Reaper Writes

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68381631

Grian refuses to wait inside the apartment building since he knows the spiders are gone. Instead, he flops down on the roof and stares at the sky with Xelqua on his chest. He was just up there! Flying!

          “That was amazing,” he grins. “I wish, I wish we could do that without having to fight anybody…”

      That would attract far too much attention. But, the Song, and the feeling of the wind, and flying!

      He is torn between scooping Xelqua up to run around the roof in excitement and going to sleep for a week. Being a Magical Girl is exhausting. Xelqua agrees, muffling a dainty yawn in one of his fluffy wings.

          “Maybe not right now, huh?” Grian asks, still grinning.

      Xelqua nods sleepily and wriggles a little to keep himself awake.

          “I’m glad you like it,” he murmurs. “I wasn’t sure if Aria only did because of me.”

          “No, no, I love it!” Grian insists, waving a hand above them. “It’s so- it’s perfect!”

          “Perfect…” Xelqua repeats, shoving his face under a wing. “It’s only our first time! We’re not even really good at working together yet.”

     Grian huffs. “We also fought the Warden!”

     Xelqua extracts his head from his feathers and stares.

          “Yeah, okay, fine, that barely counts,” Grian sighs.

          “Well, regardless, how have you been? We’ve had a busy day,” Xelqua says, and Grian giggles at how casual that statement is.

          “Uh… all of our stuff is mostly okay, so that’s good,” Grian begins. “Some of the little bits got knocked off and I have no idea if Mumbo can get the bits back. A lot of Scar’s house is covered in marks – like Scar’s face, the same color.”

     Xelqua startles, eyes wide, but he doesn’t interrupt.

          “Then we scooped you back up and went shopping, which you were there for, kind of. Did you see anything while you were exploring?”

          “Maybe something related to the markings. I found a – is the word den? Hideaway? – a little place I thought was a cat house at first, but inside… It had writing.” He pats Grian’s chest to emphasize how serious this is. “Spirit writing, the language of enchantment. It was a list of things.”

     Curling around Xelqua, Grian sits up to look at his partner properly.

          “Definitely writing? Where was it hidden, just in a wall?”

     Fluttering to keep his place in Grian’s arms, Xelqua raises his paws and tries to convey the space he had found. “Not exactly? You know the corners of the rooms that have cabinets in them? The space where the corners are? There was a little door and I went in.”

     Grian nods intensely, fishing in his pockets for his phone. “What did it say? Here, I’ll write it down…”

     Amazingly, his phone has survived whatever pocket dimension his stuff melted away into - but has gained about six billion notifications. Oops? Well. Turning in the cores did take a while…

     He ignores them anyway and opens a new note. Xelqua crawls up onto Grian’s shoulders to look.

          “Okay, if I remember right, it was a list of things – in English, I think it’d be skulk, area, Doc something? And clocks,” Xelqua taps his claws for each item.

          “Doc something? Is it hard to translate, or…?”

          “No, it was smudged. Whatever it said was pretty short, though.”

     Grian adds that to his note, and then half the screen is taken up by a call. He… probably shouldn’t ignore this one.

          “Oh, Scar’s gonna be mad… Hi! I found my phone again!” Grian lies.

     Scar yells wordlessly on the other side, then his voice fades slightly.

          “Grian? Are you okay?” comes Mumbo’s voice.

     Xelqua bounces in shock, and Grian can feel him sniffing at the phone in confusion.

          “Yes! When I hid in the building, my bag fell and I’ve been looking for all the stuff,” he elaborates, and hopes no one came to look for him while he was Aria.

          “Don’t do that!” Scar yells, slightly closer to the phone.

          “You’re still on the roof of that building?” Mumbo asks, stressed.

          “Yeah,” Grian says, nodding. “I’m going to try to – if I put you on speaker, I might be able to look up where I am?”

     Communicating Grian’s location is far harder than it needs to be, but eventually Scar, Mumbo, and a response team navigate to the apartment building. Grian repeats his lie several times – to Scar, to the medic who checks him for magic sickness, to their coworkers Joe and Cleo who have apparently been assigned to report on this Rogue. He barely remembers most of it as the conversations blur with exhaustion. Xelqua is so lucky that he can sleep in Grian’s bag.

     Additionally, Grian misses that he apparently agreed to stay at Scar’s for the night because he might have magic sickness. Again. And Pearl is worried about him. Again. Unfortunately for her mental health, she cannot babysit him (again) tonight, but she has nominated Jimmy for the task.

     Jimmy is delighted to be here.

          “Grian! What did you do!?”

     Grian’s head snaps up sleepily, half-expecting to hear him follow up with, “I’m telling Mum!” Given that they’re adults, all Jimmy does is stomp over to the ambulance and fold his arms.

          “Hey-y-y Tim, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Grian snarks automatically. “It’s not like I survived two Rogue attacks back-to-back or anything.”

     They look at each other for a few seconds, and then Grian topples forward into his brother’s shoulder. Jimmy immediately curls around him, squeezing tightly. This is the single benefit of his little brother being taller than him.

          “I hate getting calls from Pearl like this,” Jimmy says, slightly muffled.

          “I’m sorry,” Grian says, because saying that he didn’t try to get into this situation is approaching a lie.

     Jimmy leans back to examine Grian, who notices something in turn; thin, glowing lines, like Xelqua’s eyespots, but instead shaped like fish scales. They trail under his eyes and across his arms, barely bigger than fingernails. There are even scales glowing through the fabric of Jimmy’s beloved and deeply ugly fish hat where it is tied around his neck. Grian’s jaw clenches. Why does everyone he knows have magic scars? At least he can guess when Jimmy would’ve been exposed to a Rogue.

          “I’m okay, still. They’ve cleared me again.”

          “’Again’ is doing so much in that sentence,” Jimmy observes wryly. “Please tell me you didn’t get up to any of your old antics.”

     Grian huffs playfully, because Jimmy doesn’t know the half of it. “Oh please. I only rode on a purple crystalline dragon until giant spiders jumped us.”

          “You kicked one!” Scar pops up, from gods only know where.

     Grian and Jimmy squeal in the same pitch.

          “Whoops!” Scar chirps, unrepentant.

     Mumbo waves awkwardly, and Grian drags a breath through his teeth. It makes a terrible noise, but Scar continues to smile pleasantly.

          “Tim, these are my friends, Mumbo,” Mumbo starts waving again, even more awkwardly. “And Scar.” Scar tips his hat and bows. “And boys, this is my little brother Timmy.”

     Jimmy, exasperated, groans and tips forward. “My name is Jimmy, Grian’s just a gremlin.”

     Grian smiles guilelessly.

          “Well, it’s nice to meet you! Grian’s mentioned you before,” Mumbo says politely. He swaps to adjusting his cuffs since he decides waving this long is probably weird.

          “Only good things?” Jimmy asks, jokingly.

          “Oh, of course!” Scar chirps. “He’s got so many stories from your high school days!”

     He means well.

     Jimmy, as a person who was there, reacts to that statement with the appropriate amount of disbelief. He doesn’t call Grian out, but his eyebrows do climb high enough that Grian knows he’ll have to explain later.

     Grian shrugs up at him, and forcibly changes the subject.

          “Pearl has forcibly volunteered Tim to look after us tonight.”

     Jimmy grumbles a little at the nickname but squares his shoulders and puts a smile back on his face.

          “I’m happy to do it! And if the Response Team has cleared you, that’s great.”

     The three of them are cleared to go home. Mumbo is not allowed to drive. There is a discussion Grian mostly ignores over whose car they’re going to take back, which Mumbo wins because they have bags and stuff that won’t fit into Jimmy’s little car. Grian is not allowed to call it a space buggy again. If he didn’t have very strong memories of soaring off hills in it, he might actually listen to that rule.

     Jimmy is better at driving now, though that doesn’t stop Mumbo from white-knuckling every corner. Scar attempts to distract him by wheedling him into having opinions on what to make for dinner tonight – Scar’s suggestions are lists of different kinds of sweets they absolutely do not have enough time to prepare. Most of Grian’s suggestions are actually helpful. No one likes them, but they are.

- - - - -

     Grian really wants a nap. He loves his friends, really, but trying to fit all five of them into the kitchen is a mistake. They have more than five different ideas for dinner and usually Grian would pick something and assign everyone tasks, but he is so tired. Instead, his only tasks are: retrieve dirty dishes, clean them, stay out of the others’ way, and – of course – investigate Scar’s house for more evidence of whatever Xelqua saw.

     The Watcher himself is probably asleep in Grian’s bag. Grian debates whether it would be worth waking him when the others are done making whatever argument/meal Grian is studiously ignoring. Since they’re each making (and fiddling with each other’s) meals, there will probably be enough for leftovers. It’ll be fine.

     The glowing on the undersides of furniture might not be fine. None of it is in Xelqua’s purple, ranging from orange, to blue, to pink, with that blue being the brightest. What has been hiding under Scar’s things like it’s stalking him? There is nothing carved into the brightly lit corners that Grian can see, but he takes pictures anyway. Given that his phone does not have magical sight, it doesn’t actually pick up the markings, so he then has to note whatever he sees down in a separate document with a number for each picture, which keeps him plenty busy when he isn’t wrestling Jimmy for batter-covered spoons.

     Or Jellie. Jellie has made it her mission to jump on the counter and eat whatever she finds, and while Scar insists that it’s his job, Grian still finds himself calling out, “Jellie! No!” like she’s going to listen. He feels terrible about her little stripes, all highlighted in the same blue as the brightness under the tables and the blue from across Scar’s skin.

     Across many of Scar’s scars, which had been horrific enough on its own, but Grian knows – has seen the photographic evidence all over the house – that Scar’s nickname wasn’t always so visually apparent. The youngest of the kid-Scars has only the one; the slash-mark under his right eye that has been almost covered by three other blue, diagonal marks on adult-Scar. Why hasn’t he said… anything?

     Until… oh dear, was it really only a day ago? Until Grian gained the ability to see magic, he just accepted Scar’s excuse of being clumsy. It’s not like Scar isn’t clumsy! He’s been walking into chairs and dropping cutlery the whole afternoon. But, as Grian is shuffling around collecting and cleaning knives, he imagines Scar waking up with bruises or cuts he doesn’t remember getting and just …shrugging it off. Unaware that some mysterious entity is in his house.

     It’s extremely, distressingly easy to imagine. Scar is not the most observant of men.

     Grian, however, notes that several of the plates have magical markings on them, too. Blotches that don’t match the painted flowers around the edges. He hasn’t seen a knife with markings yet. He wonders if that’s because he’d have to find the Rogue first.

     The markings don’t scrub off the first time he tries, either. Or the second. Or third. He’s concerned that garden-variety dish soap is not strong enough for magic.

          “Are you feeling okay, Gri?” Scar asks.

     Garden-variety dish soap does make the plate slippery enough that Grian has to fumble to catch it before it hits the floor.

          “Ah! Don’t sneak up like that!”

          “…By standing in the middle of the kitchen?”

     Mumbo and Jimmy, the traitors, are giggling.

          “Sure! But, um, are you feeling okay? You’ve been glaring at that plate for a while…” Scar asks again, and Jimmy’s giggle stops dead.

     Before Grian can formulate an answer, Jimmy loops around Scar and pushes back Grian’s bangs. He squawks when Grian reflexively bops him with the plate.

          “Hey! I’m just trying to check if you’ve got a fever or something, don’t make me wet!” he whines, and Grian glares.

          “I’m just tired! You didn’t have to deal with two Rogue attacks in two days,” Grian grumbles, putting the dish down and wondering how he can shuffle it around to wipe again. He doesn’t have to fake the yawn that cuts him off. “I’m just making the plates extra cl- mm. Extra clean.”

       Jimmy hums and starts tugging Grian’s shoulders. “No, I think Scar’s right-“

          “I am?” Scar asks.

          “- and you should go sit down for a bit. Dinner is almost ready, just don’t fall asleep at the table.”

     Grian glares at them, but the sight of the bright rings of magical color in both Jimmy and Scar’s eyes makes him relent and he allows them to maneuver him into a seat. He puts his head down and fiddles with his phone until dinner.

- - - - - -

     Fate might like Aria, but it hates Grian. He’s certain. Something that liked him would let him actually sleep. Instead, he’s glaring at the whorls on the painted ceiling and the lights that flash by whenever some poor, equally insomniac soul drives down Scar’s quiet street.

     His only consolation is that Xelqua, having napped through most of the day, is now awake. The Watcher doesn’t seem to realize that Grian is awake, wiggling around out of Grian’s eyeline and freezing for a moment whenever he knocks into something.

          “Hey Xelqua! Are you hungry?”

     Xelqua shrieks, scrabbles, and Grian sits up to see him at the bottom of the shelving unit next to the door. He’s half-hidden behind some of Scar’s miniature buildings, and his eye-markings glow brightly.

          “Grian!” Xelqua yelps. “You’re awake? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“

          “I’ve been awake the whole time, don’t worry,” Grian says, only slightly irritated by the fact. Only slightly!

      Xelqua eels out from behind a miniature soda fountain and flaps up to the bed, spilling over the blankets near Grian’s knee. Looks like Xelqua hasn’t woken up all the way. Huh, his markings aren’t even fully open, that’s cute.

          “Really? But it’s so late…” Xelqua wriggles around until he’s satisfied with the positions of his wings.

     Grian shrugs and looks up as another car passes by.

          “I don’t know, it’s fine. Are you hungry? You slept through dinner, and I have little snacks – we could go down and get you some of the leftovers, too.”

          “Oh, that sounds nice, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Xelqua says, almost embarrassed.

          “Sure! It’s not like I’m sleeping anyway. Let’s see if I can find my way back down.”

     Grian is not actually sure ‘down’ is the correct directional adjective for their path. Earlier, they went up and down several ramps and staircases, but Grian is pretty sure some of those were just because Scar was dropping Jimmy and Mumbo off at their rooms. He thinks that if he goes down the stairs at the end of this hall, turns right, goes through the green hallway and the room with the seashell collection and the jeans sofa, then down the blue hallway, he will find the kitchen. Or a kitchen. If it has food in it, it will work.

     Xelqua rides on his shoulder, listening to him quietly recount some of the silly stories he’d heard during dinner. He keeps having to pause and reorient himself, or peek through doorways. Sometimes Xelqua will interrupt with a question, since his education on humans isn’t perfect.

          “Who’s the person in the white coat in these pictures of you with your friends?”

     Or questions about the house itself.

     The Watcher is looking at a set of photos lit through a window by a warm streelight, ones that mostly feature people Xelqua has – well, not met, but been in the same room as.

          “He’s in a lot of the pictures in this house,” Xelqua continues. “Even ones Scar isn’t in.”

     Grian swallows. It’s been a few months, but that’s only made the situation sadder. In the photo, Scar stands with arm around a man slightly shorter than him, with darker hair but the same vibrant green eyes.

          “That’s Scar’s brother, Cub. He lived here, too, until he went missing. Just vanished while Scar was with us at work,” Grian explains, hesitating as he realizes something terrifying.

     He sets a hand on Xelqua, who whips around and blinks all of his eyes. Even the markings.

          “I… hope that whatever happened, it’s not related to the, the markings.” He takes a breath. “None of these pictures show markings, obviously, but sometimes…”

     Xelqua makes a nervous noise, and his claws clench on Grian’s shoulder.

          “I don’t like that! I don’t like any of that!” he says with plastic cheer.

          “Yeah,” Grian agrees, looking at Cub’s faint smile beside Scar’s blinding grin. “I don’t know if I want to be wrong or not.”

     He lingers a bit longer in the quiet with Xelqua, just looking at the photos. Most of these are from celebrations from the last three years. Nothing big like birthdays, but instead little things like movie premieres or breakthroughs in Cub’s inventions. Grian hums and turns to look through another doorway for the jeans sofa.

          “Cub was an inventor. He made a lot of the funny little light fixtures and things around the house, and he ran Vexcorp along with Scar. He’s been missing for… almost four months.”

     The room he glances into lacks both jeans sofa and seashells. The magical markings across the legs of the chairs and tables run counter to the weave of the wicker furniture.

          “Not here yet, let’s keep going,” Grian says.

     Xelqua makes a considering noise but doesn’t interrupt again until Grian finds the right room.

          “…How are you sure?”

          “The seashells on the shelves, and the pillow shapes, and this visual crime,” he says, waving at the jeans sofa. “We passed through it earlier, and we made jokes that it looks like Scar is the guy who keeps stealing Jimmy’s jackets to turn into upholstery.”

     The denim fabric used does not have the glowing scales Jimmy’s jackets do. Maybe Grian will be able to track down the thief now.

     Shuffling around to bump against Grian’s jaw, Xelqua hums doubtfully.

          “Well, that’s fine and all, but… I can’t see that,” Xelqua says.

          “What?”

          “It’s dark. This room doesn’t have any open windows. How are you seeing right now?”

     Grian goes very still. Xelqua wriggles around some more, but it feels far away.

     How is Grian seeing right now?

     He spins in place slowly, taking in the pale walls and ghostly shelving, the shadowy forms of other, non-jeans furniture. Now that he looks, Xelqua is right. No lamps sit at the center of the splotches of dim light. There are definitely sources, brightest spots, though overall the room remains dark enough that Grian didn’t notice. Some of the shells glow from within, the furniture in big stripes-

     The markings.

     The magically scarred sections of the room make light! Actual light only he can see.

          “That’s terrifying.”

     Xelqua squeaks around his neck, then twists around with a paw raised like he was trying to feel out his surroundings.

          “What’s terrifying?”

     Grian waves his hands again.

          “It’s the, the lights, they’re - what I’m seeing, I think it’s the markings - the light is them,” Grian says quickly, beginning to pace. “I can see the markings, and they’re light, and that’s why. I’m, I’m seeing in the dark because I’m seeing the magic.”

     Xelqua’s head wobbles as he scans the room, as if tipping his head will reveal anything.

          “That’s... how much magic is in this room? I thought you only saw little pieces?”

     Grian fumbles for his phone to activate the torch and then aims it at the jeans sofa. Xelqua’s anxious wriggling slows with the light.

          “Here, is this better?” Grian asks before answering Xelqua. “I don’t know how to show you what the marks look like.”

     Honestly, Grian should’ve thought about all of this earlier. He should’ve noticed that the rooms were lit, that they were lit by the marks, and that Xelqua couldn’t see. He hadn’t even noted that the Watcher was clinging to him instead of flying around like usual! He really is tired, and somehow broken the habit of being constantly on-guard.

     With the gift of sight, Xelqua flutters down onto the jeans sofa. He nudges the fabric, then scratches at it in confusion. Is he trying to sense the magic still? For a long moment, Grian hovers in the middle of the living room and watches Xelqua tug at the jeans sofa and poke his nose into the pockets.

      Then his brain manages to smash together a thought.

          “Maybe I could trace some for you?”

     Again, it is obvious in hindsight. Grian kneels on the couch, sideways so his body won’t be blocking Xelqua’s vision.

          “There’s three colors here, mostly,” Grian begins. “Pink, orange, and blue. Scar has all three colors, but mostly blue across his scars, and pink makes the biggest blotches here. They’re lower, here, and then these-“ he rises on his knees and spreads his fingers the match the shape. “-in orange and blue are cut-like, and usually higher up.”

     Humming in acknowledgement, Xelqua flips his head back and forth and starts glowing brightly. While his physical eyes close, the glowing ones open wide, and their pupils start flicking around. Grian almost makes a noise, but he doesn’t want to break Xelqua’s concentration.

     A few minutes pass.

     Xelqua opens his physical eyes, and the glowing fades. Then he shakes his head in a much more deliberate manner.

          “I can’t sense anything weird here. Scar and Jellie noises are the loudest, and you since you’re here, and also Mumbo and your brother really quietly.”

     …Why would attempting to listen to the Song make Xelqua’s eyes glow?

          “I don’t like that,” is what actually comes out of Grian’s mouth. “Not even something that could be Cub?”

          “I don’t think, um, the Song can go back that far? No echoes.”

          “Huh.” Grian slides to his feet. “Maybe we could try to find Cub’s workroom after you eat and try the same thing there.”

     Xelqua launches himself into the air. “Sure!”

- - - - -

     One snack time later, both halves of Boatem’s newest Magical Girl wander through the dark house with Grian’s phone aloft. Grian is fumbling through his own memory attempting to locate Cub’s workroom. It was always easier when Cub was in it, making small noises as he put together things for VexCorp and for Scar. Grian is pretty sure it’s on the ground floor, with windows facing their yard, but Scar loves to redecorate. Trying to remember the way by how denim any particular couch is will not help here.

     The markings are still present, too, which only adds credence to Grian’s new theory about what happened to Cub. Blue and orange ribbons, pink blotches, and the odd mixture on certain surfaces. Plenty of Cub’s small, finished creations are still present on shelves and tables. Nothing that Grian can see is damaged, but that probably would’ve been taken as evidence, or maybe Scar would’ve already cleaned it up.

     Despite the late and/or early hour, exploring Scar’s house with Xelqua is oddly jolly. Most of the doors are locked, or blocked, or otherwise stuck, but Grian keeps trying anyway. Especially ones that have splashes along the bottom or blotches on the knobs. Xelqua flutters along behind him and sniffs the doors to try and divine what lies behind them, and occasionally describes a smell Grian finds worrying. What does ‘cucumbers and lasagna’ mean, and how does Xelqua know what lasagna smells like?

      The next corner he turns reveals a striped hallway featuring a massive steel door.

     Yes. That’s it. Cub’s workroom.

          “That door! How are we going to get it open?” Grian points with his phone hand, and Xelqua scuttles out along his forearm.

          “It doesn’t have a handle that I can see,” Xelqua notes.

     Grian shifts his arm to point at the wall beside the door, or more specifically the control panel and the small red light indicating that it’s still locked.

          “It’s locked from this side; need to hit the right buttons.”

     Looping up Grian’s arm, Xelqua hums and flips his head around.

          “We don’t need keys?”

     Instead of having to carefully position his phone to keep allowing Xelqua to see, Grian turns on one of the stained-glass lamps on the hall table. His phone goes back in his pocket, and he rubs his newly freed hands. It’s not reminiscent of a cartoon villain at all.

