's edition of the Newspaper. Said your paragraph layout wasn't up to standard, or something."
Moka's right eye started twitching in annoyance. "...you're kidding me," she didn't state so much as plead. "He said it was fine on Thursday!"
Yukari shrugged. "Yeah, well, a little bit ago he changed his mind and told me to come get you for it."
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Moka mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "Good grief," which she may or may not have unknowingly picked up from that intimidating-as-hell-but-surprisingly-reliable upperclassman, Jotaro Kujo.
"Okay," she muttered, "I guess I'd better get that taken care of first, then. Thanks for letting me know, Yukari."
Turning to the other occupant of the room, the vampire asked, "Kind of odd that you're here too, Mizore -- since you're not part of the Newspaper Club, and all. Did you need something?"
If Mizore were honest with herself, she almost freaked at the sudden scrutiny, having forgotten how perceptive Moka could be. Fortunately, she was the second least-emotive individual on campus, so she hid it well. "Nah," she lied. "Just... hanging out with Yukari."
Adding just the barest edge to her tone, she added, "...ran into her earlier and she seemed lonely."
Moka's eyes widened at the statement, and Mizore immediately regretted what she'd just said, but didn't have a chance to address it. "I... see. With everything that's been going on," she muttered while looking anywhere but at her friends, "I guess I've been terrible company lately."
Yukari reached a hand out to the older girl... "Moka, that's not --"
Tears of guilt starting to build at the corner of her eyes, Moka ran for the door. "I need to redo that article real quick, then we can hang out later. Work before fun and all that!"
....but ultimately fell short of her goal, Moka slipping past just before Yukari could take hold of her.
As Moka let the building, Mizore bitterly kicked at nothing in particular. "I screwed that up."
Yukari glanced at the Snow Woman, and in a moment of empathy, stepped to hug her waist. "Relax," the little girl said with emphasis. "Moka's heading to the clubroom, and that's Phase One complete. Admittedly, she's in a mood, so we'll have to run like hell to catch up with her, but that's okay. The plan. Can still. Work."
After a few seconds to mull that over, Mizore let out a sigh, and all of her tension with it. "You really need to work on your comforting skills."
"Bullshit, I can hug like a pro!"
Mizore might have scoffed and rolled her eyes, but her soft smile betrayed her real feelings on the subject. "...seven out of ten."
Unable to do more than squawk in indignation, Yukari huffed and disengaged, before turning to run off after Moka.
Now left to herself in Moka's room, Mizore paused. Even though she needed to beat feet and chase after the other girls, she wasn't quite ready yet. "A wife's duty is to her husband," she muttered to herself. "And part of that includes making sure his life is peaceful and happy."
So if her husband-to-be's friends were quarreling, then as an eventual wife, she needed to do what she could to resolve that.
Clenching her fists and steeling her gaze, Mizore stepped for the door.
"But it's not just because they're his friends..."
Locking it tight and ensuring that it latched shut, she then broke into a sprint. "They're mine, too!"
<----- [TO BE CONTINUED]
Fuckin' what, Jushin Liger out of nowhere.
I thought I was the only one who knew about that guy and/or giant robot anime.