          “Each of these buttons is numbered, right? If we hit the buttons, they will put numbers here–“ Grian taps the small screen, no longer washed-out by the tiny red light. “-and then if they are the correct numbers, the light will turn green and the door will move downward.”

     Cub had designed the system to be Scar-proof, which meant that it didn’t have a bunch of steps to open and would also not trap Scar in the room. There are four digits in the code from the size of the screen, and a number pad with each button a different color, though some are tainted by markings. Maybe the colors were chosen to help Scar remember? If it’s four digits, it’s probably not Cub’s lucky number of 135.

          “So, it’s like a secret phrase?” Xelqua asks, having shuffled up to Grian’s shoulder.

          “Yes! I think we’ll have to guess it, though,” Grian says. “Shouldn’t be too hard, Scar has to be able to remember it.”

     He examines the panel again. Four slots on the screen, all numbers from 0-9, not anything new. What number would be easiest for Scar to remember? Crouching, Grian pokes at a low shelf, trying to rustle up a clue. There are plenty of framed photos and small inventions Grian could carefully lift and check for any dates, but instead his eyes fall on the prints stained into the wood and then up against the wall.

          “Xelqua, I think… If the Rogue broke in to steal Cub, the marks on the panel are on the buttons we should use.”

     Loudly gasping, Xelqua flails on Grian’s shoulder.

          “Which ones? Can I-“

     He falls silent as Grian points, first to the zero beside the enter key and then up to the one and two.

          “Not four different numbers, unfortunately, and it’s definitely not Cub’s lucky number, but it’s more of a lead than we had!”

     Xelqua nods excitedly and wiggles carefully as he thinks.

          “So, what numbers do those make that would be likely… it could be a month - January or February, like 0-2-0-1? And maybe 2-0-1-0; it could be a year.”

          “Scar and Cub’s birthdays are in summer, and Scar’s has a nine in it I’m pretty sure,” Grian adds, and only tries the first two suggestions.

     Both times, the lock only beeps grumpily at them.

          “I wish it’d tell us if we got some of the numbers in the right spot,” says Xelqua.

          “Would defeat the purpose of a lock, probably,” says Grian, distracted. He’s thinking about numbers Scar would know. If not his and Cub’s birthdays, then it’s probably (hopefully) a year, and not 2010.

     Wait.

     Hold on.

          “I think you were almost right, and if we combine your guesses,” Grian begins.

          “Really?” Xelqua chirps, delighted.

     Grian steps forward and hits-

          “2011 was the year this house was built. Scar designed it,” Grian explains, and the lock clicks green.

     The halves of Aria cheer as the door lowers.

     While Xelqua immediately lunges into the air to zip into the revealed space, Grian freezes in place. He scans over the room and the sweet bubble of success pops and sinks.

     If this house is splattered with magical markings, Cub’s workroom is painted with them. It isn’t the automatic lights. Every surface, the tables and counters, shelves and mechanisms, even the floor and ceiling, just swirling with pink, orange, and blue. And, and, they’re bright! Strong!

     Either something spent a lot of time in here, or…

     Well. Something very magical happened.

     And Cub… was likely here at that time, huh?

          “Grian?”

     Oh, he’s just been standing here, freaking out.

          “I- Xelqua, can you- It’s covered in markings. Glowing.”

     There is a moment of silence. Freed from his dread, Grian squints into the workroom, trying to spot his friend. They might as well investigate a little normally before Xelqua does that magic thing he does. Whatever corner Xelqua has wriggled into is hidden from the doorway, however, so Grian grits his teeth and places one foot in the center of an orange blast-mark.

     Nothing happens.

     Grian takes another step, then another, and then does not startle when Xelqua flops out from behind a machine Grian cannot identify. Well. He doesn’t scream. He might flinch a little bit.

          “You aren’t creeped out at all?”

     Xelqua blinks.

          “Nothing is moving, there’s just… buzzing?”

     That’s fair. Grian isn’t sure what Vexcorp is focused on, but Cub’s workroom has many different machines and parts under the glow. There are boxes of scrap, screws, tools, and specialized parts, and many, many legs. Not flesh legs! Metallic ones, and Grian is surprised that Xelqua isn’t concerned by the number of armored legs hanging from the ceiling or carefully unfolded but collecting dust. Grian is a little concerned, and he knows exactly why Cub has so many mechanical legs in his workroom. Well. Grian is mostly concerned because the legs are just as covered in markings as the workshop and the person whom the legs are designed for.

     Xelqua bounces over to the mechanical exoskeleton that Grian hesitantly reaches out to touch. With all the enthusiasm of an Earth ferret down a tunnel, Xelqua climbs into the empty casing and wriggles around to blink at Grian. It’s unfairly cute.

          “Comfy in there? This one even has padding, I wonder if Scar ever wore it,” Grian muses.

     That is what causes Xelqua to hum in confusion. “People making movies need armor? Well, I guess you did get attacked by spiders, and that Warden.”

     Now, Grian is blinking rapidly in confusion and not because of how magically bright this room is. Right. Xelqua wouldn’t know…

          “Well, it’s not just armor. Cub made these since Scar can’t walk by himself – they call it an exoskeleton, even though Scar already has bones,” Grian says.

     Xelqua hums, flashing bright purple, and twists to look at Grian upside-down. He’s accidentally caught his nose under his tail, but since he clearly has something on his mind, Grian takes a breath. He doesn’t want to talk about Scar’s history without his permission, even though he’s talking to a secret magical creature!

          “Why would having bones mean that he doesn’t have an exoskeleton? Isn’t that just outside bones?”

     Well, never mind then. Grian is glad they are both confused in this conversation.

          “On Earth, most things either have endoskeletons or exoskeletons. Some vertebrates do have external armor, but it’s often connected to their inside bones. Do creatures where you’re from have …both?”

          “Yes! Well, sort of. There are these teleporting spirits and they definitely have exoskeletons and endoskeletons. They’re from the End, though, but they teleport to the World.”

     Xelqua pulls himself up onto the outside of Scar’s exoskeleton as he speaks and wobbles up to wave his paws as he talks.

          “They’re usually all black with purple eyes, and if you look at them, they get really mad, and they’re so big that I usually just hide. Not as big as the Warden though! Maybe I can…”

     Scanning the workroom, Xelqua takes to the air. He dives toward an oddly neat desk and tugs one of the sketchbooks free. Grian tugs the chair out and balances the cup of pens as Xelqua pulls on one. He has to hold it like a toddler, with both hands (paws?), but is nonetheless determined to draw something.

          “What are these spirits called? Or do they not have a name because they’re from the End?” Grian asks carefully. He’s very confused. There are even more dimensions beyond the Rift?

     Pausing in his efforts, Xelqua shrugs, then continues drawing.

          “We call them Endermen.”

          “Hm,” Grian begins slowly. “So they have… ender-skeletons. Well. That’s all nice and ominous. Will we have to worry about them?”

     Grian tries to imagine fighting a teleporting foe, and his headache doubles.

          “Only if you look at them! See, they’re really tall and skinny,” Xelqua says, putting down his pen.

     The drawing is a stick figure.

     Honestly, it’s probably pretty special for a creature without thumbs, but whatever Xelqua is trying to convey is lost on Grian. It reminds him of drawings Jimmy made when they were little.

     Playing along, Grian asks, “So they have black exoskeletons?”

          “Yes! The only time I saw one up close, their arms were really cool. The joints have a bunch of plates that layer over each other – like that arm!”

     Arm?

     Scar doesn’t need an exoskeleton for his arm. What did Cub make?

     Grian turns slowly, scanning the bright, swirling colors for the armlike shape Xelqua has spotted. There are boxes completely full of strange objects, a glass containment section with a dark blue claw (?) in it, a plant with a bright light emanating from the bloom, but nothing. What is Xelqua pointing at?

     It’s when Grian is finally facing the door that he sees it. A metallic arm, hung to the left side of the door. Perfectly silver, but somehow delicate fur patterns are carved into every plate. As if in a trance, Grian takes a few slow steps toward it, and Xelqua jumps up to his shoulder to continue chattering innocently.

          “The Endermen are really good at taking weird chunks out of the world! They carry them around and will put them in in strange places-“

     Grian is not listening. Well, not consciously. The sounds are entering his head but aren’t getting any further. The arm is perfectly still, but Grian can imagine it moving and flexing up to unhook itself from the wall. Its fingers are clawed, and the magical lights reflecting off its silver fur give it the illusion of movement.

     The lights, reflecting.

     The arm is clean silver.

          “That isn’t supposed to be here,” Grian interrupts.

          “-really distinct smell, I can always tell when they’ve been nearby- What?”

     Raising his own arm, Grian points at the mechanical one. Now that he’s noticed, he can’t pull his eyes away from the only other thing in the room not covered in magic.

          “Everything – everything – in this room is glowing except for that. When the rest of the room was marked, that wasn’t there. It’s clean, blank. The hook might be green at the top, but otherwise? This is new.”

     He can’t tear his eyes away from it anymore. He is fully expecting it to move if he walks up to it. He can’t believe it didn’t move when they opened the door.

     Wobbling, Xelqua leans towards Grian’s ear and whispers, “Why would it be put up after Cub… was lost?”

          “I don’t know. …The door was locked, even, but you were just talking about a Spirit that could teleport…”

     Grian hears Xelqua sniff, and then he whispers again.

          “It doesn’t smell like the End in here, but Cub was taken a while ago, right? It smells more like deep caves, at least to me.”

     Grian has nothing to say to that. He manages to nod.

     There is silence for a long moment, save for breath and the hum of electricity. How is Grian going to explain this to Scar? He probably should, right? This thing definitely wasn’t in this room, but would Scar even know that?

     How would Grian even prove to Scar that it was strange? ‘Oh yeah, I can see glowy lights on everything in this room except this hand, where is it from?’ Scar isn’t that gullible. Grian would have to prove it some other way.

     Xelqua takes a breath like he’s going to speak.

     Somewhere across the house, a very loud crash rings out.

          “What was that?” both man and Spirit yelp, and Xelqua digs into Grian’s shoulder.

     Getting a face full of feathers, Grian tries to steady Xelqua and asks, “Should we check it out?”

     Xelqua is breathing rapidly under Grian’s hands.

          “…Maybe Aria should.”

          “Oh, that’s a much safer idea.”

     The transformation seems to sweep over Grian much more quickly than before. When the Song rushes in, its tempo is just as panicked as the Spirit’s breathing. Whatever made that noise is very dangerous. And someone went missing in this very house!

     Aria’s wings are not very helpful in such a maze, but she tries to remember the paths Grian and Xelqua have taken. There were a lot of stripes, and little miniature buildings, and a couch made of denim. Unhelpful – she doesn’t know where the crash originated. She has to try something else. The markings? No, now that she is looking for them, she notices they are too faint – like stains in the air instead of on surfaces like what Grian can see. Strange, but not enough to override the emergency.  

     What can she do to find whatever is haunting Scar’s house quickly, before it causes more damage or even steals another person?

     Is there anything nearby that can help? There are the markings, the rooms of varying themes, the beat of her heart and heels on various surfaces. At the edge of her hearing, there are footsteps and very muffled speech. Panicked, with a lot of rustling clothing, but no crying or screams. Grian’s friends! But they might not be near the Rogue either. She can’t tell who is who just by listening and looking to her left and right and into the room with what looks like blue smoke coalescing across the boards.

     The only thing that gets any louder – or changes at all! – is the Song of Fate.

     Left and looking into the room have loud, rapid patterns that fall off when she heads to the right. She’s very glad no one else is here to watch her test this, running back and forth in a dark hallway while trying not to hit anything with her skirt or wings.

     Then she considers that if anyone was here, then she’d at least be able to protect them, and she scrunches her nose. She has a heading now! At least until it tapers off again. Bouncing off the wall at the T-junction, she whirls in place, then follows the beat down the right.

     It’s a lot like playing hot-or-cold in Xelqua’s childhood memories, except instead of being blindfolded and listening to whoever was chosen as the eyes, it’s Aria chasing her own magic. She supposes that two people are still technically involved. Having human height does help with speed considerably.

     Her wings are still very much in the picture, as proven by them nearly cracking the walls when another crash shakes the night.

     That second crash heralds a scream, very familiar to half of Aria’s ears. Jimmy! The note he hits is pulled into the Song, and Aria chases it along. All of the sounds become louder and clearer, not just the alarm drumbeat. Seems to be the right way, then!

           “-that thing!?” Oh, that’s Mumbo.

     Oh, that’s Mumbo right there!

     Aria flicks her wings out and skids to a stop. The resulting gale knocks over several small objects and thoroughly ruffles the people in the hallway. All three of Grian’s friends are frozen in poses of confusion and terror. Jimmy is the farthest from her, fists up like he was going to punch something despite his fish hat pulled low over his head. Scar, shirtless, is leaning against a doorway with a baseball bat, and then Mumbo is holding a chair like a shield with his eyes squinched shut. Given that the chair is about a fourth of his size, it wouldn’t do much.

      Oh, right, Aria has startled everyone!

          “I take it there was a Rogue here?” Aria asks, tucking her wings flat and standing up as straight as possible.

     Jimmy nods shakily, and Scar says “Yes! It was blue!”

     Mumbo shudders in relief and puts the chair down, then leans on it. It’s a little disconcerting, how immediately Grian’s friends relax at her presence. She’s new! …They don’t know that though. And, hopefully, if she manages to not be recognized, they won’t learn.

          “None of you got hit?” she asks, stepping forward.

     Three shaking heads.

          “That’s good. Then please retreat and call this in. I will keep tracking it.” She loops around Jimmy and hopes the lighting isn’t bright enough that he can notice the Grian traits.

     Her stomach drops as Jimmy grabs her arm.

          “Wait, there’s still my brother, he’s still somewhere!”

          “Yeah, his room is in that direction, too!” Scar adds.

     She freezes, for barely a moment. Forcing her feathers to relax, she turns to look at them. This is bad. Not in the way they’re thinking of bad, but still bad! How is she going to keep them from looking for Grian?

     Scar pushes away from the wall and walks between her and Jimmy, tapping her lightly.

          “I can lead you to Grian’s room!” he swings the bat up to point further down the hall.

          “Please don’t run into trouble,” she responds automatically, biting down on the tired ‘again, Scar’ that wants to slip out.

          “Yeah!” Jimmy squeaks, whipping his arm out in front of Scar so suddenly they collide with a sound like a high-five. “Oh God, why are you still shirtless?”

     Behind Aria, Mumbo makes a choked noise. Aria might have giggled, also.

     Scar finishes windmilling his arms and folds them over his chest. “Can’t a man be shirtless in his own home? We have important business to attend to!”

          “Put on a jumper, Scar!” Mumbo insists, then realizes, “Oh, I’m sorry miss, my name is Mumbo, this is Scar and Jimmy. We’re looking for Grian.”

          “Mumbo, Scar, Jimmy, and Grian,” Aria repeats. She’s proud of herself for remembering to not say Timmy. Hm. How had Musician bowed when introducing herself? Aria isn’t confidant that she manages to pull it off - wings, balance, trying to hurry, you know how it is. “I am Aria, Bow of Fate.”

     Scar wanders back through the door he had been leaning in, and Jimmy fumbles his phone out to call in this incident – which will be trouble if she doesn’t sort it out before the team gets here and doesn’t find Grian.

          “Alright. You may follow me when the Rogue Response Team arrives,” Aria announces towards the doorway and Mumbo, and spins on her heel as Jimmy’s call connects.

     He squawks again, but then hastily begins explaining to the person on the other end of the line that a Rogue is in the house. Aria follows the Song of Fate down the corridor, which continues to increase in speed. She hears Jimmy ask what the address is before the Song soars as she takes a left.

     The sounds start to resemble rustling, and Aria thinks she can actually hear it with her real ears. She certainly can feel it vibrating along her spine. The Rogue isn’t moving quickly and is instead poking around in the nearby twisted branch of the house.

     Perfect. She can just trap it in a room with her so it can’t get at Grian’s friends while they look for him.

     The Rogue has left a trail of disturbed knickknacks that Aria could follow even if she couldn’t hear it rattling. Each of the little houses and cars have landed in slate blue marks with tattered edges, like some giant ghost has left steaming wet pawprints while kicking over Scar and Cub’s stuff.

     When she finally slowly opens the door with the noisy intruder, she revises her statement: the marks left are probably made by wings smacking into things like a tossed chicken. Also that the Song is bad at indicating how many particular targets there might be; there are creatures, at least three but probably more, all over the room. They are about the size of chickens, so the earlier comparison stands, and all blue and grey wings and white bone armor. They don’t look very intimidating.

     Hm. Xelqua is smaller than them and he’s strong enough to power an entire Magical Girl. And with how much color was all over the workroom, these Rogues can probably do something big.

     Luckily, they’re all distracted by bottles in a cupboard. It’s the first time she hasn’t had to rush into a battle! She can actually analyze the situation first!

     Carefully, she eases the door shut without engaging the latch. It’s unclear where one of the Rogues end and the other begins, but what she can see correlates to the phantoms in Xelqua’s memory. Flying predators that attack at night, and only the most exhausted and vulnerable prey …like an inventor pulling an all-nighter. Usually – usually – phantoms have ghostly magic that lets them slide into solid objects to hide during the day, but that doesn’t explain what happened to Cub.

     Aria crouches, wings flaring a little as she tries to balance. She has to be fast and quiet to take the group by surprise. The problem, then, is that she doesn’t have a weapon. The Warden and the spiders were all big, loud targets that were in an open enough space that her Song could be deployed. This is Scar and Cub’s house, and Aria doesn’t want to destroy it with her magical blasts. What else does she have?

     Big boots, but her wings affect her balance enough that she probably can’t pull off a perfect kick of Grian’s skill. Similarly, the large, chunky claws attached to her hands are good for forming the curves of her magic eyes, but not great for tucking down into fists.

     Oh wait, she’s ridiculous. She has giant bird talons.

     She isn’t sure why she has giant bird talons as Xelqua’s claws are proportionate for a Watcher and/or a ferret, but as they’re here and attached so she certainly won’t have to worry about losing her grip on a weapon.

     Before she can worry about losing her grip on a phantom, she has to catch one. The group of phantoms are loud, certainly, and none have turned around just yet - they’re bowling over the bottles and crafting supplies in the cupboard. Her steps are very carefully timed to the sounds from the cabinet, like a game of Red Light, Green Light – only move when the phantoms are noisy.

     Of course, the phantoms have been tossing around the contents of the cupboard for more than the two minutes she’s been creeping up behind them. Apparently, one has now decided that it’s done with its random chaos and whirls around not a foot from Aria’s extended talons.

     Three shrieks: Aria’s battle cry, the phantom’s rattling alarm, and the Song going high-pitched and sharp. The phantom before her ripples pure white. Purple sparks flutter through the air as Aria leaps forward, but the phantom has just enough time to jump into the air and summon its compatriots. She lunges again and clacks her talons against each other. Not intentionally! The phantom, still misty white, slides right through her fingers like a cloud. Crafty!

          “Hey! That’s rude!” she calls as the Rogue continues to drift left and whirl in the air.

     Uncaring, the phantom waggles its jaw and flaps a loose circle. The others – two more heads, but more might be blocked still – poke out of the cupboard and shriek. She’ll ignore them unless they take off. For now, she wriggles her talons again and turns to face the flying Rogue cautiously. She can’t hear anything new in the Song, it’s just repeating the rapid clattering from the surprise. Hopefully it will warn her if the cupboard phantoms try to jump her while she catches their friend.

     In the air, the pale phantom circles. It isn’t staying at a single altitude and ducks down right before it would fly over her head before shooting back up, like it keeps chickening out of following through on an attack. Aria rocks on her feet carefully and flexes her talons.

     On the next sweep, she beats her wings once and leaps up to catch the little Rouge. It squawks, twisting around until she squeezes. Abruptly, the press of scales beneath her fingers pops into crystal and the rest of the phantom fades, from silver to blue and then to dust.

     Aria then has to duck as the remaining phantoms shriek their own war cries. She warbles out her own notes to add to the noise and the number of flying objects in the room – summoned eyes bob in the air from the curve of her wings. She wishes she could select specific eyes to see through instead of all of them at once; it’s far too disorientating as the phantoms continue to scream and loop about, nipping at her wings and jumping away before she can hit them. They back off when she whips the eyes around her, but the movement takes too much breath to keep up for very long.

     All the same, the pause is long enough for Aria to get her back to the door and get a better view of the remaining phantoms. There are three of them, and when they notice Aria is looking, they turn white. The shrieking doesn’t let up.

          “Which one of you is next?” Aria asks, patting her dress to find the pockets again.

     The phantoms writhe around each other in the air and then seem to come to a consensus. They all turn to her, scream, and charge.

          “Of course.”

     Aria regrets wasting her breath – the eyes she has summoned raise and a few pop as the phantoms run into them. The Song makes a twinkling glass noise, and the shards hover with Aria’s hiss before digging into the frontmost phantom. The other two impact with her wings and bite. Flailing, she slams into the door and one of the mouths releases. There are two more shrieks, then two soft pops, and a voice going “Woah!” muffled through the door.

     Before Aria can deal with whoever snuck after her, her attention is caught by something glowing on the floor. Another core! That first phantom must have been unable to deal with the shards of eye. She pockets it as another yelp comes through the door.

     Something explodes.

     Aria scrambles up and catches her claws on the door handle as someone yells outside. The door frames the revealed chaos perfectly.

     Jumping on one foot, Miss Hawkeye is swatting the two remaining phantoms with her bow. At least it’s not one of Grian’s friends? There are soot marks on the ceiling. One of the phantoms is looping around the other Magical Girl with earsplitting shrieks while the other hovers to the left, pale like it’s preparing magic.

     None of them have noticed her.

     If only the phantom wasn’t so high up, she could snatch it without any movement that might catch its eye…

     She jumps anyway, wings stretching along the hallway. Her claws flex, the phantom’s tail flicks, but no, the swirl of air shoves it up and whooshes through the room. Very distractingly.

     Miss Hawkeye yells almost as loudly as the phantoms, but Aria ignores the words because the Rogues are skittering away.

          “C’mon!” She yells, and races down the lefthand hallway.

     Both phantoms flicker between blue and white. They whistle and rattle to each other as Aria chases and Miss Hawkeye scrambles to follow.

          “When did you get here?” Miss Hawkeye demands.

     Oh, no, what should she say? Well, technically, she did just-

          “I followed the sound of the phantoms!”

     Miss Hawkeye ooohs. Excellent, that was vague enough. The phantoms turn pale and take a sharp turn to the right, through a door.

     Not a doorway, a door.

     Right through it. It’s closed. Aria pulls up short with a flap of her wings and fails to stop fast enough to not slide by it, which turns out to be fine as Miss Hawkeye doesn’t stop immediately either. In fact, she only stops when she notices that Aria has.

          “Hey, they can’t have gone far-“

          “Shh!” Aria hisses, leaning against the door. The phantoms are chirping less aggressively, almost whispering like children playing hide-and-seek.

     Miss Hawkeye startles. “Oh, wait, are you listening for them? Okay, I’ll be quiet.”

     Somehow, Aria doubts that. Miss Hawkeye’s heartbeat is plenty loud on its own, not to mention the vague buzzing that follows her around. Maybe a specialized arrow? No, focus, how far are the phantoms from the door?

     Soft squawking. The light squeak of Aria’s talons against painted blue wood. A muffled thump, louder rattling. The leathery flap of wings, definitely headed away from her as the clacking instrumentation in the Song fades.

     Aria leans back and whispers, “They’re moving away from the door, but they aren’t running – speed-flying? – anymore.”

     Miss Hawkeye is leaning towards her, and lowers the hands that were pressed against her mouth and grins.

          “They think they juked us!”

          “There’s just the two left, right? One for each of us. How about you take the one on the left and I’ll take the one on the right?”

     That’s so many lefts and rights for one set of instructions. If this was Grian talking to Scar, he’d have to actually indicate which way was which.

     Miss Hawkeye simply nods. “If they’re stacked, I’ll take the one on top!”

     Aria nods but narrows her eyes. That has the cadence of a short joke.

     Even if she didn’t intend that, Miss Hawkeye certainly means to step up right next to Aria and almost lean over her to twist the doorknob. Aria hisses and bats at Miss Hawkeye’s ponytail.

          “What?” Miss Hawkeye asks, freezing.

     Aria slips out from under her arm. Tall people have no concept of personal space if nothing is in their face.

          “Let me summon some eyes first! You already have your projectiles.”

          “Eyes?”

     Shaking out her wings, Aria hums as quietly as she can. The Song rises in the air in her ears and then on her voice, and Miss Hawkeye makes another confused noise.

          “The orbs? Why do you call them eyes?”

     Miss Hawkeye startles a little when Aria looks up at her. Hmm.

          “They peel off of my eyespots?”

     Both Magical Girls scrunch their noses at that phrasing, but Aria doesn’t take it back. She spins the eye in her claws and lifts it to Miss Hawkeye’s level.

          “They also have pupils.”

     Miss Hawkeye leans away and lets go of the handle.

          “No?”

     Aria spins the one in her hands. Yes, it does. Just like the others floating around her.

          “Well, okay, they are kind of translucent instead of being perfectly clear, but there is a darker side. See?” She taps the false lens, making a nice chime, but Miss Hawkeye is not convinced.

          “Uh… No?”

     Huffing, Aria stares at her. Oh, wait-

          “Maybe only I can see them? Or –“ Aria points at the light blue patches on the door from where the Phantoms slid through it. “Can you see these?”

     Miss Hawkeye eyes the door like it’s going to split open and attempt to bite her.

          “No, again,” she says. “What are you seeing?”

     Aria hums, the eyes swirling.

          “The eyes are eyes. They each have darker spots like pupils. The door – a lot of things in this hallway, in this house – glow like there’s a blacklight on fluorescent paint.”

     She doesn’t think she should bring up that only one of her components can see the stains normally. That feels a bit too much like saying she fused in this house, and she’s already going to have one heck of a time unfusing safely.

          “Can you really not see any magical marks?” she asks, just to make sure.

     Instead of ‘no’ for the fourth time tonight, Miss Hawkeye simply shakes her head. Aria wishes her magical sight could let her see what kind of expression the other Magical Girl is making under her visor. Her mouth is carefully neutral.

          “Guess you have some kind of super-senses all around, huh?” she says eventually, less chipper than she’s been all night.

          “Uh, yeah!” Aria says nervously. “I’ll tell you if I start, I don’t know, feeling the ghosts of magic or something.”

     Bingo! Miss Hawkeye laughs again. “What does that even mean?”

          “I don’t know, it hasn’t happened yet!”

     Aria aims her best smile up at the other Magical Girl, then sweeps her wings to her right so they gesture towards the door.

          “Shall we?”

           “Let’s shall!”

     The leather – or magical, leather-adjacent material – of Miss Hawkeye’s gloves doesn’t squeak as she turns the handle again. Aria flexes her talons. The revealed room is a library, bigger than Aria expected, with squishy couches and bright, swirling steam in pink, orange, and two shades of blue.

     One of the phantoms is coiled around the topmost rung of one of those sliding ladders attached to bookcase on the left wall. It’s watching the other eat paper on a desk in the middle of the room.

     Miss Hawkeye draws her bow, arrow magically stringing itself as she pulls it back. Aria hits a note that sends the eyes hurtling through the air. The phantoms squeal and launch into the air. Similarly to when they’d rushed Aria, the eyes are in the perfect spot for Aria’s target to just run into them, and several pop.

     The rest are blown away as the arrow loosed by Miss Hawkeye explodes. Wait, no, turns into a tornado; the eyes and the battered phantom are drawn back across the room. The miniature storm tugs at Aria’s hair, skirts, and feathers, but it can’t stop her from detonating the final eyes as the phantoms are entangled in the wind. Instead of the normal twinkling chimes and flashes, the Song almost snarls with the sound of many shards of magical glass and rattling phantoms as the storm whirls.

     Should they be worried about two kinds of magic mixing together like this? Aria glances at Miss Hawkeye. Again, the visor renders the Magical Girl’s face unreadable; that means worrying is silly, right?

     The light show ramps up as the phantoms are reduced to cores and Aria takes a hesitant step forward. Apparently, the resistance supplied by their wings kept the tornado from reaching its maximum speed. Whining like a stressed gear, all the background beat drops out of the Song. The shards of eye turn into purple dust, then wink out as their magic fades. The storm fades, too.

     Two cores drop to the carpet, noiselessly.

     There is complete silence.

     Nothing.

     Until-

     Miss Hawkeye takes a step, then casually walks around the low tables and seating to scoop up the two cores. Every footfall vibrates in the air, in Aria’s bones like it’s trying to restart her heart. It certainly restarts the Song, thumping along gently after all that jagged action. Aria presses her hands against her chest, not entirely convinced she’s fine.

     What was that? The Song just… cut out! There was nothing! Until Miss Hawkeye moved, Aria couldn’t even hear her own heartbeat! It’s fluttering under her fingertips now, which is good, but why did it even flicker? What did mixing their magic do?

          “Cutiepie? Aria? Hey? Are you… Okay?”

     Miss Hawkeye is in front of her, ponytail swinging and knees bent. Why is she crouched? She isn’t that tall – oh. Aria sat down. Hmm.

          “Is magic supposed to do that?” Aria tries, shakily.

     Miss Hawkeye glances over at where the tornado was, then back at Aria.

          “…Explode?”

     Aria wiggles her hand.

          “Make everything silent when it did.”

     The pause as Miss Hawkeye flicks her attention back and forth between Aria and the now-empty floor feels much longer than it probably is, but as it can only be described as a lack of speech and not sound, Aria attempts to match her breathing to the beat of the Song.

     Finally, Miss Hawkeye asks, “Do you know what magic overuse is?”

          “No?”

     The wry twist in the other Magical Girl’s mouth indicates that she expected this. She sticks her tongue thoughtfully out and presses her hands together.

          “So, because there isn’t enough ambient magic or something, all the magic we use is generated by our Spirit, okay?” Miss Hawkeye begins, and folds her legs so she can sit comfortably. She waits until Aria nods to continue. “But Spirits usually only have to power their cores, and we’re not all cores, we’ve got-“ She pinches her own arm. “-Meat. Human stuff, too. Which is harder to …send the magic through. Not as …oh! Conductive. Cores conduct magic but flesh is bad at it, so we can run low if we use too much, and we get sick.”

     That… does make sense. If she is low on magic, then she was simply unable to sense The Song of Fate. It didn’t stutter. It’s just that Grian didn’t sleep! Xelqua is putting in too much energy!

     She raises a hand to scrub at her face and bumps into a solid force just above her skin. A mask? Hmm. That’s… good? Interesting that she didn’t notice its weight. Wait, no, she can think about that later, Miss Hawkeye is still talking!

          “-the reasons a bunch of Magical Girls will show up to things, because then we can all share the effort and then it’s less noticeable for our pieces. Human and Spirit bits. Components. I am also tired!” She chirps brightly.

          “We should wrap up then. You have the other cores?” Aria asks, trying to pull her last dregs of energy to the surface along with the cores she collected from her pockets.

          “Yes! You better go to bed as soon as you unfuse, okay?”

          “Sure,” says Aria, surrendering the cores with the expectation that the team Jimmy called will be keeping at least half of her up for a while longer.

- - - - -

     Twenty minutes later, after awkwardly hiding in a random room to unfuse, Grian upholds that opinion. He sits in the plushest armchair in the sitting room the response team has decided to use as a base. He is, despite his and Miss Hawkeye’s wishes, awake. Xelqua may or may not be awake, if being scarf-shaped counts as being conscious. Grian doesn’t think so.

     He is pleased, though – apparently Jimmy and Scar managed to smack the phantoms when they’d tumbled through the hallways and Mumbo had thrown things, so none of them are hurt! Though that might be because they were together, and the Phantoms couldn’t gang up on them individually.

          “Hey,” Grian says, the first time his spoken since he was cleared, again. “Buddy system. Let’s not go anywhere by ourselves for tonight.”

     He might regret that. But he’s also apparently too tired to be Aria properly, so he might as well have backup.

     Jimmy, standing with hands on hips across the room, makes a thoughtful noise. Several members of the response team look up and make various agreeing noises, but the vague blur of their auras don’t waver as they don’t turn around. Scar, rolling around on the floor with Jellie, makes cooing noises at her. Apparently, everyone else is too tired for words.

     It’s quiet for a while until the rest of the response team regroups. Scar gets up – after being gently kicked by Mumbo – to talk to the people confirming the security of his house. Grian closes his eyes and strains his ears.

          “-else, Mr. Goodtimes, but neither can we find a point of egress. No broken or open windows or doors, no gaps in walls,” says a tired man, the red-haired one who had escorted Grian back to this room.

     Scar makes his ‘nodding violently’ noise.

          “No, no, that’s fine, that makes sense. The ones that came by us could go through things like ghosts! I think they just wanted to come inside, and the walls couldn’t stop them. Maybe the Magical Girls chased them out?”

     Grian can’t help scrunching his face. How did Miss Hawkeye get in?

          “That was mentioned in your reports, yes,” says another team member. “but neither the Rogues nor the Magical Girls have been identified.”

          “Oh, those phantom-y guys are new?” Scar asks, voice pitched up like he’s trying to suppress a comment.

     Grian opens his eyes just a little, enough to find Scar’s (still bare) back from behind his eyelashes. The bright lines of his scars catch the eye easily. Jellie is hooked over her owner’s shoulder, and is herself squinting at the room in turn. Jimmy leans into the conversation.

          “The Magical Girl that ran through right before I called you guys was the same one from earlier, with the spiders? She had pink and gold wings.”

          “With the spiders?” says the first member of the response team.

          “Yeah!” Grian and company chirp.

          “This is your second Rogue alert of the day?” says the other member, higher in pitch than before.

          “I wasn’t there!” Jimmy protests, offended at the idea that he could be so careless as to get into two incidents in one day.

          “Yeah, we got to ride the dragons!” Scar says cheerfully. Normally. Whatever he was trying to keep from escaping his teeth has fled him.

          “I was on magic sickness watch!” Jimmy continues. Mumbo pats him without getting up from his chair.

          “Are we going to have to call Pearl after all?” Grian asks, and Jimmy looks horrified.

          “She’s going to kill me, I just know it,” he says, and the group starts laughing. It’s too early for this.

     Yet again, the response team insists on making sure they all know the recommendations for magic sickness and the red-haired man even asks if they have someone else to watch over them.

     Jimmy looks at Grian with a miserable expression.

     Grian rolls his eyes, but pats his pockets until he finds his phone.

          “It’s at only 2% charge,” Grian lies. Jimmy visibly wilts. Turning to Scar, Grian pulls up his whiniest, most annoying voice. “Scaaaaar, take me back to my room to get my chaaaaarger.”

     Scar and Mumbo make disbelieving noises but Scar does stretch and wander over to the door behind the couch. One of the response workers twitches, aura flickering brightly for a moment, but doesn’t protest. Great! Grian flashes the room the most brilliant smile he can manage under the circumstances and resettles Xelqua on his shoulders. Time to tell Scar about the Phantom theory!

     …How is he going to do that?

      Well, first he has to figure out why he should know this. He’d lied earlier that one of the Magical Girls hid him, so maybe… no. He should figure out what Scar knows first. He’s tired and rusty. He pats Xelqua and takes a deep breath.

          “Have any Rogues shown up before?”

     Scar twitches uncertainly as he pats at the wall for a light switch. He rocks back and forth in place for a second as he opens and closes his mouth.

          “Not recently, no, but there were Magical Girls who came by once. Aqua Vex and Fire Vex. That was a long time ago.”

          “What? Really?”

     How has Scar never mentioned this before? They’re investigating Magical Girls!

          “Yeah.”

     Grian stops waving his hands and squints at the back of Scar’s head.

          “You don’t sound happy about that?”

     Scar leans forward, further hiding his face.

          “I’m thinking something followed… them… here. For Cub,” he says, which astonishingly gets them back on the target subject!

          “Was that visit close to when Cub, uh, was last here?”

     Scar turns left with shoulders hunched. Jellie weaves between the humans’ legs to chirrup comfortingly. Pausing only to pick her up, Scar ducks through another door without looking back.

          “’Bout a week before, I believe,” he says.

     Grian reaches out, but doesn’t catch Scar’s arm. Instead, he returns his hands to Xelqua and takes a deep breath. He has to be so careful, here.

          “Did they leave any magical markers? Like, I don’t know, runes or something?”

     Scar hesitates. Grian wishes he could see Scar’s face. Maybe his aura could help Grian somewhat, if only Grian knew what to look for.

          “Are you asking if the Magical Girls tagged my house?”

          “No, on the inside! The colors in your house!”

          “The colors?” Scar yelps, fully shaken from his melancholy to whirl around and make Jellie squeak.

     He wiggles in place like he’s trying to get an arm free, so Grian reaches out to finally touch him. It doesn’t make Scar any less nervous, but Jellie sniffs his wrist. That’s nice.

          “There’s stripes and … splatters? Like paint? You can’t see it?” Grian asks and hopes the answer is ‘no’.

     Scar goes rigid, aura flaring bright. He stares at Grian with wide, horrified eyes and Grian bites his lip. Did he push too hard? Jellie writhes around and Grian steps forward to keep her from flailing out of Scar’s arms or nicking him with claws.

          “I’m going to take that as a no,” Grian says, trying to smooth over whatever has pressed the power button in Scar’s brain. “But I noticed them recently, and then tonight the Phantoms showed up, so now I’m wondering if that’s related. If they made something that lures in Spirits, but they keep getting Rogues?”

     He doesn’t want to stop talking. Scar hasn’t moved except to track Grian’s fluttering, eyes still wide. Jellie has yet to stop wriggling, but she hasn’t fallen yet.

          “-Or you keep getting Rogues, I suppose. I haven’t seen video of the Vex Sisters in… a while. Were they supposed to come back?”

     Scar flinches and turns his face away. His eyes are closed! Grian is only making this worse. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Jellie manages to push herself up over Scar’s arm so she can look at Grian head-on. Her attention itches just as much as Scar’s pain.

          “Scar? Are you okay?”

     Nothing. Not even a breath.

     Well, no movement.

     The magical markings on Scar’s body, however, are writhing.

     They ripple and lift from his skin like they’re being shaken by repeated earthquakes, blades of light rising from his skin and cutting through his aura.

          “You’re not okay,” Grian announces. “You’re flickering!”

     Scar whips his head around and opens his eyes. They’re just as brightly flashing as the scars.

          “You can see his magic?” yelps a voice, but Scar’s mouth doesn’t move.

     Grian yells. Scar yells. Two more voices yell, and only one of them is familiar! Xelqua has un-scarf’d and scrabbles at Grian’s shoulders as Grian and Scar look down at-

     Jellie?

          “Why?” Scar hisses.

          “What?” Grian yelps again.

     Why is Xelqua moving? Who was that? What is happening!? Grian stumbles back, trying to shove Xelqua back over his shoulder, but the Spirit’s noodle-y body wriggles through his hands. Grian yelps for the third time and lunges forward to try and catch him but only succeeds in bumping into Scar and Jellie.

     Jellie reaches out and catches Xelqua.

     With hands.

     Abruptly, the cat Scar was holding is instead a small, humanoid creature, dripping with soft pink magic. Xelqua is wiggling, but he isn’t scared – he’s chirping “hello, hello, hello!”

     Grian waves his hands around. He was too tired for this hours ago. Scar hoists Jellie and Xelqua up to better examine the Watcher.

     The new voice – Jellie’s voice – pipes up.

          “Who are you, little guy?”

     Xelqua squeals, delighted.

          “I’m Xelqua! I’m a Watcher! Who are you?”

     Scar’s head rises from his apparently-not-a-cat to stare at Grian. It’s Grian’s turn to freeze uncomfortably.

          “I am Queen Jellie,” she says, and wriggles like she is attempting to bow or something. “Eldest of the Royal Cat line.”

     Slowly, hesitantly, the shock in Scar’s eyes softens into something gentle Grian doesn’t understand.

          “Oh! I’m sorry, um, Your Majesty?” Xelqua stutters.

     Just as slowly, Scar starts to smile. Smirk. Offer his best evil grin. It stretches the stripes of magic across his cheeks. The ones that match the Spirit in his arms.

          “Oh, you can just call me Jellie! I’m undercover, you know.”

     Grian points at Scar. Scar opens his mouth.

          “You’re a Magical Girl!?!?!?” they both say at the same time.

     Scar is delighted! Grian is…

     Grian is full of so many emotions. How had Scar managed to lie for… the entirety of their friendship? Jellie is sapient! Scar is magical! Scar decided to suggest the Magical Girl research project!

     Scar is a Magical Girl and there was something very magical in Cub’s workroom.

          “Which Magical Girl are you? When did you become a Magical Girl? Wait –  You said you saw colors, like, Wait- Xelqua, you said you were a Watcher, wasn’t that what- WAIT!” Scar babbles, wobbling in place and shifting Jellie in place of gesturing.

     Grian reaches up and plucks Xelqua into his arms to ward off the impending anxiety. He straightens up and tries to look less baffled than he is.

          “We’re Aria.”

     Scar squeals in delight and Jellie makes a loud ‘mm!’ noise with huge eyes.

          “I was right!” Scar cheers, and the same time Jellie says –

          “Oh, we’ve met you already!”

          “Well, yes, I wasn’t just going to let you and Mumbo get attacked by spiders, even with the Wizard helping,” Grian says, because Xelqua hasn’t stopped making a small, excited ‘eeeee’.

     Jellie shakes her head. “I mean we, as one person, have met you before,” she says with a smug little expression.

     Scar spins her up and she rolls to stand on his shoulders, very like a toddler dressed up as a princess, and they both pose as they speak.

          “We’re Hawkeye!”

     Grian makes a choked noise as he tries to start multiple sentences at once. Xelqua’s ‘eeeee’ becomes an ‘EEEEE’.

     Scar and Jellie start giggling.

          “You’ve been her the whole time?” Grian eventually yells. His friends only laugh harder. “I’ve been freaking out about trying not to give myself away, and you’ve been a Magical Girl, one I have spoken to before, this whole time?”

          “In my defense, I am undercover,” Jellie says.

     Scar giggles, then shakes himself.

          “Actually I’m usually partnered with… well… with Cub,” he says. “The other colors you saw are probably the other two Spirits who are missing.”

          “Oh!” Xelqua breaks out of his excitement and droops over Grian’s shoulder.

     For his part, Grian’s hand come up to cover his mouth.

          “My retainers,” Jellie adds. “Katy Bee and Mr. Finnegan. They’re little, not great at staying in one shape yet.”

          “Children?” Grian asks, through yet another wave of horror. “Something happened to children?”

     Anger, no, rage is an unfamiliar expression on Scar’s face. His tilts his head up to death glare at the lighting inset in the ceiling as his aura sparks and the scar-marks flutter again.

          “Something did,” he says, voice remarkably steady for the context. “and when we find out who… hm. Will you help?”

          “Yes!” yells Xelqua while Grian says “Absolutely!” and leans forward to take Scar’s hands. “We can try to look into things during our research for the documentary-“

     Scar slumps forward with a yelp from Jellie.

          “Thank you,” he says. Grian pats him, and Jellie and Xelqua both bump their heads against him.

     After a second, Scar takes a deep breath and straightens back up. Jellie continues to hide her face in his hair, but her partner has apparently tucked away his emotions. Grian is horrified and impressed – he hadn’t realized other people could do that so well.

     Scar smiles. Grian mirrors him tentatively.

          “How about you tell me about how you two met?” Scar says cheerfully. “I seem to remember we have to track down your charger, too.”

          “You were there, it was literally two days ago,” Grian says.

          “After the lot of you went into the Rift room, Grian was thrown through the window and I caught him,” Xelqua says.

          “You are the little guy from the Observatory’s zoo!” Jellie says, delighted.

     The halves of Miss Hawkeye somehow manage to talk Grian and Xelqua into rehashing the (brief) history of their partnership. It’s nice to be able to tell someone about all of this, even though Scar and Jellie were there for the most part. It still feels unreal to wander through the house and talk to the Spirits. Grian hopes he isn’t dreaming.

     He thinks he’d like to have a proper team again for all these shenanigans. This is nice. Even better, he isn’t dragging someone else into something dangerous on accident. Scar and Jellie were already tangled up in the Magical Girl side of the city, and Xelqua was locked up! They’re going to find Cub! Grian hasn’t had a goal like this since… well, since he moved to Boatem. It settles something in him to have a long-term mission again.

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52012432

It turns out that hiding a Spirit in his bedroom is much easier than Grian expected. The hard part of last night was convincing his sister that he was completely normal and not suffering from magic sickness (or having recently become a Magical Girl). She still insisted on feeding him a lot of soup, but he did sneak some up for Xelqua without being suspicious enough to call out.

Grian also put Scar’s chrysanthemum in a vase he wasn’t aware he owned, and the flower glows brightly to his new sight. Xelqua must have spent a lot of time wrapped around it in the bag for his power to have worn off so strongly.

However, there are other things in his house that glow for reasons he cannot understand: the jacket his brother forgot, a cat mug, and a weird little rock he’d found about a week ago that had looked like an eye. Grian tucks it into his pocket, just in case. They have to make a plan first, before he can get to questions.

Well, actually, they need to eat, but Grian can multitask. Xelqua is having a great time flying around the house and poking things now that Pearl isn’t here, but the scent of cooking food makes for an excellent lure.

“Oooh, what is that called? It smells so nice,” Xelqua asks, landing lightly on Grian’s shoulders.

“Hey! It’s just, ah, it’s eggs and ham? I don’t actually know if you can eat this, I was worried you couldn’t eat the soup last night,” Grian explains, trying not to squirm as Xelqua’s feathers tickle his neck.

“Aw, I was wondering if it had a name like French Toast. One of the scientists liked French Toast. Oh! I can eat almost anything; if I remember correctly, I can eat more things than you!”

Hm. Okay, maybe it is time for some questions.

“From when? Do you remember things from me that were shared?” Grian allows himself to ask, shoving the slices of ham around so they all cook evenly.

Xelqua shakes his head in Grian’s periphery. “The Rift is connected, and it’s also not the only one – you knew that, right? – so we know things about humans! Some Spirits live here full-time, even. I don’t know if any humans live beyond. The scientists in the facility were studying the Rift, but they didn’t know a lot. What do you know?”

This definitely should’ve been a conversation they had last night, but Xelqua looked so peaceful sleeping. Grian bites his lip.

“To put it simply: I don’t think anyone who isn’t a Magical Girl knows that Magical Girls aren’t just some kind of Spirit,” Grian says. He moves to shrug, but remembers something. “Wait, Miss Hawkeye said some people know, but are dangerous. I don’t know who they’d be, since she also said to go back to the Observatory with Cores…”

“Oooooh boooooy…” Xelqua says slowly. He jumps down onto the dishtowel to Grian’s right and pushes his paws up by his face anxiously. “Okay, yeah, that makes sense, you asked what the bond meant and I thought you’d just misheard me…”

Grian and Xelqua look at each other, and have a mutual moment of panic as they both realize how deep of a gulf of understanding spreads between them.

Xelqua is the first to break the silence, jumping into an anxious whirl of white and pink.

“Okay, okay! I didn’t- I guess this is why we were always told to not talk to random humans. Okay. I am Xelqua, I escaped through the Rift because there was a …I don’t know if it’s ever come through the Rift. There was thing I would call a demon, and it wanted to eat me, so I flew until I was in the... The Observatory? I thought it closed from this side, it doesn’t-“

Grian pushes the slices of ham onto a plate with the eggs without interrupting.

“-but the scientists made a weird little house and fed me, so that was good, and I thought they knew more because one of them called me Watcher? Which is what I am, we’re Watchers,” Xelqua says, swirling to a stop and tapping himself in the chest.

“I guess whoever named you is the person we’re supposed to meet,” Grian adds while Xelqua inhales.

He didn’t mean to distract Xelqua, but the Watcher ruffles all his feathers and immediately switches topics.

“Musician! That’s an interesting name for a Spirit, I wonder if they took an English name when they crossed over? Usually we don’t use names that are that… obvious? About what our powers are. The Song of Fate isn’t referenced in my name at all.”

That doesn’t mean that the mysterious Musician has any sound-based powers, then, but Xelqua doesn’t seem to realize this and just jumps up onto Grian’s shoulders again as he turns to cut the eggs and ham into smaller slices. They negotiate portions before Grian walks over to the table, even though Xelqua simply sits on the tabletop instead.

It occurs to Grian, watching Xelqua daintily eat a chunk of egg with his paws, that the Spirit knows just as much about him as he knows about Xelqua.

“So, uh, you had that whole introduction, so. Mine. I’m Grian, you kind of met my sister Pearl but I also have a younger brother named Jimmy, I work for the Hermit Gazette with Mumbo and Scar. Our current assignment – the reason why we were in the Observatory – is to make a documentary on Magical Girls.”

Xelqua’s head peeks over the egg with a wide-eyed delight, and he giggles when Grian pauses.

“Yeah, I dunno how we’ll manage that. Ah, I used to live in another area about seven hours from here named Evo County. I have a college degree – do you know what that is?”

Xelqua nods, swallows, and chirps “You did a lot of school to be very good at something!”

“Yeah, and I swapped around a bit. Oh! Also, I can see glowy auras, but that started happening after Aria, so it’s probably your fault.”

Ruffling his feathers in excitement, Xelqua chirps again and rocks up onto his back paws. He takes a comically deep breath and then explodes into chatter.

“That’s not exactly true! Humans have their own magic capabilities, but they don’t naturally generate magic - usually – so when we linked up, you get to use my magic, but it’s through your powers, that’s so cool!” Xelqua says in a rush, dodging around plates to jump up on Grian’s shoulders again and aimlessly pat him in excitement. “What do the auras look like? Are they all the same color? What has them?”

“Woah, okay,” Grian says, leaning back and raising his hands to catch Xelqua as if the Watcher would fall. “Well, first, uh, I have about twelve more questions, but- okay, so far all living things have auras and some weird objects I think you were interacting with last night, like my bag. They’re all different colors and the humans have different patterns. Oh, your eyespots are visible all the time even though Doctor Plays -  Zedaph? The blonde man we were with? – said that was only under the Rift’s light.”

He also pulls the eye-shaped stone out of his pocket and sets it on the table as Xelqua cheers excitedly.

“This also has an aura, which is kind of funny since I picked it up in Spawntown Square about a week ago.”

Xelqua jumps down onto the table again and scoops up the rock. Then he shuffles over to his plate and plucks another slice of egg to chew on as he turns over the pebble. Grian pops a similarly-sized piece of egg right into his mouth, then nearly tips over his juice glass as his phone vibrates loudly. Xelqua puffs up, startled, and flaps his wings to keep himself from falling off the tabletop.

SCAR: they delivered all the stuff we left at the observatory at my house!

SCAR: we should probably go through it before Jellie knocks something over

MUMBO: oh yeah that’s great

MUMBO: in an hour maybe?

GRIA: how did you wake up early enough to receive that deliviery?

SCAR: I didn’t!!

MUMBO: oh if Grian’s awake we might as well do it now

Grian bites his lip and looks up at Xelqua.

“So, that’s Scar, the stuff we had to leave at the Observatory has been returned and we’re going to meet up.”

He doesn’t know how to ask if Xelqua wants to come along. He also doesn’t know if Xelqua wants to come along, but he feels like Xelqua probably should. Granted, this might be the strange bond they now share, but Grian doesn’t want to leave the childish Watcher alone.

Luckily…

“Ooh, Scar’s house. He’s the one with the cat, right?”

Grian laughs.

“Yes, Jellie. You overheard that entire conversation, huh?” Grian asks, referring to Scar’s enthusiastic monologue yesterday wherein he insisted on showing pictures of his cat to the entire emergency response team and the retrieved scientists. “I don’t know if you’d be able to see her, though. Unless you snuck out of my bag to go wander the house; it’s pretty big.”

Xelqua hums, disappointed, and attempts to scarf down the egg without dropping the pebble. Grian texts the group chat one-handed while returning to his own food.

GRIA: sure? I need to finish eating though

SCAR: you were up late? You???

GRIA: no, I went to bed after getting Pearl to relax

SCAR: I meant that you woke up late!

“Maybe I should be a creature instead. What kind of creature should I turn into?” Xelqua muses, startling Grian.

“A creature? Like how you were a scarf?”

“Yeah! Since I’m a core I can change what I look like, so maybe I should be…” Xelqua zones back out and places the pebble on the table.

Shapeshifting. Shapeshifting could fix a lot of the interaction problems looping through Grian’s head. Xelqua still wouldn’t be able to talk, but maybe he could-

“What, like if you pretended to be a pet? Like a ferret?” he blurts out.

Xelqua whips around to stare at him while biting into a slice of ham. Without speaking, he shimmers, then his feathers flicker out of existence. The pink marks that remain on his body turn brown, and the eyespots only Grian can see blink shut into stripes. Not as immediately necessary, but an interesting side effect nonetheless.

Taking the slice of ham out of his mouth, Xelqua asks, “Did it work?”

“Yes!” Grian cheers. “I don’t know how we’re going to explain me spontaneously acquiring a ferret, but we can work on that later. Maybe you can be a therapy ferret for all of the fights I’ve gotten into.”

He means that as a joke. Xelqua immediately looks at him with huge newly-brown eyes and Grian feels guilty. The he talks, and Grian feels guiltier.

“All of the fights? People fight you often?”

Grian spears another slice of egg so he only has to say something short.

“I used to. Pearl mentioned that at some point, did you overhear her? Jimmy and I would get in fights and she’d end them.”

He chews, but Xelqua continues to look sorrowful.

     Ignoring the continued messages, Grian pops up the internet on his phone and searches ‘therapy ferret’. He clicks the first link that doesn’t look like an ad and places the screen in front of Xelqua.

          “Here. This might have information about therapy ferrets. Does that work?”

     Just like accidentally changing topics earlier, Xelqua pounces on the new information with an excitement rivalled only by hyper toddlers. His little pink pads can even activate the screen, so Grian lets him read out pieces as they get ready to go to Scar’s.

- - - -

By the time they’ve gotten to Scar’s, Grian and Xelqua agree that, at some point today, Grian is going to have to drop by a pet supply store to help sell the idea that he’s acquired a ferret… and also pretend to buy a ferret, but that’s easier. He kind of has a ferret already. That part, at least, will be the easiest lie he’s ever told.

It will be much harder if Xelqua moves around in Grian’s bag in the meanwhile. Grian doesn’t blame him, though – scarf form is far less relaxing now that Xelqua isn’t exhausted from fighting. He pets Xelqua’s head as he presses Scar’s doorbell again. And again. And again.

Mumbo opens Scar’s door this time, while Scar himself holds Jellie down the hall. Mumbo is as neatly put-together as ever, compared to Scar’s indomitable bedhead.

“Hey Grian, nice to see you’ve found the doorbell again,” Mumbo says.

Grian smiles innocently.

Scar lifts Jellie to wave at him as a greeting and coos over how cute she is. He’s right, but Grian is distracted by the glowing markings all over her. Like Scar’s striped blotches, there are soft blue lines tracing every patch of tigerlike patterning on her body. They match. Which Rogue attack was close enough to this house that both of them could’ve been marked by it?

As he follows Mumbo and Scar further in, Grian’s heart sinks further. The house is practically painted with aura-marks, or maybe stained: trails along the ground, against doorframes, windowsills, objects. Something – maybe many somethings – was here recently. Pawing through Scar and Cub’s stuff, holding things long enough that they glow brightly even still.

Scar opens a door, fingers drifting over a bright patch of magical residue, and Grian has a thought: what if the things leaving the marks keep coming back? Is Scar haunted? He hasn’t mentioned anything moving around his house, but with Jellie here and how big it is, Grian usually relies on Scar’s memory to have any idea how it’s supposed to be put together.

This time, Scar leads them in an entirely different direction – as far as Grian can remember – that ends in a living room with several cardboard boxes of recording equipment and lots of green furniture. Grian puts his bag down next to a couch that is hopefully out-of-the-way enough that if Xelqua wiggles out, no one will notice.

To distract from Xelqua possibly escaping on an adventure, Grian dramatically flops across one of the chartreuse couches. It’s not a fainting couch, but he doesn’t care. Pillows fly everywhere and Jellie runs out of the room, to which Scar makes a sad little noise.

Mumbo wanders over and pokes his knee.

“Scoot, I’m sitting here too,” he says.

Grian huffs and refuses move.

Mumbo sighs and catches Grian’s ankle. Grian squawks, but instead of shoving him off the couch, Mumbo only picks his legs up and sits down, letting Grian swing his legs back down into his lap. He looks unbelievably smug under his moustache, dark eyes glittering with mischief. Scar ignores their byplay and pops open one of the boxes.

“I think this one is some of the cameras and uhh…” he begins, audibly rustling.

Mumbo asks something, but Grian is immediately distracted by Xelqua scrabbling under a table near the door. He’s got a perfect sense of timing; Scar holds up a camera and thoroughly distracts Mumbo. Xelqua looks up, waves at Grian, then slides behind another couch with his noodle-y body. Grian nods at him, as subtly as he can, and attempts to refocus on Scar as he takes the card out of the camera and shuffles over to load it into Mumbo’s laptop. Xelqua doesn’t leave any markings where he walked. Is that because he’s hiding his powers right now, or because whatever is haunting Scar is very, very powerful?

“Hey, so do you think these’ll’ve caught anything? Did you leave them on?” Scar asks, as the folder pops up. He settles on the arm of the couch next to Mumbo, instead of any of the other seating options in the very green room.

Grian begrudgingly sits up so he can see the screen. Then he realizes that there might have been cameras – not necessarily their cameras, but cameras – in the hall where he transformed, and the immediate panic gives him a headache. He presses into Mumbo’s shoulder and tries to regulate his breathing, which has the additional effect of drawing Mumbo’s befuddled attention.

“Woah, wait, Grian? Are you-“ Mumbo trails off, wriggling his arm over Grian’s shoulders.

A hand rests on Grian’s head – probably Scar’s, and Grian’s breath hitches audibly. He forces himself to take a deep breath, tears prickling at his face, and scrubs at his cheeks.

“I don’t – I don’t want to see the – if the Wa- the Rogue, I don’t want to see it,” Grian manages to lie, embarrassed at his own emotions. Well, it’s not entirely a lie; he absolutely does not ever want to meet another Warden, but also the sudden sweep of panic at possibly already failing Miss Hawkeye’s advice is far more soul-crushing than it has any right to be.

Did bonding with Xelqua destroy his emotional control? He’s usually so much better at dealing the emotional fallout of fighting, secrets, and secrets about fighting. Sure, it’s been… several years, but he didn’t even have to let himself freak out in the shower! He wishes this logic could keep his body from reacting, but unfortunately it continues to breathe unsteadily.

Scar’s hand on his head ruffles his hair a little, making his fringe fall into his eyes, and then leans over pat Grian’s shoulders, too.

“I didn’t manage to set up a camera before it broke through, I left most of them in the experimental wing,” Mumbo says anxiously. He doesn’t expect that to be as reassuring as it is, and startles in the hug as Grian slumps in relief.

Grian’s still panting, but the crest of the emotional wave has passed. This doesn’t stop his friends from patting him gently, or the soft peeps from Jellie, who is sitting on the floor and staring up at them.

Grian puts his hand over his eyes and tries to regulate his breath.

“Okay, we might – if you check first, I think that’d be okay,” Grian allows, just before the embarrassment rushes back in to the gap left by his panic. He squishes his face in his hands and then catches Jellie as she jumps up, then Mumbo and Scar wriggle into a more comfortable position to look at all the pictures.

Aside from… whatever that was, the meeting goes smoothly. Scar keeps attempting to copy the faces of the Spirits Mumbo took pictures of, and the cameras seem alright. Mumbo is slightly distressed because not all of the lens caps and smaller levers were packed. Grian makes several notes, even, on some of the Spirits that came right up to the glass for Mumbo to take their pictures.

Then Grian remembers that one of the Spirits in the photos is currently hiding somewhere in Scar’s house. He has a moment of dissonance as he simultaneously wants to go collect Xelqua anxiously and also sadness that he can no longer easily slot Xelqua into the documentary. Grian hasn’t seen Xelqua since he squeezed under the other couch, but he hopes the Spirit isn’t in any of the rooms Scar will lead them through as they go to eat.

Or maybe he should, so he can jump back in Grian’s bag without Grian having to make a scene. As it stands, Grian just keeps putting his bag down in hopes Xelqua hears them getting ready. They are probably all going to go in Mumbo’s van, so they’ll also likely come back here, but he still doesn’t want to make Xelqua nervous. They’ve only been friends for a day!

But, at some point between ‘putting the cameras in a different room’ and ‘putting his shoes back on,’ a lot of white fluff has tucked itself neatly into his bag. He pets Xelqua as he stands, and is internally thankful that Mumbo’s van is a refurbished one with weird seats so he again has a decent excuse to hug bagged-Xelqua.

He leans his head against the window for a little while, until he realizes –

“Hey, at some point I kind of want to drop by a pet store or something. I’ve been thinking of getting a ferret,” Grian lies. Hopefully that’s casual enough.

“WHAT!?” Mumbo yells, and the entire van jerks as he hits the breaks. Several things roll across the van’s floor.

At least his first reaction to be startled is to stop driving…?

Scar flails, but manages to remain in his seat.

“No, seriously, what?”

Grian squirms under Scar’s baffled green gaze, then swaps to staring at Xelqua’s markings as Mumbo also attempts to make eye contact in the rear-view mirror.

“I want to get a ferret, maybe…” Grian lies, again. He sounds so unsure. This is so embarrassing.

“Okay, a pet, but why a ferret?” Scar asks. He doesn’t sound judgmental, just intrigued.

“No, no, hold on, how long have you wanted a ferret?” Mumbo insists, slowly speeding up. He is the one who sounds concerned, and Grian is unsettled.

Xelqua rolls over in the bag to hold Grian’s fingertips. Several small objects also roll across the van floor as Mumbo turns left.

“Well, I didn’t think of a ferret at first,” Grian hedges, trying seem more certain than he is. They’ve should’ve planned out this conversation this morning, like Miss Hawkeye had with Aria. “I just wanted something to hang out with, really. But I was looking at things and-“ He struggles for his phone. “Ferrets can be trained and stuff, and they can go in pockets.”

“Awww!” Scar coos.

“Oh, okay,” Mumbo says. “Just making sure you’re not… randomly compelled to collect animals now because of Spirits.”

He means it as a joke. He’s been watching over Scar, of course he’s going to notice anything potentially out of character that could indicate magic sickness.

Grian makes a wheezy noise that sure doesn’t feel like a laugh as Scar chortles, because Mumbo isn’t quite on the money but he’s uncomfortably close. Then Grian imagines a ‘crazy cat lady’ but for flying ferrets and starts laughing for real. A tiny little woman swamped by her shawl, lifting her hand out as Watchers are draped across her arm and shoulders like scarves. He pats Xelqua and returns to reciting all the cool ferret facts Xelqua read out that morning.

- - - -

Lunch is nice and involves the least amount of anxiety Grian’s had all day, which is surprising given that he’s, y’know, Grian. They get a booth because all three of them are shy. Mumbo starts folding napkins into origami as they wait. No one really questions why Grian occasionally slides napkin-wrapped pieces of food into his bag. Scar manages to avoid knocking over his lemonade. It’s nice, peaceful.

In retrospect, Grian could make a joke like ‘the calm before the storm’ or ‘he was having too much fun so the universe got mad’.

Mostly, Grian wants to take a nap. But that’s three hours later, after his second day of being (half of a) Magical Girl.

Instead of immediately returning to the van, the team decides to walk around a little. This isn’t just for Grian, either – Scar wanted to poke around in the specialty shops for his model houses.

Luckily, they didn’t buy anything very delicate, so when everyone’s phones go off and the street rumbles, nothing breaks when Mumbo startles and drops some bags.

“Swarm?” Scar says, high-pitched and panicked.

“What?” Grian asks, crouched over Mumbo’s bag.

Scar whips around, eyes wide, and offers his phone screen.

Grian had already guessed that it was a Rogue Alert; the lockscreen shows the special alert markers. What Grian has never seen before, though, is the words beneath.

ALERT

ROGUE ATTACK IN PROGRESS IN YOUR AREA

SWARM REPORTED, TAKE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY

“A swarm?” Grian repeats, still confused but now fearful.

In the few seconds it took to scoop up Mumbo’s dropped bag and read the alert, it was already too late. ‘A swarm,’ terrifyingly enough, means that a huge number of Rogues have been spotted.

As the pavement shakes again, a writhing wall of darkness crawls over the other end of the road.

It’s not a flat shadow. Unfortunately, it’s a sea of huge spiders.

As they descend to street level, it becomes clear that it’s a single wave, not an endlessly-generating horde. They’re about half the size of the cars – smaller than the Warden - but that’s still too big, and Grian takes a few steps backward as the spiders spot some humans fleeing and start chasing.

Something catches Grian’s shoulder, and he yelps.

“Here, narrow alley!” Scar hisses, tugging.

Despite Scar’s usual clumsiness, he manages to drag Grian down a little access road between a café and a bookshop. Mumbo is pressed up against the wall near the end, panting. Grian stumbles as Scar lets go and tries to open the café’s door.

“Locked,” Mumbo says breathily.

“The spiders can walk on walls, they can come in sideways,” Grian reminds everyone, spinning around to stare back the way they came.

Mumbo makes another attempted noise and Scar bangs on the door. A car careens past the mouth of the alley, but Grian doesn’t hear it crash. The ground shakes again.

“How are spiders making an earthquake?” He grumbles.

He slides his hand into his bag, and Xelqua clings immediately. They can’t transform here, though. There’s a camera on the outside of the bookshop, nestled into some ivy.

Mumbo makes another noise, almost choking, and Grian turns again, afraid a spider somehow teleported in behind them.

No, Mumbo’s hyperventilating. Less deadly, still not great.

“Hey, hey, okay,” Grian begins, desperately attempting to think of something comforting. His own fear is being swallowed by protectiveness, just like when trying to hide his little brother from-

No, thinking about that right now won’t be helpful.

Mumbo keeps covering his mouth and nose in intervals in attempts to forcibly regulate his breathing, so he doesn’t verbally respond to being petted. Scar slams into the door again, which is probably not very helpful. If anyone is in that store, they probably think there’s a spider trying to break in.

Before Grian can say anything, there are a pair of quakes, right on top of each other, and Grian falls into Mumbo’s arm. Something moves at the mouth of the alley-

Amethyst Witch is sliding off the top of a stunned spider. It’s so much larger, this close, and it looks like she’s broken its legs. It’s smoking at the joints, and pops into a core as she turns to look at them. The purple ruffles of her dress and her long, fiery braid defy gravity, drifting down to indicate she’d jumped from the roof. The oversize brim of her hat, however, stays perfectly in place to hide her face.

“Hello there! I apologize for the startle, but it seemed more pertinent to save you first!” She chirps, and Grian nods shakily.

She offers them a little curtsey, then scoops up the core and vanishes it somewhere in her dress. Mumbo slides down to the pavement and takes a heaving breath as most of the tension slides out of Grian’s body. The Wizard spins her wand, and crystals grow up from the ground to block the alley.

“Hi, hello, that’s, yeah!” Scar says in a rush.

Turning back to them, the Wizard flicks her wand towards the ground, and little shards of purple start bouncing together into the beginnings of shapes.

“Here, I’ll call something up for you to ride, let’s get you out of here,” she says, smiling reassuringly. “I think we’ll have to go two-by-two, though.”

Her crystalline constructs fold into draconic forms as she walks between them and extends her hand. She has gem-tipped fingers that Grian is now fascinated by; they’re almost hooflike. Now that he knows Magical Girls are only half-Spirit, he wonders what kind of Spirit is partnered to make her. Scar leans forward to take her hand, and Grian tries to tug Mumbo’s arm over his shoulders after petting Xelqua.

“Where would we go? Just hover in the air?” Grian asks. “Or are the spiders only in a specific area?”

Mumbo takes a full breath as he wavers to his feet, and Grian pats him reassuringly. Scar also pats one of the dragons, but he is more reverent than reassuring.

“They’re moving in a single wave, so they’re easy to spot from the air! We just have to move south or north from here – or east I suppose, back where they came from,” she answers, then swaps to explaining ‘How to Ride a Dragon-Construct’.

It is simultaneously easier and more difficult than Grian thought. He’s ridden horses before, so it’s not unfamiliar, but it is also strange in that – with the wingbeats - the rhythm of the movement is different, and obviously the dragon is made of translucent amethyst. Being able to see through his mount is pretty disconcerting. The Wizard is also sharing with him, which he absolutely cannot giggle aloud about. Two Magical Girls on one magical dragon construct!

The little bubble of happiness carries him into the air, and the Wizard guides the second dragon with her wand while tapping at their dragon’s horns.

Because this day has been nothing but an emotional rollercoaster, it is only now that they discover that the spiders. Can. Jump.

Small spiders can jump! There’s an entire group of spider species notable for being able to jump! And, of course, one of those species is unbelievably large in the Spirit Realm, was somehow transported through the Rift for as-yet-unknown reasons, and then set upon Boatem!

Of course!

And one of them has launched itself at him!

Of course!

Grian processes this while screaming.

The dragon cannot bleed, apparently will attempt to heal when shattered, and has captured the spider’s mandibles and one of its claws in its attempts to stick the lost amethysts back into place. The dragon, sized such that it could take off in an alley, is too small to hold the spider, Grian (and Xelqua), and Amethyst Wizard, and descends far too quickly for Grian’s liking. He kicks the spider in the face while the Wizard whips her wand around and thunks it into an eye.

Her attack is far more effective, magic-powered and all, and more crystals form across its face. It tries to wriggle free as a roof comes up way too fast, and the Wizard wraps her arms around Grian’s middle and topples sideways.

She floats.

The dragon and the spider shatter against the pockmarked concrete of an apartment building with a sound like hail. Grian can’t tell if the shrieking was the spider, himself, or his friends still in the air. The dragon immediately begins reforming as they touch down, and Grian is immediately spun out to arm’s-length so The Wizard can examine him.

“Are you alright? Did it nick your leg?” she asks, and Grian has to take several huge breaths before he’s got enough room in his lungs to speak.

He pats Xelqua in the bag for comfort.

“I’m, I’m fine? Physically? Yeah.”

He can’t even see her face and yet feels the depths of her concern. Can she project her emotions, or did he pick that up as a side effect of his magical senses?

She can’t worry about him for too long, however, because there are Even More Spiders, all honing in on their rooftop. He can see them hopping between rooves. The Wizard tilts her head like she’s looking through her hat at the dragon, then scans over the spidery horizon.

This roof has a little shed to hide the access hatch, too small for a spider to enter. Grian has an idea.

“I think I can hide in there, if you need to-“

He cuts himself off as another spider launches itself at the dragon still in the air, just barely skimming its wing.

“Oh, that would be helpful, I’m sorry,” Amethyst Wizard says, her other dragon launching into the air.

The roof shakes, and Grian skitters across the concrete as the Wizard shoots a bullet of amethyst from her wand before levitating after her dragon. The door opens when Grian falls into it, and he pulls the bag up close.

“Hey Xelqua? If she doesn’t pull them down, I think we should help.”

“Oh absolutely!” Xelqua crawls out of the bag and up his arm, wrapping over his shoulders to watch. “Oh, she’s pretty. Do you know her?”

Grian sits down on the grimy floor and laughs. What kind of question is that? His life is so chaotic. The fear is being wiped out by the sheer craziness of this entire interaction.

“Not before today! Her name is Amethyst Wizard, though. She makes constructs, you might have overheard…” he dissolves into breathy giggles.

A spider is launched by the unencumbered dragon. None have managed to get up to Grian’s friends yet, but every time one jumps, Xelqua’s paws clench in Grian’s sweater. Grian rests a hand on Xelqua and turns to scan the top of the stairwell, just to check for cameras. There is one, but it’s already tilted to look at the far wall. Yeah, that makes sense, with the smell.

Xelqua squeaks, and Grian whips around to see the dragon carrying his friends sink low toward a roof maybe a block away.

“Okay, yeah, let’s do this,” Grian says, wavering to his feet.

Xelqua launches himself into the air, and Grian offers his hands.

Again, Xelqua presses his paws into Grian’s hands, until warmth and light fill Grian’s vision. Before, in the single previous transformation, he’d been too startled to really process. He’d been him, and then vague fuzzy feelings until he was conscious again. This time, he tries to focus on the magic washing over him. He can see it, now, pink bubbles and darker magenta whorls sinking into his skin. Currents of magic around his body spin themselves into the beginnings of a pink dress and white feathers, until the magic washes over his eyes and everything goes bright.

The Song rises again, the feathers fill in solid, and Aria smiles to herself in the stairwell. Gravel and debris kicked up from the dragon and spider crashlanding crunch under her pink boots, then dust the air as she takes off.

Despite the circumstances, the sky is blue and warm. The city spreads out beneath her, patches of roofing and parks, and it is beautiful. She shoots into the sky with ease, the wind twirling around her with a cheerful whistle layering over the Song of Fate. This is wonderful! She allows herself to loop joyfully, just once, before turning to the spiders.

The dragon with Mumbo and Scar has landed atop an apartment building without a convenient shelter. Amethyst Wizard is standing between them and two spiders. Aria hums sharply, eyes blinking into existence in the lee of her wings, and swirls them into a cloud.

They trail after her as she swoops down like a falcon, and slam into the spiders as Aria catches herself just before she crashes. She folds into a curtsey before looking up at the other Magical Girl, who waves.

“Hello, miss! Thank you for the assistance!”

“Anytime,” Aria chirps. Then, before she is given another silly nickname, she adds, “My name is Aria! Anything else I can do to help?” She glances up, at the dragon hiding Scar and Mumbo under its wings.

The Wizard whips her wand around and a handful of butterfly-like shards sail across the sky like bullets. A spider jitters in place, then starts leaking something clear.

“You fly, right? Can you guard the dragon? I was attempting to deliver the civilians outside of the spider’s range, but I-“ she interrupts herself to throw a tridentlike crystal arrangement at another spider.

Aria hums another set of eyes into existence and whirls them into a wall. She closes the gap between herself and Amethyst Wizard so that the tornado of eyes can protect the dragon, too.

“If you can get it to stick with me, I can sing the whole time,” Aria agrees breathlessly. “I can do ranged very well.”

It’s about all she knows how to do at this moment, but the very large pink talons attached to her hands indicate she should be able to perform some kind of close-combat at some point. Amethyst Wizard nods, and gestures with her free hand.

“C’mon, I’ll see if I can get the dragon to go in front of me. I can’t fly by myself very quickly.”

Aria nods, skipping over to the head of the dragon and singing up some new eyes. They keep impacting on spiders as they try to interact, and Aria tries to watch them instead of worrying about being in front of Mumbo and Scar. She doesn’t have a mask or a hat to hide her face, and she doesn’t know how much of her face is affected by Xelqua. It could still be very Grian-shaped. At least she has longer hair? It’s pink at the ends, but the rest remains golden brown.

What do her eyes look like? Are they purple like the eyes she summons?

She twists away to look at a spider impacting with the shield and decides that’s a problem for future her. Possibly as Grian and Xelqua. What matters right now is matching the Song in her head, replenishing the spinning eyes and waiting for Amethyst Wizard to reform another dragon for herself.

They both have to take breaks to smack away spiders, and Scar even grabs a crystal at one point and throws it. The crystal leaves a weird purple mark on his palm as The Wizard attempts to tug it, but the mark fades quickly. Grian didn’t have any marks on him, did he? She’ll have to remember to check Scar for magic sickness.

Right now, though, the dragons are taking off. Again. This time, the spinning shield of eyes will help keep the spiders from weighing them down, and Scar cheers as one bounces off the lower edge. Aria is barely pausing to take breaths, between calling up eyes and attempting to stay just behind both dragons, but she agrees. Flying in the open air hasn’t lost its shine yet, and the desperate escape doesn’t dampen it at all. In the direct sunlight, the eyes reflect like oil. The whole swarm of them is - of course - coordinated, and the spiders still jumping at the ball are kind of like dolphins attacking a school of fish in a documentary.

Aria pushes up, over the shield, and the similarity to fish starts to dissolve with the city as a backdrop instead. That’s alright, though. Aria has an idea. The eyes seem to leap from her feathers and skin when the patterns glow with the Song, so in theory, if she could find or shape them to trail over her hands, she might be able to direct the eyes more, well, directly.

She just has to line it up perfectly as the Song swells again. The shield also has to be replenished, though, so she keeps up her own vocals as she trails the storm. The smaller wings lower down her back shed more eyes than her main flight wings, until she rolls midair like a cat and the violet lines start moving.

Sweeping down to the left of the dragon train, the eye patterns rippling over her body slide up to her palms. A single note, and they blossom into the third dimension. They catch on her talons, and she spins in the air, winding back to throw at the next spider crouched and ready to spring.

These eyes, so recently formed, are more powerful than the eyes maintaining the barrier. The spider she hits shatters like the one Amethyst Wizard landed on in the alley. Aria has to swoop down to snatch the core from the air, where it pulses slightly. The texture is …bad. Like something is attempting to escape a bag made of hair. It is presumably silk, but she hates it anyway.

She is also unsure how to contain the core without holding it. The Wizard simply disappeared the one from the alley, didn’t she? Or did her many layers of skirts hide pockets? Sailing under the eye storm with a whoop from the dragon riders, Aria pats her own skirt carefully. Bingo! She still doesn’t really want the cocoonlike core anywhere near her person, but pocketing it will have to do for now. It weighs down her skirt, but doesn’t fall out when she spirals out of the path of another spider. She hopes it’s not stuck, or eating her clothes somehow.

Several more cores join the first as more spiders are attracted to the movement of the storm, even though they are breaking away from the initial line Aria had noticed. Apparently, whatever drove them to cross the city is less important than inconveniencing her, personally.

On the other hand, Scar is having a great time. He’s yelling unhelpful sentence fragments while Mumbo attempts to get him to shut up and stop attracting attention. Given that they’re riding a purple dragon, followed by a purple dragon, and surrounded by purple orbs, it’s a completely lost cause on Mumbo’s part. Amethyst Wizard is ignoring them both and shooting tridents of crystal out of the shield.

There are so many spiders. Even though they have to actually jump from uneven roof to uneven roof, they are almost as fast as the dragons. It is definitely unfair. Amethyst Wizard is casting heavier and heavier weapons at the spiders to try and weigh them down long enough to let Aria explode them into cores, but they just keep coming. At least the spiders are leaving the rest of the city alone? Wherever the Wizard was planning to land will clearly just be immediately overrun.

Aria slips into the shield to talk to Amethyst Wizard briefly.

“I think that unless we do something complicated with the flight paths, we’re not going to be able to land until they lose interest,” she says in a quiet part of the Song.

The Wizard bares her teeth. The inside of her mouth is also amethyst-colored. “Someone else has to show up soon. I think I can hold them together for another twenty minutes.”

Oh, Aria hadn’t even considered that the constructs might have a time limit like the eyes. That pushes up the timeline considerably.

“The top of the Hermit Gazette has a viewing area that might be unlocked, the eyes and the dragon can cover them until they get through.”

“And then we lead the spiders away again, yes, let’s try that,” the Wizard says, and flicks her staff sharply.

Aria drops back through the cloud of eyes, calling up some replacements for the ones that had gone out while she’d been speaking. She wonders if Xelqua and Grian’s throats will hurt when she separates. That’d be difficult to explain, probably.

With a second target again, the spiders jump more often. Aria tries to lead them away from the wide turn Amethysts Wizard carefully charts and hopes that splitting their attention takes some of the stress off of her. She’s yelling the plan to Mumbo and Scar, who are immediately on board. As employees, they have passes for the roof doors even when they’re closed to the public, but Aria was absolutely not going to share that information. It should be open today, anyway.

They aren’t turning completely around, so they aren’t flying back over the apartment Aria has to remember to return to. Instead, they take a left, where the spider wave used to be before it became a spider pack. The Hermit Gazette isn’t the tallest building in the city, or even the tallest building in its immediate area, but it is perfectly positioned to look out over the old Mycelium District they are currently flying over.

It is also perfectly positioned to frame another coalition of spiders, and the new, statue-like Magical Girl smashing them into pebbles. Resurrection is easily recognizable despite being ringed by as many spiders that are still trailing after the dragons, mostly because she is twice as tall as they are. Also green. The green definitely helps.

Aria feels a little bad for bringing another entire swarm down on her head, but she has an apology forming across her wings as she swoops down just like she had with The Wizard. The eyes slam into the spiders with a terrible crunching noise like many bags of chips being hit with baseball bats, but Resurrection doesn’t flinch.

Instead, she digs her fingers into the chain wrapped around a few spiders and whaps them against the concrete. They crumble into cores, and the chains retract so Resurrection can tuck them away before lassoing another set of spiders. She is the first Magical Girl Aria has encountered who has visible pockets. Her tattered dress highlights each intentional opening with orange, and every single one has at least one core peeking out. It’s very gross and Aria hates it.

“Hello! Sorry to crash the party!” Aria yells.

Tossing one of the spiders off of the roof, Resurrection turns to blink up at her.

“Hello! You’re new,” she says, and starts reeling in the chains attached to her shoulders. “You’re very welcome to do so, though, there’s far too many of these pests for just me.”

Aria can’t immediately respond until she pops a few more eyes into existence to keep the spiders from tackling her, which just proves Resurrection right. Unfortunately, that problem will only be getting worse.

“My name’s Aria, Amethyst Wizard and I are trying to keep some civilians –“ she has to pause to flick a few eyes at another spider, which gives her a moment to reflect on how odd it is to refer to people she knows in such a vague manner. “- we were trying to fly some civilians away from the spiders, but they jump, so we’re trying to hide them now.”

Resurrection looks at her, then up over her head – presumably where the very purple cloud is approaching.

“Well. I’m Resurrection of the Statues. Have the two of you decided how to hide all… that?” Resurrection says conversationally. When she turns to lasso another set of spiders, Aria can see that her chains actually originate from a loop on her back, like a doll on a necklace.

The pace of conversation is slightly awkward since Aria can’t respond until she can take another breath.

“Amethyst Wizard is going to drive the dragons into the Hermit Gazette Tower so they can hide in the viewing area. They work there, apparently,” she explains eventually.

The purple cloud is nearly upon them, and some of the spiders are beginning to notice. Instead of attempting to snatch the dragons from the air, they turn to attacking the grounded prey. Aria has to take off just to have more maneuverability, trying to sing enough eyes to protect herself and rejuvenate the shield as well. Resurrection is unphased as the dragons get into earshot, and Aria can hear Mumbo and Scar screaming at the top of their lungs.

Some of the eyes Aria just summoned to replenish the shield are immediately taken out by the new horde of spiders, stunning them so Resurrection can easily swipe them with her chains. The boys scream again, and Amethyst Wizard tosses a handful of crystals that rapidly grow as they slam into the spider Rogues.

With Resurrection, Aria might actually be able to slow down the horde long enough that their silly plan might work. Her chains might also be able to launch Aria’s eyes, if she could manage to find a spare breath to ask. Looping low over the other Magical Girl’s head, Aria narrowly misses a few spiders with a hand-launched explosion. Luckily, the noise and light stuns and startles many spiders such that Resurrection can lasso them and launch them into each other.

The dragons sharply ascend along the tower, shedding spiders, and Aria hums the note that makes all the remaining shield eyes explode. It’s risky, sure, but it also scares all of the spiders still trailing them, enough that they disappear over the edge. Hopefully that will give them enough time for Mumbo and Scar to hide.

Aria turns to the spiders still bothering Resurrection and times her dive with the next time the markings line up with her hands. With the shield down, she has more power to focus into the explosions, which is wonderful. Unexpected, but wonderful. A few spiders crawl up the tower wall, but only enough to launch themselves over Aria’s head. She has to listen very carefully, both to the Song and to the scratches of the spiders’ feet.

Resurrection’s hits are often bass notes, contrasting with the chains clattering against their own links. Though Aria doubts she can her the Song, the other Magical Girl is rhythmic in her attacks. Snare, tug, reel, and launch, steadily such that Aria can dance in the air as the high notes. Amethyst Wizard descends from the Hermit Gazette, which hopefully means the boys got away safely, and slams down crystals in a perfect crescendo.

The spiders transform into clouds of smoking and pulsing cores.

The three Magical Girls look at each other, panting. Aria sinks back to the ground and settles all of her wings. Resurrection somehow vanishes her chains entirely. Amethyst Wizard brushes down her skirts.

Aria manages to break the silence first.

“Did those men get into the building?”

Amethyst Wizard nods rapidly, slightly startled. The brim of her hat flutters with her movement.

“Yes, it worked perfectly, actually! I was a little concerned that the spiders would break the door open, but… did you do something about it? Or did your orb thingies just run out of time?”

“Oh, I exploded them!” Aria chirps. She doesn’t know if she should elaborate. Do other Magical Girls have something like the Song of Fate? “They react to my voice, actually,” she says, when she decides that her previous declaration sounds unhinged.

The others both nod, humming in understanding. Aria refuses to squirm out of anxiety, but is unsure how she’s supposed to act now that the fighting is over. Typical Grian moment, really – Xelqua is far friendlier than the human.

Before she blurts out something else, Resurrection stretches with a terrible grinding noise, and startles Amethyst Wizard into speech.

“Oh, Aria, right? Have you had to turn in cores before?”

Aria shakes her head, embarrassed. This time, she can’t stop herself from shuffling in place, which only serves to bump the cores in her pockets against her legs. She can’t feel them move, but the knowledge that they are is still enough to creep her out. The Warden’s core had, too, hadn’t it? This better not be a trend.

Resurrection makes a soft hum, and is smiling when Aria peeks though her bangs.

“Well, we’d best show you, then. Musician won’t bite. She’s far more scared of you than you are of her, and she hasn’t even met you yet.”

That sounds kind of ominous, actually. Usually, people say things like that about bears. Aria nods anyway.

The Wizard turns to Resurrection.

“Rezz? Do you want me to carry you?”

“Where are we going?” Aria asks, as if Miss Hawkeye hadn’t told her.

Resurrection nods at Amethyst Wizard, who starts to form another dragon.

“The cores go to Musician, near the Rift,” she says, so Amethyst Wizard can focus. “She takes them in, I think. Better than just bandying them about out here.”

“We have to sneak into a building?” Specifically, the one building she’s already been in. Wait, does that apartment building count? It might. Ah well. Aria isn’t going to mention it.

The Wizard giggles lightly. Resurrection makes a huffy noise instead of a laugh, for plausible deniability and to convey disagreement.

“No. Musician is usually somewhere around the Observatory campus, though. There’s a field, you’ll see when we get there.”

Amethyst Wizard interrupts to ask if Aria has enough energy to fly across half the city, which abruptly reminds Aria that she gets to fly. Really, truly, fly. She nods rapidly, and impatiently rustles all six of her wings as The Wizard and Resurrection mount the dragon. It’s a bigger dragon than the ones she made in the alley – has to be, to carry the giant animate statue – so Amethyst Wizard has to be lifted up.

Then she can tap the dragon’s horns, and Aria and the dragon spread their wings. The roof shakes when they push off, just from the sheer force of displaced air, and Aria is free.

Without the pressure of having to fight a swarm of spiders, Aria can simply fly. There is nothing else to focus on. Just the feeling of wind through feathers, angling into the heat rising from the rooftops, twirling in the air. The Song of Fate is loud and joyous, and Aria cannot help but sing along. She makes no eyes with these notes, no magic is channeled, but her markings swirl and glow anyway.

It might just be her mind trying match patterns, but even the movement of the rest of the world seems to line up with the Song. The distant pulsing sirens of emergency vehicles, the swirling startled birds, even the flaps of Amethyst Wizard’s dragon all match the beat of the Song in her mind. Maybe even her heartbeat.

Returning to the Observatory means turning left, which the dragon takes at a wide angle. Aria takes the time to launch herself into several twirls, just for the hell of it, before diving down to skim along the rooftops as the dragon evens out. Then she sweeps under the dragon and rolls up to coast beside the other Magical Girls.

“So. We’re going near the Rift Observatory? Not… landing on the roof or something?”

Resurrection smiles, revealing teeth the same pale green as her skin. What stone is she supposed to be made of?

“Musician is shy. She’s the only one who seems to keep a territory,” she begins, which is strange.

If Musician is so localized, then why was she not there when Aria first formed? …Were her, hm, components not working that day? The other Magical Girls expect her to be constantly present, though. Very mysterious.

“We land in the field between the back lot and the forest, and she comes to meet us. Usually from one of the small outbuildings. There aren’t cameras that face that way, but I imagine it would not be unreasonable to assume that Magical Girls would be interested in the Rift,” Resurrection continues, almost to herself.

“From the buildings?” Aria asks. “Is she working with them?”

The other Magical Girls hesitate, then look at each other, then at different points in the sky.

“I think her… anchor… might,” Amethyst Wizard answers, after a second.

“But I still say that they don’t know anything, so whoever it is, they’re still hiding it,” Resurrection argues.

Amethyst Wizard has nothing to add to that. They fly quietly for a few minutes, until the Observatory building comes into view and a different instrument joins the Song. It almost sounds like whispering, the odd crackling Aria had thought was the Rift itself. Is its influence strong enough to echo all the way out here? Maybe it is calling out to her since she is thinking about it.

She is also thinking about the field slipping down to the tree line behind the Observatory, one blocked completely from the public view. It is big enough that they simply glide down like a tiny plane, though Aria takes a lap before actually touching down.

In the shadow of an outbuilding, a figure is sliding out from behind a wall. They – she? – is comprised of armor pieces floating around an indistinct body, like layers of glass around ink. Opaque green segments form the visor, chest plate, tasset, and boots, with bright lights flickering at the corners. If this is Musician, she doesn’t look like most other Magical Girls.

She’s probably Musician. The Wizard and Resurrection move toward her and the dragon curls into a catlike loaf, unconcerned. Resurrection even leans in to hug the newcomer, which reassures Aria considerably.

She lands on the dragon’s other side, so her wings don’t kick up dust near them, and then waves when introduced.

“This is Aria, we just picked her up. She’s new,” Amethyst Wizard explains.

It’s such a casual statement that Aria immediately giggles.

“Ah, I’m sorry, I’m just, you introduced me like a new puppy,” she says, wondering if her feathers cover what feels like bright blush. “Yes, I’m new. This is my second time out, actually.”

And her second time on these grounds, but if Musician’s – what did Resurrection say? Anchor? – if Musician’s anchor does work here, then she might know already. Aria swallows, remembering Grian’s panic earlier. Musician might know quite a lot about her.

Musician’s faceplate is emotionless, but she tilts her head like a bird and emits a very synthetic hum.

“Then it’s very nice to meet you, Aria,” she says, and her voice is metallic despite the warmth. “Usually, someone has to go track down the new people. Usually after something silly happens…”

When she shakes herself out of her thoughts, she chimes lightly. Ah, that would be where the Song is getting the noise. Aria wonders if other Magical Girls have specific instruments or sounds she just hasn’t put together yet.

Amethyst Wizard makes an embarrassed noise and Resurrection huffs, tossing her hair. Aria wonders what “silly things” they did that Musician remembers. Musician ignores them and straightens up as she continues.

“My full name is Soulside Musician! My role here is to help dispose of cores, which are the concentrated essence of a Spirit. As a core, a Spirit is very vulnerable, but can regenerate to full form if given enough time. Thus, this is the easiest-“

“Muse,” Resurrection cuts in gently. “We fought a lot of spiders today. Can we give you some while you talk?”

Musician startles, chiming again, and her next sentence is almost panicked.

“Spiders? As in multiple?”

The Wizard starts pulling cores from her skirt and Resurrection simply flips her outer layer over.

Musician gasps, crouching, and doesn’t continue with whatever lecture she had planned.

“This is far more than is usually capable of coming through! How did… how long have they been gathering?”

Aria shrugs and empties her pockets too. How is Musician going to carry them all? She only has armor.

“The alert was different too. They made a ‘swarm’ one,” Resurrection says grimly.

Musician scoops up a core and cradles it with both hands. It sparkles, and Aria’s question is answered: more translucent glass crawls over the core and hovers off of Musician’s palms to orbit her head. She grabs another, and another, and an inverse of Aria’s eye shield forms around the four of them. There are so many spiders that they drop three cores for every one Musician crystalizes.

And, with breaks for Musician to focus on her magic, they explain the fight today. It is a different dynamic than talking with Pearl or medics, closer to Xelqua’s memory of preparing food as a group. Not that he ever ate another Spirit’s core! The spiders’ cores are about the size of cacao pods, though.

And the conversation is much grimmer than family gossip. The Magical Girls occasionally reference a fight or a kind of Spirit Aria is unfamiliar with, but most of the events they compare the spider wave to made its way to human news. This is the first time more than about fifteen Spirits have been out at once, according to Resurrection, and Musician agrees that the specific order in which the spiders were deployed speaks to a plan of some sort. The only real question is… who?

“Has anyone seen any human-shaped Rogues recently?” Amethyst Wizard asks, and Musician jumps.

“No, but that’s weird too,” Resurrection muses. “Maybe this one is capable of long-term planning instead of simply causing chaos.”

“I hate that,” says The Wizard.

“Are ‘human-shaped’ Rogues like Helsknight?” Aria asks. Grian’s team was on the follow-up for that incident, and Xelqua’s knowledge cannot fill in what, exactly, the fiery Rogue was. Resurrection was present, so hopefully she will know.

The other Magical Girls are surprised Aria even thought to ask. …Or they’re debating how to answer. They tip their heads toward each other and Aria can’t read any of their expressions save for Resurrection’s contemplative one.

“I believe so. Helsknight certainly fell into the category, but other kinds sometimes appear. He was a Rogue possessing a human to strengthen his power.”

That’s an upsetting concept! Aria and Xelqua were not aware that Rogues could bodysnatch people! Xelqua has met plenty of Spirits with humanlike appearances, but never any that would admit to having just… done that.

  “Was the human okay after? Did they get some kind of… superpowered magic sickness?” Aria asks, pausing in her attempts to flood Musician with cores.

Again, there are Meaningful Expressions Aria can’t read between The Wizard’s hat and Musician’s face mask. Okay. Maybe Aria is asking some things that tread on someone’s privacy. Resurrection hums, thoughtful once more, but only shrugs.

“Ah, I think that, if I’m remembering right, victims of possession are often unconscious for a while afterward…” Amethyst Wizard explains quietly.

Immediately, Aria attempts to remember everyone Grian had interviewed that had been unconscious after the Helfire Incident, then feels guilty. That person deserves rest, not for her to poke into their life! And Grian may never have met them! They could’ve still been healing at the time, or part of Scar’s interviewees, or-

The sound of her own name diverts her from her theorizing.

“Aria is right, though. The person who set the spiders out so carefully might be hidden, and therefore out of our normal investigative parameters,” Resurrection says. “Unless some sort of… I don’t know, mass scanning ability is hidden away somewhere-” she looks at Musician, who shakes her head. “-then clues it is. I’ll try to catch people and spread the theory around, see if anyone else has seen something acting strangely.”

The more she speaks, the more a specific pattern appears in her speech. It’s as if she is deliberately swapping between accents to confuse someone who might try to identify her voice. Sometimes it is more echoey, too, like The Song has plucked her words to weave into its beat. Aria is focusing on this instead of asking further questions because she has to catch up on dumping cores. It’s not like she can do much to help, unless she stumbles across Miss Hawkeye again.

Musician’s glowing dome of cores is so packed it is practically still, instead of the swirling patterns Aria’s eyes formed. Somehow, she manages to balance it as she stands, the last few cores crystallizing in her arms.

“Is that the last of them?”

Aria smoothes down her skirt, then looks at the other Magical Girls.

“I think so?”

Musician attempts to bow without knocking anything free.

“Then I’ll try to get them all squared away. Ah. Be safe!” She says, toddling with bell-like chimes across the concrete back to the building she first appeared from.

The Wizard, Resurrection, and Aria all share looks. Or kind of tilt their heads at each other. The hat still trips Aria up.

Resurrection sets her hand on Aria’s shoulder.

“You need to go back where you were before, okay? Unless someone else is there. Try not to be seen.”

Aria nods rapidly. “I know!” Then, because that might sound a little rude, she tacks on, “On my first… outing, I met Miss Hawkeye and she told me, too. I think she took the core, but I suppose I can’t ask now.”

The others nod, swallowing the lie easily. Should she have? Telling them that she was here for her first fight really feels like too much information.

“That’s alright then. I’ll take you back to the roof we found you on, right, Rezz?” The Wizard asks.

On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47311924 

     It’s unclear how the Boatem Village founders became aware of the hole in reality at the center of town - if they specifically chose the location because of the Rift, or if the Rift later called out to them. The Spirits that occasionally appear from the Rift were probably involved, though. Rare, magical creatures have that kind of effect on people.

     Allegedly, they’re also just as sapient as humans, but that might only apply to the Spirits with human forms: the Magical Girls. The subjects of the documentary Grian and his team are currently researching. Even though they show up to take down the Rogues that attack the city, no one has ever managed to figure out where they go. What is a Magical Girl like when she isn’t throwing laser beams and glowing hearts at giant monsters?

     Well, hopefully Grian can find a Magical Girl, which is historically the sticking point in everyone else’s attempts. But he does have a team of highly competent researchers and camerapeople on his side, a cool office, and probably too much free time, so he thinks he’s got a pretty good chance.

     He pushes the door to said office, and spots his two friends chucking uncapped markers at each other while covered in sticky notes.

     Okay, maybe he just has a team. Grian can already spot inkblots on Scar’s side of the office, where he’s managed to dodge Mumbo’s attempts.

          “Hey guys, I see planning is going well,” Grian calls, and his teammates both yelp. Scar even throws his marker! At least it hits one of Grian’s binders instead of his clothes.

          “Oh, h-hey Grian! We were just, uh, testing the new equipment!” Scar says, smiling like a cat that just knocked over a plant.

          “They’re very… colorful?” Mumbo adds sheepishly, examining the sticky notes attached to his suit. Scar managed to splatter him with far more blue ink than Mumbo returned with red.

     There is a pause, then the three of them cackle.

     Grian attempts to lean against the door as support, but it opens the entire way to bounce off the doorstop and smack him as he wobbles upright. They laugh even harder, and it takes a good five minutes for them to calm enough to settle down and actually start planning out a research and filming schedule.

     Scar is the only one who might have any scheduling conflicts as he is occasionally called in to his brother’s company while the man is missing, but Grian and Mumbo are determined to keep Scar from moping in his labyrinthine house. It turns out that, despite what Grian walked in on, Mumbo was indeed thinking up what they could try in these early stages.

          “Do you remember the field trip to the Observatory every year? I could probably run the tour by now, just ‘and here we have the weird tiny zoo where the Spirits we’ve captured do strange things we can’t account for with science,’” Mumbo asks, approximating a tour guide’s cheery façade.

     Scar giggles as Grian lifts his head from his notebook.

          “No, neither of us grew up in Hermit County,” Grian hums, considering. “Did they really take you every year?”

          “Yeah, there was always someone who tried to break into the Spirit observation pen to try to get a Magical Girl to appear – we are not doing that,” Mumbo adds hastily, when Scar claps his hands.

          “Sure, sure, I wanna see the little Spirits!” Scar says.

     Grian and Mumbo both stare at him until he pouts, though the gleam in his eyes undermines any sincerity of the action.

          “I promise I won’t sneak in anywhere!” Scar says, and Mumbo and Grian look at each other for a moment, trying to gauge if they should push it.

     Grian shrugs, and Mumbo sighs heavily, ruffling his mustache. Then he pushes back from their table and holds out his hands like he’s framing a scene. This time, he tries to imitate the narrator of a nature documentary.

          “And here we have a Crystalline Pixie. Despite having a name and physical proof of their existence for decades, we still haven’t found a way to get them to stay in our weird plastic log enclosures,” he narrates as he pans slowly across their office.

     Scar bites down on his hand even though it fails to muffle his laughter, and Grian smacks Mumbo in the shoulder, clicking his pen before scribbling on the page his own cheek had rumpled earlier.

          “No, no, that might work, right?” he mutters, and his friends lean in to try to read his notes upside-down. “If we’re going to have some sort of breakthrough, we should probably prove we’re not just making things up – that we know what we’re doing, right?”

          “Do we?” Scar asks, tilting his head to the left just like a cat.

     Grian glares at him, and then at Mumbo’s apologetic expression for good measure.

          “If we do our research, yes, we should.”

     This time, Mumbo and Scar share a look while Grian scribbles out plans in some of the most ornate chicken scratch to still be legible writing. Maybe. They aren’t looking at it from his perspective.

     Scar leans forward to tug some of the early sections of script towards him and picks up a glitter gel pen.

          “Well, I guess we have to pad runtime somehow. Do you want this as the opening or are we still doing the fight compilation as a hook?”

          “Ah… we should definitely keep the compilation, people love those,” Mumbo answers.

     They continue to brainstorm, and at one point, Mumbo gets into contact with the media outreach team for the Rift Observatory. He manages to set up two tours of the facility: the standard tour he remembers from field trips, and a special ‘backstage’ tour for grown adults with professional jobs who are responsible. He tries to not eye his chaos-minded friends too obviously when the manager makes that joke.

     They give him the most angelic smiles they can muster.

                                                     - - - - -

     Scar’s sleep schedule is just horrible, so on the day of the tours, Mumbo and Grian show up at his house at about 11:30, and Grian presses the doorbell approximately fifteen times before Mumbo even steps onto the porch. The bell barely clicks on this side of the door, but Grian continues to tap at it as Mumbo pulls his phone out. It’s the joy of pressing buttons! Also, Grian can hope that somewhere in his warren of a home, Scar is being menaced by doorbell noises.

     The curtains to the left of the door shift wildly, and Jellie pops up in the window. She puts her little kitty beans on the glass and meows silently, and Grian waves at her with his free hand. Then there’s a clatter from behind the door, and Scar yelps loudly.

     Grian continues pressing the doorbell even as Scar opens his door. Now, he can hear as it buzzes faintly deeper into the house.

          “Hi guys! What time is it?”

          “About thirty minutes until the tour,” says Mumbo, batting at Grian’s hand. “You’re still in your pajamas! Have you even eaten?”

     Scar beams at them brightly, then lunges to pick up Jellie as she toddles towards the open door. She wriggles in his arms until her claws are digging into the spaceship diagram spread across his pajama top, and Scar jerks his head into the depths of his house.

          “Come on in, we’ll be even later if we have to chase down Jellie!”

     Mumbo and Grian wander in behind him after Grian hits the button one last time… Twice. Okay, several times. He also shuts the door behind them, as Jellie is still peeking over Scar’s shoulder.

          “How about we make food while you get ready?” Grian offers when they turn somewhere in Scar’s labyrinth. It’s oddly quiet. Even knowing Scar’s brother is missing doesn’t mean Grian stops expecting to hear him tinkering somewhere.

     Scar immediately spins, making Jellie mew, and grins at them before turning down a different hallway.

          “Yeah! That’d be fun, maybe.” He drops Jellie gently and pushes open a door, then sweeps his arm out dramatically at the revealed kitchen. “I dunno what I have, go nuts!”

     As Mumbo and Grian enter, Scar ruffles Grian’s hair, already poofing out of its updo. He squawks and spins, but Scar is squinting his eyes shut from smiling and misses Grian’s glare.

          “Oh yeah, maybe we should make waffles,” Mumbo says.

     Grian whips around to stick his tongue out at Mumbo, too, and huffily begins tightening the pins in his braids again.

          “Just because my hair isn’t long enough to stay in a bun otherwise does not make it a waffle,” Grian protests. “None of you ever bother with more than just combing your hair. The braids are nice! They add texture!”

     Ignoring Grian’s long-running argument, Scar points a finger-gun at Mumbo and says “Good luck!” before wandering off.

     Mumbo and Grian stare at each other for a long moment.

          “I can’t think of anything better to make,” Grian admits, defeated. “He better have enough milk.”

     The looming appointment doesn’t manage to dampen their spirits, and they successfully keep Jellie from jumping onto the plates of waffles set out by the time Scar ambles back in with still-damp hair. He flops onto the table and stretches his arms out over the edge, then is nudged by Jellie. At his other side, Mumbo sets down a plate and bumps it against his elbow.

     They all eat an entire waffle in pleased silence. Well, Jellie eats small, cut-apart waffle pieces mixed into her kibble very loudly. Then Grian actually looks at what Scar put on.

          “Scar, do you have anything …red?” Grian asks.

     Indeed, Scar has managed to put together an outfit that is anything but red. He also may have mixed multiple suits together, because his suit jacket is lavender but his pants are striped orange. Compared to Mumbo’s simple black suit and Grian’s red jumper and tan slacks, Scar is notably… bright.

     Patting down his jacket, Scar hums. “I might have a bow tie? Oh! How about this?”

     Out of his sleeve, Scar pulls an entire white chrysanthemum. He spins the stem in his fingers, then tucks it into his breast pocket. Mumbo giggles while Grian squishes his own face in his hands.

          “No, no, I meant red so we all match, kind of!” Grian huffs. “Not an excuse for close-up magic. Where did you even hide that?”

     Mumbo giggles louder. Adopting a put-upon expression, Scar opens his arms and leans back from the table.

          “I’m getting into character! I know we’re not recording voiceover yet, but we might need some scenes of me talking to people there, right?” Then he flexes his wrists, and two more chrysanthemums pop out of his sleeves. He twists his hands to tug them out, and offers one to each of his friends. “Hey, if you wanted to match…?”

     Mumbo and Grian burst into laughter, and Jellie chitters from the floor.

                                                        - - - -

     The lobby of the observatory is chrome and glass, which reflects the visitors’ bright colors in an almost garish display, and that’s even on days when Grian and Mumbo didn’t accept Scar’s offer of ‘matching’ outfits. Okay, mostly they just accepted the chrysanthemums. Grian has tucked his chrysanthemum into his bun like a pom-pom, Mumbo has acquired gloves in addition to placing his chrysanthemum in his own breast pocket, and Scar has gained a lavender top hat, a light blue sash, another handful of random flowers, and, of course, a red bow tie.

     They are very brightly-colored in this very austere and science-fiction-y looking place. Scar waves at small children as they walk up to the welcome desk, and the secretaries smile at them with the air of people vaguely alarmed by whatever is in front of them. Whoops?

     Grian smiles politely back and wonders how often random people show up dressed like Magical Girl groupies.

          “Hello, we’re the team working with the Hermit Gazette. We have a meeting with Doctor Plays at twelve-oh-five?” Grian asks.

     Mumbo leans over Grian’s head because he is unreasonably tall. He can probably see the secretary search up their entry. She directs them to a specific door, but before any of them even touch it, it slides down and reveals a blonde man in a lab coat and huge blue goggles. He’s visibly delighted to see the three of them, and claps his hands.

          “Hello, hello, hello! I’m Doctor Zedaph Plays, I’m going to be taking you through the back today,” he says, and Scar bounces forward to shake his hand first.

          “Oh my gosh, hi! I’m Scar, this is Grian and Mumbo,” he beams.

     As they are introduced, Grian and Mumbo wave, then accept a handshake in turn. The doctor steps back to let them into the corridor, and they descend into the metal innards of the Observatory. There are colored lines on the walls and strip lighting recessed into the ceiling, and it feels like Grian has stepped into a spaceship. He makes a note to add that to the script. Scar will like saying something to the effect of “a ship to another world – the Spirit realm buried under our feet.”

     Current Scar, though, is staring at the walls and glossy windows with huge eyes. He almost trips into Grian as he attempts to watch a different scientist set up a model Doctor Plays explains as “a representation of our current understanding of the Rift and what lies immediately beyond it.” It looks like a cornucopia being used as a Jack-o’-lantern; a gray, coiled cave full of purple light.

          “Kamino,” Scar mutters under his breath.

          “What?” Grian tips his head back and scrunches his face as his bun shifts.

          “Mumbo didn’t say he went to Kamino every year,” Scar elaborates, clarifying nothing.

     Doctor Plays does laugh, though.

          “Oh, we don’t have clones here,” he says, and Grian finally remembers the scrap of Star Wars trivia Scar is enchanted by.

     Mumbo makes a few baffled noises. “I- we’re underground! I didn’t think ‘ooh it’s like we’re on that rainy planet with the Boba Fetts!’”

          “But aliens!” Scar protests. “There’s aliens and science!”

     Everyone giggles, but then are cut off by a sudden beep. A door opens behind Doctor Plays, and he waves them in.

          “We do kind of have aliens, that’s true!” he says, and then sweeps an arm over the intricate glass displays and little tanks within the room.

     Though the actual wall material is the same white as the hallway, the floor is glass over a maze of metal and grates. The maze… doesn’t seem to have an exit, unless some of the grates along the walls move. Inset within the walls are cross-sections of burrows, like ant farms, except the burrows are about the width of Grian’s hand.

     Doctor Plays steps out onto the glass shielding the maze, and spins in place.

          “Welcome to the Lab-yrinth! Here, we are testing endermites’ navigational memory,” he explains, then strides over to one of the terrariums as the team enters. “Currently our primary research subject is named Mike! Would you like to meet him?”

     Every member of the team gasps in delight and practically cheers. Doctor Plays smiles and flicks on lights within the terrarium. As the shortest member of the team, Grian doesn’t have to lean over to examine the contents. A lump of what Grian had assumed was bedding uncurls like a rolly-polly, and scurries up to the glass when Doctor Plays waves.

         “Hello Mike! Would you mind demonstrating for our guests?”

     It is unclear if Mike is capable of listening, but Scar and Mumbo clap in excitement. Doctor Plays’ grin widens, somehow, and he starts fiddling with several controls to the left of Mike’s terrarium. Several things clunk mysteriously out of sight, and Mike scuttles down a burrow and disappears.

         “So, in simple terms, Mike enters here,” the doctor explains, pointing to a grate along the same wall as the terrarium. “And then we measure how long it takes him to get to that one over there, the blue one. The maze stays the same, and the time will display here.”

     There are already many times displayed, formatted as ‘name’, ‘date’, and ‘time’, several of which are attributed to Doctor Plays himself. Grian points them out as the they all settle against the wall while Mike is presumably being loaded into the maze entrance.

         “Oh, yeah! We also tested how well a human driving a little remote-control car with a camera on it could complete the maze. I’m the fastest, but then, I also designed it.”

     Grian and Mumbo chuckle, but Scar claps and then grabs his hat as he leans over.

         “Mike’s here! There he goes!”

     The endermite peeks out of the grate as it slides slowly to the left, then shoots out until he reaches a wall. Antennae twitching, Mike rotates in place slowly.

         “Is he like an ant? Does he leave a scent trail, I mean,” Mumbo asks, as Mike pauses and starts frantically wiggling his antennae.

         “Possibly!” says Doctor Plays. “No chemical traces have been found, but given that we also can’t explain how the Rift works, it might be leaving marks we cannot sense.”

     Mike continues to ping-pong his way throughout the maze, cheered on by four grown men sitting cross-legged on the floor like kindergarteners for story time. He backtracks about three times and investigates two dead ends, and Scar clutches at Grian’s shoulder every time as if Grian can do anything about it. Well, maybe he could, given that Mike seemed to react when Doctor Plays waved earlier, but if there’s one thing Grian remembers about science, it’s that you do not interfere with the experiments.

     When Mike finally toddles into the grate under the door, a little success tune plays and lights flicker their way around the screen as it updates. Doctor Plays stumbles upright and presses his hands to his mouth as the computer reshuffles the scores - no, results. This is science, it’s just cute.

     Again, Mumbo and Scar loom over Grian’s shoulders as they all lean in.

         “Six minutes!” the doctor cheers, spinning in place.

     Over Grian’s head, Scar asks, “Is that good?” as Mumbo crouches down to peer into the burrows.

     Grian says “Does he get a treat?” at the same time.

     Doctor Plays laughs, and steps around them to the set of shelves next to the door.

         “Yes, he does, and yes, it is!” he says, opening a big bucket of something. “Sometimes I sit here for upwards of ten minutes, but I haven’t had to in a while, which means he might be memorizing it! How cool is that?”

     He pulls open a hatch high on the wall, because everyone is taller than Grian, and pours in little brown and purple seeds onto the surface of the terrarium. Mike winds through the burrows until he’s over Grian’s head, only visible if he steps back.

     The other three don’t have to. Mumbo and Scar make ‘aww’ noises and Doctor Plays coos at his Spirit.

     This sets the tone for the other rooms along the hallway. Hallways? Grian couldn’t navigate out of the Observatory if he tried. Maybe the Lab-yrinth is just a small-scale test if the Spirits could escape, too. There are a lot of them, though Grian could not tell you what most of them were like. The biggest he can remember was a cow with mushrooms, though maybe the glowing, floating bush could have been. Grian’s favorite is the one they met right before the scheduled break.

     Like the reptile room at a zoo, there is a long, darkened hallway full of small exhibits displaying different Spirits, including more endermites. It’s much prettier than Mumbo’s earlier description of “plastic log enclosures.” Doctor Plays knows every single one of their species names and has stories for every single one. The very last Spirit is displayed beside a huge window to the room the Rift is in, and the eerie purple light washes over its enclosure so thoroughly that Grian can’t tell what color anything within should be.

     Draped over a branch like a scarf, a ferretlike Spirit with many wings is intently eating a piece of fruit. Its feathers shimmer in the purple light, making the eyespots on its wings appear to blink. As they approach, it flips around on its branch to shove the treat into its mouth rapidly, and Grian is instantly entranced.

         “That is a Watcher! It is the only one we have on record, so it is rarely out here. It was fiddling with the controls for the Rift overseer when it was found – nothing was damaged! We think it liked the glowy lights. It certainly cries when there isn’t any purple light,” says Doctor Plays.

     Grian settles down on the floor before the exhibit, and Scar giggles.

         “Did we tire you out?” he says, voice dripping with fake concern. “Aww, we went to fast, he has to take two steps for every one of ours!”

     Mumbo snickers, and Grian smacks both of their shins.

     Grian huffs, then asks the doctor, “Look at it! Does it glow? I can’t tell, with the lighting.”

         “It’s reflecting the Rift like black light! Under normal light, its feathers are pink and white. The eyes aren’t visible at all, usually, which is how they’re blinking now – they’re just tipped out of the light,” Doctor Plays explains, also kneeling.

     Scar and Mumbo settle down, too, and listen to the doctor explain how the feathers are constructed that lets them do that, and also something about chickens, but Grian is intent on watching the little creature finish eating and ripple around its branch to jump to the ground.

     It comes right up to the glass, and Grian squeaks.

          “Hello, you are very cool,” he whispers as it bumps its nose against the glass.

     Scar leans into Grian’s side and coos, then there’s the click of Mumbo’s shutter indicating he’s taken a picture. That’s fair. He’s taken a lot of pictures, since the Spirits aren’t afraid of humans at all; they’re curious and willing to play along with the strange people staring at them.

     Unlike with the Spirits in the experimental wing, the Watcher doesn’t have a specific area to interact with it, but that doesn’t stop the team from playing finger tag with the tiny creature. They set their hands on the glass and try to pull back before the Spirit taps at them. Scar is really bad, because he keeps curling up to laugh and missing the Spirit’s movements. To be fair to Scar, though, the Watcher also keeps tripping over its own wings. Not designed for ground movement, huh, little beast?

     No one is keeping score, and Grian isn’t even worrying about how to add this into their project. It won’t be hard, though. Cute Spirits are very on-theme. Depends if they mind the cameras, really.

     Eventually the Watcher flops in the leaf litter and puts its frontmost pair of wings over its face, its entire body rippling with its breaths.

          “Aw, did we tire you out, honey? Okay, we’ll leave you be. We have to see the big purple light, after all,” Scar coos.

     Bidding the tiny creature goodbye, they finally make for the exit and the viewing room beyond. Similarly to the waiting room at the front of the building, it’s sleek and minimalist, but the purple lighting makes the scene far more sinister.

          “Wow, it kind of looks like a rave,” says Mumbo.

     Or a rave, yeah, sure. There are no windows separating this raised section from the area below, only a guard rail. The floor beneath is bare concrete, and along one wall is a huge screen with a digital face on it, like a Tamagotchi. It also seems to have hands, and is manipulating the massive array of buttons and levers that run along the length of a countertop like the control room of a spaceship. There is a person with a clipboard also pressing buttons, and Doctor Plays calls down to them.

          “Hey, E.X.! Anything interesting?”

     When they look up, E.X. is wearing a full mask, which makes Grian a little nervous. Is there some kind of protection standard Doctor Plays forgot to explain? That seems far-fetched – Doctor Plays loves explaining – but maybe, hopefully, it’s just for those on the Rift floor. E.X. seems unbothered by their bare faces, at least.

          “The bot insists something is happening, actually. The spikes are getting more frequent, sure, but they’re not any more intense,” they explain with a shrug.

     The robot whirrs loudly and its display changes from a face to a readout, like a heartbeat monitor. The doctor and E.X. both tilt their heads to the left, and Doctor Plays even catches his tongue between his teeth as he squints at the screen.

          “Is it spiking whenever that thing looks through the Rift?” Scar asks, pointing.

     Looks is too passive a word; the Spirit is tearing at the purple tendrils still obscuring its form, flailing toward the opening. Just as Grian registers the black shape, larger than any of the Spirits in the rooms before, alarms blare, and Scar grabs him by the shoulder.

          “It’s crossing over! Back, we need to call in a team-“ Doctor Plays calls out.

     He is interrupted by something whizzing past Mumbo’s outstretched fingers and embedding into the wall, followed closely by several more. Scar pulls them both down, hissing under his breath, under the sound of the Spirit screaming. There’s the shriek of twisting metal, and Grian peeks through the railing to see that the robot is trying to hold the big Spirit – no, the Rogue – back. He can’t see E.X., and the Rogue screams again and launches the projectiles from its throat into the robot’s screen.

     It starts fizzling, arms jerking wildly, and the Rogue in its grasp screams louder. Doctor Plays opens the door back into the Spirit Hallway, pushing Mumbo through, and shouts something under the sirens. Grian really doesn’t want to stand up. The alarm is too loud, pressing at the corners of his brain he tries to hide so he doesn’t freak out in public, and Scar’s panting is fast against his shoulder.

          “Under the tables, try to stay covered as we move?” Grian suggests, slipping his bag off his shoulder so he can fit.

     Scar nods, and slowly starts scooting backward to the seating area. Grian takes a deep breath before he digs his shoes into the tile and rolls into a crouch. He’s small enough that his head is still behind the bars supporting the handrail, and with his feet under him, he could run if he needed.

     The Rogue is far bigger than the other things he used to run from.

     Scar is coiling himself up beside a table instead of continuing to slide towards the open door, the hall beyond, and Doctor Plays and Mumbo peeking out from behind an ‘employees only’ door. Grian shoves him in the shoulder while the robot tries to stick its hands into the Rift. Unfortunately, the Rogue is gripping the sections of bent metal in its arms, and the robot can’t shake it loose.

     Scar pokes Grian back and rearranges himself so that he’s crawling instead. Why didn’t he start like that, honestly, this is why Grian is their plan guy.

     Every molecule of confidence in the plan he just thought up ten seconds ago vanishes in an instant when the robot shakes the Rogue again while it is tearing at an arm, and the metal snaps at just the right moment for the Rogue to be launched right in front of them. It crushes the guardrail and skids into the wall, scattering furniture and ceiling squares. The alarms are still blaring, but Grian puts a hand over his mouth anyway, going as still as possible. The Rogue breaks the loose arm’s grip and throws it towards the door, which makes the entire floor shake and the wall collapse.

     They’re trapped. Really, properly trapped, Grian still half-tucked under a flimsy plywood coffee table like it’s any kind of shield at all when there’s a giant monster screaming at the ceiling loudly enough to make his ears ring and his vision spotty with an instant headache.

     This is, of course, when Scar decides to be brave.

     He rolls onto his back and carefully stretches an arm around the edge of the tabletop, patting along it with his hand spread like a spider. One of the random knickknacks on the table he’s under – probably a model of something – is roughly hand-sized and ball-shaped, and Scar seizes it. With a flick of the wrist, the bauble sails the scant few meters between them and the Rogue and impacts with the window into the Display Hall.

     Whatever kind of glass the window is made of, it’s much stronger than the bauble, which shatters into shards and some kind of liquid the purple lighting tints into a reddish stain. The Rogue spins, raising strangely delicate antennae and twitching wildly.

     It roars, greenish lights blinking along its spine and claws.

     Grian wobbles, scrambles to catch himself as his vision goes momentarily blank. Even though he’d just complimented its sturdiness, the hallway window is cascading down into shimmering piles. Did the screech shatter the glass that finely? Grian’s blurry vision isn’t helping, but it looks like sand.

     The Rogue takes a swing at the wall, and Grian attempts to tuck himself more securely under his table. With the dull roar over hearing loss, he feels more than hears his head thunk against the plywood. Grian might’ve made a pained noise the Rogue can somehow hear over the blaring alarm, or maybe even that faint sound attracted its attention as it whips around again.

     This time, the greenish lights ring around its open mouth, an odd sideways opening in its chest like a second maw, and it sniffs jerkily as it lowers its head.

     Grian stops breathing.

     The Rogue is blind, he thinks. It has no visible eyes, unless the lights count, and its antennae wave madly as it tries to locate him. He hopes the desperate beating of his heart isn’t audible to it, or that Scar doesn’t do anything dumb.

     Technically, his prayers are answered.

     In practice, the Rogue tires of sniffing him out and swipes its huge claws across the room, shattering tables and exploding couch cushions.

     Grian curls inward, but that doesn’t save him the second the Rogue’s claws brush against his back. It roars as it tightens its massive fingers like a toddler excited at retrieving a toy, and Grian goes limp as the sound shakes his bones. He’s definitely screaming now, even though he could’ve sworn he was almost out of air and despite the Rogue’s current crushing grip.

     Scar decides to be brave again.

     He screams his own war cry and something crashes. Did he kick the table at the Rogue? Grian wriggles in its hand when it rumbles, though he can’t do a thing about it if it screams again.

     Instead, it throws him.

     The claws prickle into his ribs briefly, and then whirling air. He flails, yells, then impacts with glass. The alarm is still blaring, but this time he hears it shatter. Then he also feels it as the shards cut into him, and he covers his face like it’ll help.

     From this distance, the Rogue’s roar is bearable. Then Grian remembers Scar is still in there, and he jerks upright, shedding shards of glass. To his surprise, he recognizes the window he flew through: the Watcher’s exhibit, which means he was just launched almost fifteen feet into glass. How is he not… concussed? Dead?

         “Hello?” says a soft voice behind Grian.

     He whips around to the best of his ability, cuts burning across his shoulders, but only the plants and rocks forming the walls of the terrarium are visible.

         “Hello?” Grian repeats, flicking his head back and forth.

         “I’m sorry, I couldn’t catch the glass, I wasn’t prepared…” says the voice.

         “Catch?” Grian repeats, again, even more baffled.

     A curve of what Grian had thought was bedding uncurls and flaps as the Watcher crawls out of a corner to jump into the air. It ripples like it’s swimming, until it’s eye level with Grian. It’s wringing its front paws, like an anxious person, and Grian isn’t sure he didn’t hit his head.

     Especially when it speaks.

         “Ah, my name is Xelqua! I wasn’t intending to end up having to Choose, but, well…”

     The Rogue screams, and it – they? -  look over their shoulder and then take a deep breath.

          “As a Spirit of the Song of Fate, I can combine my power with humans to assist them against Rogues,” Xelqua says.

     Half-convinced he’s hallucinating, Grian lifts a hand towards the Spirit. Encouraged, it drifts closer, wings rippling.

          “I wasn’t intending, when I was lost, I really only wanted to escape, I didn’t think I’d need to, but,” they reach out and set a paw on his outstretched fingers. “Would you accept this bond, so that as one, we may channel the Song of Fate to defeat the Warden loose in the other room?”

     If he isn’t imagining this, that sounds pretty important. Actually, it sounds like the exact thing the team was looking for, but the wording is just vague enough to be concerning.

         “My name is Grian, if you, ah, missed it earlier,” Grian says politely. “What does that mean, exactly? What would I have to do?”

     Xelqua nods fervently, which ripples all along their body, blinking their eyespots. They put another paw on Grian’s hand.

          “All you have to do is allow me to empower you so that we take on the form of a being capable of fighting the Warden. I need a person from this side to do it, to properly channel my magic.”

     The entire building shakes as the Warden roars and something else is thrown through the broken window, this time missing the enclosure and skidding down the hallway. It isn’t Scar.

     Grian makes a snap decision that he’s probably hallucinating and that his day can’t get any worse. This is actively denying that he’s really curious, because that sounds like Xelqua is going to give him magic powers, and he literally would not be here if he didn’t think that sounds so unbelievably cool.

          “Okay, let’s do magic.”

     Xelqua suddenly presses all of their weight into Grian’s hand, the eyespots lighting up with pure, white light. Then the rest of them, a bright wave dripping over their feathers and fur and onto Grian’s hand. It’s warm and fuzzy, then searingly hot, but Grian can’t pull his hand away. In a single, sickening swoop, it spreads over his eyes and sinks into his bones until his whole body is fire. Terrifying, but painless. The sounds of the Warden crashing into things and screaming fades out, and a melody rises in its place.

     The Song of Fate.

     The music swells around him and he closes his eyes and relaxes into the tide, the fire replaced by air and energy. Though he should be constrained by the mossy ground of Xelqua’s enclosure, his body wants to move, and the cuts and bruises don’t pull at his muscles when obeys. Something soft brushes along his spine and his awareness spreads along it, fanning out over two- four- six new wings, then a tail, stretching and folding as the whisper of a touch wraps around him. As if left by a kiss, a burst of warmth spreads outward from his forehead, just between his eyes.

     Everything hangs, for just a moment.

     Then the magic reaches an internal balance, yet a tipping point for this transformation. To the outside eye, barely a second has passed, and yet, a new being kneels in the ruin of Xelqua’s enclosure.

     The last ripple of magic fades from the air, and Aria, Bow of Fate, opens her eyes.

     She launches herself forward as the alarms break the moment, and dives through the broken window. The Song of Fate still whispers in her ears, guides her motions so her wings and dress don’t catch on the tattered glass. They unfurl again as she lands on the remnants of the platform’s railing, and the movement kicks up dust from the crushed pieces of concrete.

     While the Warden abandons the tables it’s ruthlessly smashing, Aria fails to locate Scar. He was closer to the door, wasn’t he? Did he climb up when Grian was launched? The Warden sniffs at her, and she readies her wings, fingers itching to twirl the Song into a weapon.

      There’s no blood. No red blood, at least.

     The Warden’s faintly-glowing navy blood speckles the concrete, though Aria can’t see where it is wounded. If something chased it into the Rift, she hopes it doesn’t follow, but if the robot cut into it when it was trying to return it, well. That seems like a weakness she could exploit, if she gets a little range.

     She pushes off of the railing as the Warden processes she’s there and takes a swipe. It screams at her, of course, but she can scream back, hitting a note that makes power coil in her hands and drift into the air. Like bubbles, they float on the current of her voice, their iridescent shells glint with the Rift’s energy like her eyespots.

     Banking around the robot’s sparking head, she loops the song back in on itself, and the orbs turn their false eyes to the Warden and home in. A high note, and they detonate, shards spraying across the whole room but sailing harmlessly through Aria’s body. She can’t quite remember the lyrics to create any eyes with special effects, but the noise of them shattering makes the Warden’s antennae flutter with irritation.

     Then they whip to the left, as something clatters up on the platform. Aria jerks backwards as the Warden whips around, but the new sound has completely absorbed its attention.

          “Well, hello there!” says Miss Hawkeye, casually leaning over the precarious edge. “Haven’t seen you around before.” Her head tilts, and though her eyes are hidden behind dark glass, Aria feels the weight of the other Magical Girl’s attention. “Either of you! Hello!”

      Aria waves, and Miss Hawkeye jumps down as the Warden launches another supercharged shriek into the balcony.

          “Well, at least one of you is friendly!”

          “Ah, yes,” Aria finally manages to say, forcing herself to form words instead of the Song. “The big guy is definitely malevolent.”

     She pushes into the air again as the Warden flails in confusion, and notes that Miss Hawkeye drops into a crouch instead. She knows the other Magical Girl flies; she’s famous for making impossible shots from impossible dives. If she’s already injured – though that doesn’t make sense, her mind rebels against the concept, somehow – Aria should try to keep the Warden’s attention.

     Miss Hawkeye has already nocked an arrow, so Aria opts to summon another round of eyes. She loops around the high ceiling, dodging the projectiles launched with the Warden’s shrieks, and Miss Hawkeye settles half behind the rubble to shoot several arrows very quickly.

     Though she cannot sense whatever lights the Hawkeye arrows, Aria knows that they most often explode into flame on contact. The Warden discovers this firsthand, and makes a noise like a metal bin being crushed. Miss Hawkeye giggles as the flames crackle, and Aria lands near the rubble as the eyes shatter along the concrete leading toward the Rift.

          “I don’t- Should we try to get it to go back through the Rift, or should we just… discorporate it?” Aria whispers, holding her wings stiffly so she doesn’t overbalance.

          “Ooh, you’re new new,” Miss Hawkeye says, cupping a hand against her mouth to whisper. “Okay, so usually we just chip away at Rogues until they turn into cores, or someone manages to talk them down if they’re sentient enough. This guy, though – it hasn’t responded to me at all, so cores it is. Though we should probably chuck it back in the Rift afterwards, huh? That’s pretty convenient.”

     Cores, huh? That feels correct, like hearing a song from your childhood you haven’t thought about in years. Aria can’t quite grasp the specifics of it, but she hums some eyes into existence as she jumps back into the air. She just has to do enough damage, and then Miss Hawkeye can do… whatever it is that transmutes the Warden’s body back into a core. No, it’s pure damage, right?

     How big of an eye can Aria sing?

     Before, each note had been a separate eye, so she takes a deep breath. To keep the Warden from interrupting her, she lands on the inactive robot’s shoulder and tucks herself into the gap between its screen and wall. Miss Hawkeye looses another arrow, recaptures the Warden’s attention, and dodges the table it throws. Its shriek doesn’t manage to blot out Aria’s steady note.

     She almost drops it the next second, as Miss Hawkeye does something with another arrow that makes a massive stream of water explode out of the concrete and knock the Warden over.

          “Yeah!! Okay, if I…” the other Magical Girl cheers. “…here, this.”

     Her next arrows slip between the Warden’s exposed ribs and glitter with small explosions. They’re strangely muted, as if from a much father distance.

          “It should be pinned!”

     That’s good, because Aria is out of breath. The eye is about the size of a tire, and Aria has no idea how strong it’ll be.

          “Can you try to get clear?” she calls down, waits a second for Miss Hawkeye to cause a smaller explosion that shoots her into the air, and then returns to directing the eye.

     The rest of the world fades out of her awareness as she carefully leads the eye down, swirling around the Warden’s open soul-catcher in its chest. From the eye’s point of view, Aria can see something swirling in the glowing cavity, and knows in her bones that the Warden’s core is almost revealed.

     The eye bumps against the Warden’s chest delicately, then settles across the opening like a bubble on a drain. It flows into the gap like the Song is using the Warden’s ribs like a bubble wand, blowing a second bubble inside the Warden as it rages against Miss Hawkeye’s arrows.

     Aria looks across the room at Miss Hawkeye perched in the broken window, and nods.

     She cuts the Song.

     Deeply violet sparks flicker into existence within the eye and surge outward. For the briefest of moments, really only interpretable after the fact, the eye is opaque and solid. Then it detonates.

     It’s remarkably less gory than Aria was expecting.

     Aside from the massive eye’s shards, the Warden’s body crumbles into smokey pieces and reveals cool, greenish light. They scatter, sure, but there is absolutely no blood. Each time the chunks impact, they shatter even further, leaving trails of dust. There isn’t even a scream, just the eternal blare of the emergency siren. It makes sense, Aria supposes, since the Warden isn’t really dead. As long as the core isn’t damaged, the Warden will eventually gather enough magic to reform a body.

     Miss Hawkeye jumps back down, and Aria glides to a stop beside her. What Aria had thought was a shield on her back is carefully folding itself into the round shape, with the two bars of orange and blue actually being the tops of Miss Hawkeye’s wings. How is she doing that? No animal or Spirit Aria can think of seals its wings together when not in use.

          “So, cutiepie, that was your first battle, right? Are you okay?” the other Magical Girl asks, drawing Aria out of her head.

          “Yes, it was, and yes, I am,” she says, then processes the nickname. “I’m Aria!”

     Miss Hawkeye just grins at her squeak, pulling the catlike stripes on her face into crinkles.

          “Well, Aria, do you wanna do the honors?” She gestures to the Warden core, twitching on the ground.

     For the most part, it’s a round object with roughly the same texture as the Warden’s head, but the tightly woven fibers twitch and uncurl as they watch.

     Aria tries to not looked visibly unsettled and fails miserably, and Miss Hawkeye laughs again. She scoops it up in one gloved hand and holds it up toward the Rift as if the purple light could reveal anything about it. Mostly it just highlights when a tendril comes loose and flails freely, and Aria is envious of Miss Hawkeye’s composure. The other Magical Girl doesn’t seem concerned about it grabbing her at all, and visibly relaxes when she finally lowers the core.

     Instead of explaining, she grins at Aria again.

          “We’re lucky the Rift is here. Usually, I have to find a way to hide the cores until I can hand them off to someone to purify,” she says, and curls into a classic baseball pitch.

     That dredges up a distinct memory from the Grian half of her consciousness: handing over a bag of something her mind shies away from naming to a man in a dimly-lit bar. Grian received a stack of money for it. Aria wonders if Magical Girls are actually paid, and if this theoretical money is actually of human origin.

         “Are they other Magical Girls? Or do I need to do something specific to find them?” Aria asks as the core sails into the Rift.

     The surface of the Rift ripples like liquid, and the core doesn’t drift down with gravity before it fades from view.

     Miss Hawkeye hums, considering.

          “They can be. Honestly, if you just land nearby here – this building – there’s a Spirit that takes them. The Musician. You’ll be able to find him easily, huh, singer?” She says teasingly.

     Aria shrugs. She supposes she better figure out some lyrics, if she’s going to need to track down Spirits, too.

     Miss Hawkeye turns to face Aria as her cheerful expression drops.

          “Just… be careful. There are people far less helpful who’d love to find a Spirit to control. Don’t transform where you can be seen. Don’t tell anyone what you are,” she says, setting her hands on Aria’s upper arms to emphasize her point. “Go back to where you transformed, okay? Try to hide nearby, and then the two of you are going to have to come up with a cover story.”

     Aria swallows hard. Miss Hawkeye is more serious than she’d been the entire fight, than she’s ever been on the news. The echoes of Xelqua’s desperate flight through a literal storm of magic, aiming for the tunnel of the Rift because anything else would end with pain, wells up in Aria’s mind. Hunters on this side, too.

     She grasps onto the first thread she can weave into a reassuring cover and takes a determined breath.

          “I hid in one of the control nooks next to the Spirit cages and didn’t come out when the big guy starting throwing things.”

     Miss Hawkeye relaxes into a smile.

         “That should work! Great job, cutiepie. Good luck, I’ll see you around.”

     Instead of flicking her odd wings out, Miss Hawkeye draws her bow and fires three arrows into the door under the overlook. Aria takes off before she realizes those were explosive arrows, and the building shakes again as she slips through the broken window.

     True to her cover story, she slips into the little space where the exhibits are designed to be opened. The hatch is metal, even though Aria’s talons could carve it up. Aria wonders if, after today, whoever designed these will have to figure out how to reinforce the viewing section, too.

     Then she remembers she has to detransform and twin bolts of anxiety and sadness ruffle her feathers. She wants to listen to the Song and fly and explore the city. But just as urgently, she really, really does not want to find out why Miss Hawkeye was so adamantly against anyone finding her. People are going to respond to the emergency siren, and Scar and Mumbo are somewhere in the building.

     If Xelqua goes with Grian, they could continue to work together. The bond offered is not an eternal thing, but they do not have to say goodbye.

     Aria arranges herself on the floor with her wings brushing the walls, and focuses on the idea of Grian and Xelqua as separate entities again. The Song wails, her wings shiver, then tuck in close, and the warmth from the magic drains into the air. In an instant just as quick as the initial transformation, Xelqua reforms, curled around Grian’s neck.

     Grian himself gasps at the sudden cold and the return of the many cuts from being thrown through the window. He blinks fuzzily, almost expecting pink talons and a fluffy skirt, but his hands are bruised and human and his jeans are torn up. Xelqua wriggles free to flop into his lap and flips his body around to look at him. He can tell, now, that’s the Spirit’s concerned expression, because Grian was just in his head. Xelqua was in his!

         “Hey, deep breaths, oh goodness,” the little Spirit says, wobbling up to set his paws against Grian’s chest.

     Oh, yeah, that might help. Hand over his mouth, Grian forces himself to breathe slowly. His heart stops pounding in his ears just as pounding feet echo through the hallway, and Xelqua crawls up around Grian’s neck again. About time the response team showed up.

     Just as the first boot enters Grian’s limited vision, Xelqua fizzles. As in, magic sparks around Grian’s neck, and when he touches Xelqua’s body, the Watcher has transformed into a scarf. Right. He’d be taken away again if the scientists knew he was a Spirit.

    Grian’s going to have to sneak a Spirit out of a laboratory.

         “Hello?” he asks instead of worrying about it.

     The team whirls, and Grian flinches. Their bodies glow vaguely, centered in their heads, chests, and hands. One of the men steps forward, and Grian wobbles upright to catch his outstretched hand.

         “Hello, you’re one of the visitors who hasn’t been accounted for?”

         “Yes, and Scar’s still in there,” Grian says, pointing. He’s embarrassingly unsteady on his feet. “It threw me through the window.”

         “Okay, sir, we have a medical service set up next to break room three, so we’re just going to head down this hall and then left,” the emergency responder says, and Grian zones out for a while. Probably shock.

     Can he still get magic sickness as a Magical Girl? What he can remember from Xelqua is rapidly unspooling like trying to preserve a dream, though Xelqua’s new enough that he might not know.

     Break room three contains Mumbo, Doctor Plays, EX, and several other employees under the care of paramedics. The emergency response member hands him off to a red-haired woman whose eyes go wide when she sees him.

         “Hello, I’m Gemini, if you could sit down here, please?” she asks, and Grian must look pretty bad when Mumbo immediately crosses to crouch in front of him like he’s made of glass.

         “Are you okay? Well, obviously you’re not okay, you’re bleeding.”

     Grian relaxes onto the cot Gemini indicated, and tries not to anxiously pet Xelqua. Mumbo might notice that he’s got an entire extra scarf. Luckily, he’s got an easy distraction.

         “The… Rogue threw me through a window,” Grian says, narrowly avoiding calling the Warden the name he shouldn’t know.

         “What!?” Mumbo yelps, and several people’s heads come up.

     The paramedic sets a supply case on the table beside the cot and shoos Mumbo away. Then, she sets her hand on Grian’s head and tilts his face. She continues to gently poke at him, which sucks because the adrenaline from transforming has started to wane and he can feel pain again.

         “We hid under the tables in there but I knocked something and it grabbed me, so Scar threw something, which freaked it out and it threw me,” Grian explains.

         “It was on the ground!! How did it get up there with you!?” Mumbo asks, terrified and exasperated in turns.

         “Let’s get a look at those cuts, actually. Would you like a privacy screen to take your shirt off?” the paramedic interrupts.

     Grian hums, uncaring. He only really minds if someone touches Xelqua, so he carefully unwraps the disguised Spirit and places him at the head of the cot before shucking off his sweater. Almost every muscle involved in those actions sting now. The paramedic is probably going to have to put disinfectant on them, which will sting more.

     To distract himself from her careful touches, Grian recites the slapstick routine the robot conducted for the room. If he closes his eyes, he could almost pretend he’s in high school again, getting patched up after a fight while his sister decides whether or not to chew him out. He very determinedly keeps his eyes on Mumbo’s worried mustache. Note to self: becoming a Magical Girl is nostalgic for the wrong reasons.

     Before Grian has to lie after the glass, Scar and another member of the response team burst into the room. Scar’s face is bloody, but he jumps an entire chair to slam his hands down next to Grian and yell.

         “How are you not dead!? It threw you like ten feet!” he scans Grian’s injuries. “Your bones aren’t even broken!”

         “Hey, hey, let’s not stress anyone out, sit down-“ says another paramedic, and Scar is shuffled onto a nearby cot.

     That’s okay, because Grian’s just realized that he can tell the funniest lie.

         “Well, do you remember what Mumbo said?” Grian asks, and Mumbo himself squints. Grian grins. “That people kept trying to summon Magical Girls by tapping the glass? I broke it! And there was a Magical Girl after, she might’ve done something.”

     Mumbo slaps himself in the face, which is excellent. Scar groans loudly, mostly relived under the exasperation, and Doctor Plays leans over with a sparkle in his eyes.

         “Who was it?” the paramedic prompts. “We’re going to have to check for magic sickness as well as bone fractures, hmm?”

     Grian tilts his head back to look at her, just in case either of his friends notice something off about his expression.

         “I didn’t recognize her, but she had a lot of wings. The regular ones, and some over her face.”

         “She was new then!” Scar chirps excitedly. “I heard singing, but I couldn’t see. There was another one at some point and they talked and blew stuff up.”

         “How did two entire Magical Girls get into our facility?” Doctor Plays mutters to himself.

     Well, Grian can attest that at least one of those Magical Girls did not technically enter. He pats Xelqua nervously, then hisses as the paramedic sets her hand beside a bigger cut.

         “Well, whoever she was, you’re very lucky. I haven’t found any glass to remove yet.”

     She doesn’t find any glass at all, which she is vaguely concerned by, but Grian is willing to chalk it up to Xelqua. Other Magical Girls heal people, so the weird bit is apparently that the glass was taken out without sealing up the cuts. Grian thinks it probably was removed when they transformed, pushed out of his body by magic. It says something about today that the thought is not even top thirty for ‘weirdest realizations had’.

     Right now, a higher entry on that list is the glow everyone in the room emanates. Xelqua is very bright, EX’s weird mask and protective suit also seem to glow from within, and Scar has odd patches, but everyone else has a simple aura. Is that because Scar was close to the Warden?

     Wait, no, whenever the paramedic puts her hands in front of his face, she also glows like Scar. Not exactly the same pattern, and Scar is blue instead of purple, but just as brightly. He gets a good look when she lets him stand up and talk to the investigators collecting reports. It feels a little strange to be on this side of an interview, but that might be because he’s constantly preoccupied with not outing himself. It’s harder than it seems! He’s very glad Miss Hawkeye insisted on Aria deciding on a story before detransforming, coming up with something on the fly seems like it would catch him easily.

     Then another member of the response team gives Grian his bag back, which is great for two reasons: one, Xelqua can go in the bag! Excellent hiding spot, and he also takes out the crushed chrysanthemum in his hair as if he’s just putting away the costume items from his outfit. It is possible he’s paranoid already. He pushes that thought down, because reason two is that his phone is in there! He leaves the bag open just in case Xelqua still needs to breathe as a scarf and clicks his phone on.

     It starts, which feels like an achievement even though the cracks in the screen haven’t worsened. There is an alert on his home screen warning him of a nearby Rogue attack, and Grian can’t help but giggle a little. Yes, phone, thank you very much, he’s aware.

          “Your phone’s fine?” Mumbo asks.

          “I dropped my bag before the Rogue ended up on the overlook,” Grian says, and accepts the congratulatory high-five from Scar.

     Doctor Plays plops down next to them and smiles apologetically.

           “Well, I’m sorry to say that we’ll probably have to continue the tour another time,” he begins, and the team laughs. “But you do have a new story for your project! Also, I’m willing to provide additional interviews and such if you’d like. Would you like my contact information?”

          “Oh, yeah, that’d be great, actually,” Mumbo says, and they descend into phone shuffling.

     To ensure that all numbers have been typed correctly, everyone also receives test messages.

     Grian sends “hi, it’s Grian! You’re going to have to fight the spellcheck every time you write my name. Sorry.” The message he receives in response contains a laughing emoji and “yeah, my name is Zedaph, my phone wants it to be seraph.”

     Scar also insists that they all take a picture together to ‘commemorate living’. Grian scoops Xelqua and his bag into his lap. They all try to squeeze together on one cot, and Zedaph steals Scar’s hat. Grian hopes that one of the pictures turned out okay between Scar flailing over Grian’s head and Zedaph falling off the cot.

     The paramedic from earlier puts her hands on her hips.

          “Please don’t knock your head on anything after escaping a Rogue attack, I was just going to clear you,” she says, and like naughty children, all four of them straighten up and smile as innocently as possible. Zedaph even tips Scar’s hat, but he doesn’t bow since he’s still sitting on the floor.

     Scar offers up his bandaged hands.

          “Oh, helpful medic lady, please let us go home so you don’t have to be responsible for us anymore,” he requests.

     She laughs, and catches his arm to make sure he didn’t tear open the bandages.

          “Well, I have another thing you’ll need to worry about: neither of you have shown any signs, but I think you should try to stay with someone who can check in and make sure you don’t develop magic sickness, alright?” The paramedic catches Grian and Scar’s eyes in turn.

     Is that potentially what the auras are about? Scar has been magic-sick in the past, maybe that’s why his is all blotchy. That would mean the paramedic might have been exposed once. Maybe Grian can see his own aura in a mirror and check.

     Mumbo nudges his arm.

          “If you text Pearl, she can watch you, and I can go with Scar?” he suggests, and Grian bites his lip in thought.

          “I’ll check at least,” he says, instead of ‘I think my sister will immediately determine that I am magic now.’

     Any other circumstance, and Grian would agree immediately. He really doesn’t want to leave Scar alone in his huge house. If Xelqua stays in the bag until he gets the Spirit to his room, maybe she’ll just… assume he’s acting weird because of the Rogue? Yeah, no, that’s explicitly what she’d be trying to prevent. Gosh, he’s just going to have to hope.

 GRIA: hey pearl would you be mad if I tolf you I was in the rogue attack in the observatory?

GRIA: so I need you to make sure I don’t turn into a bird plague or something

GRIA: love you?

SISTER: GRI WHAT DO YOU MEAN

SISTER: ARE YOU OKAY

GRIA: yes you would be mad alright. can I tell the paramdeics you’ll pick me up or

SISTER: of course I’ll come get you I always do ARE YOU OKAY

GRIA: yeah!! She wouldn’t be letting me go otherwise she just said

      Grian looks up when the paramedic steps in the light and smiles.

          “My sister will come get me, she’s had to keep an eye on me before,” he says, trying for reassuring.

     The paramedic raises her eyebrows, not reassured.

          “You’ve been in previous Rogue attacks?” she asks, then “May I check you over, too, or do you need to say anything else to her?”

 GRIA: last checkup. Scar’s going with mumbo so text me when you get here

SISTER: you are telling me ALL the details. See you soon

      Tucking his phone into an outer pocket of his bag, Grian turns his full attention to the paramedic. He probably has to shed his shirt again, huh?

          “Yeah, my team and I are investigating Magical Girls. We’ve all been in multiple Rogue Attacks,” Grian answers, wincing as she gently shifts him. “We have a bet on whether Scar or I will see fifteen first. Mumbo doesn’t count since he’s from here.”

          “I’m winning!” Scar chirps. He really wants the celebratory ice cream.

     Grian shifts to show his back as Zedaph makes a baffled noise.

           “You’re calling that winning?”

          “He’s already had magic sickness twice and he’s lived here for four years,” Mumbo adds neutrally, attempting to present a united front despite his own objections to the joke.

     The paramedic makes an aborted noise of protest.

          “Yeah, that’s why we got two separate babysitters; otherwise, I’d be juggling them,” Mumbo agrees.

     A different paramedic, despite being present for that conversation, cuts in to lecture Mumbo on the symptoms on magic sickness as if it isn’t the common term for ‘random side effects from magic exposure.’ Grian appreciates the insistence on safety, at least. The most common effects are dizziness, skin irritation, and auditory hallucinations, and Grian hopes to God whatever lets him see auras doesn’t come with any of those. He’ll have to ask Xelqua, assuming he can get enough time alone without Pearl hovering.

     With perfect timing, Grian’s phone vibrates just as he’s putting his shirt back on. He tucks bagged-Xelqua back against his ribs and waves to Zedaph. Pearl’s messages are mostly complaints that he’ll have to walk out to meet her, which means she’s pretty worried that he’ll stop answering her.

 GRIA: I was completely cleared other than the possible magic sickness

GRIA: no glass or anything! So I should be good to go all that way

SISTER: GLASS

SISTER: GLASS WHAT DO YOU MEAN

GRIA: a magical girl saved me after I was thrown through a window

GRIA: I promise I’m fine okay

      He sends her one of the group photos as proof, one with hat tug-of-war over his head. She still continues to yell at him over text as he’s led out of the building, and then immediately tugs him under her arm when the personnel hand him off in the darkened parking lot. It would be sweet, except she noogies him as revenge.

          “Hi Pearl! I’m glad to see you, too,” he snarks, but goes limp against her shoulder.

     It’s been a while since she’s had to pick him up from any kind of incident, huh? They got out of practice. He tips his head back to look at her, even though she’s buried her face in his shoulder and he can only really see a lot of brown and cream hair under her new aura. She’s going to know something is up, with how much he’s babying the bag.

     He really hopes Xelqua is doing okay.

          “Did they feed you at all or should I make soup?” Pearl asks, hesitantly leaning back to look at him, too.

     Grian huffs a little. “They just gave us some of the prepackaged stuff from their snack bar.”

     Pearl gasps dramatically, and pulls Grian towards the left of the parking lot. “That is a tragedy, Grian, honestly, you’d think they’d feed you better when they’re supposed to be making sure you’re okay-“

     Stumbling a little to get his feet under him, Grian adjusts his bag under his arm and pets Xelqua. He doesn’t know if the Spirit can feel it, but he feels bad about how long Xelqua’s spent pretending to be inanimate. If he wasn’t glowing very brightly, Grian would be concerned that Xelqua swapped himself out with an actual scarf.

          “-after being thrown through a window! Again!” Pearl rants, waving her free arm.

     Grian is very glad his friends aren’t here to question that statement.

          “Technically it was two windows, but one of them was already broken,” he corrects, and Pearl squeezes him.

          “That’s not better!”

     She fumbles her keys from her pocket and unlocks her van. In an effort to not be a classically-suspicious blank white, she’s painted it with her cleaning company’s logo and mascot in a little scene. It’s like if a brochure and a wizard van had a baby, but it also guarantees she won’t lose it in big parking lots.

     The interior is spacious enough that Grian could tuck his bag next to his feet if he wanted. Instead, he keeps it on his lap, one hand on Xelqua’s fur, and feels that the Spirit had transformed back at some point during the walk and is now breathing. It’s dark in the cabin, that’s fine.

      Pearl turns her radio down low, which Grian tracks absently. She probably wants to keep talking about the attack, but Grian speaks first.

           “Can you get magic sickness from just... being in a place an attack was?”

      Given that his sister is often hired to help clean out buildings destroyed in Rogue attacks, Grian really should’ve asked this earlier. But before, he couldn’t see the way her body sparkles with sourceless light like she’s been flecked with glow-in-the-dark paint.

          “You were grabbed by it!” Pearl yelps. “That’s not- that’s direct contact, G.”

          “…I meant you. There was a guy at the Rift room who had a- like a space suit? One of the futuristic ones with a tighter mask. Scar asked if he was a Mandolorian. You go to places where there’s, I don’t know, Spirit blood and stuff.”

     The Warden had certainly bled. The weird stuff it’d launched while screaming might’ve stuck around after Aria and Miss Hawkeye defeated it, if it wasn’t magic.

          “Oh, Grian,” she says gently.

     He twists to look at her directly, but she’s still watching the cars until she can turn into the street.

          “You don’t have to worry about me, I promise. I wouldn’t describe our P.P.E. as a space suit, but I suppose they’d want something sturdy if they’re wearing near the actual thing…”

     What, no, not your personal protection equipment, emotional whiplash! What!

         “Why did you sound so sad, I thought you were going to tell me something horrible!?” Grian demands, taking his own deep breath.

     Pearl makes a sad, huffy giggle, which only proves Grian’s words.

          “Sorry, no, it’s fine, it’s just… you were just in a huge attack everyone was really worried about. Like, what if the Rift had gotten – I don’t know – torn open? And yet, you’re worrying about me again,” she explains.

     Under his fingers, Xelqua’s breathing picks up. Regular Grian probably wouldn’t like the idea of the Rift breaking either, but the shadowy purser he’d glimpsed in the Spirit’s memories is probably an indication of how bad it could be.

          “Just... are you okay? Emotionally? ‘Cuz this just keeps happening to you, all the time,” she continues.

     This time, Xelqua shifts, and Grian is briefly panicked that Pearl will notice until he processes that Xelqua has curled around his hand and is petting him. Then he processes her sentence, too, and lifts his free hand to bump her shoulder carefully.

          “I think it would’ve been worse if it weren’t for the Magical Girl,” Grian decides. “Like when we’d finally turn the lights on when we were little and nothing would be there? I didn’t even have any glass in me because of her.”

     Grian hopes that’s reassuring enough for being as close to true as he can make it. He can’t even promise her that he’ll stop getting into these situations; even before the promise Aria made to herself, Grian’s job is to go to dangerous places and report on them.

     But there is something he can say, before Pearl tries to bury her regret again.

          “Hey, I promise that I’ll call you to come destroy whatever monsters I can’t.”

     Pearl laughs, and Xelqua squeezes his hand.

          “How could you say that to me when I can’t even flex at you? I’m driving, Grian! Imagine I’m saying something really cool about how I’ll always be there for you while looking like a superhero, because right now I’m – hey! I’m being cut off by an Audi-“

     Grian laughs, too, and feels Xelqua vibrate like he’s silently giggling. The brief time in which they were one person is definitely contributing to how quickly they bonded, but man, does Grian wish Xelqua could meet Pearl properly. She’d love him. He already promised to save Grian from all of the weird stuff that just keeps happening.

       Karkat propped himself up on an elbow to call after her. “You play dirty, Harley!” I let myself roll into the dip from his arm and curled around it, hiding my face in the blankets and enjoying the reverberation from his growly morning voice as it shivered through my chest. “C’mon, Dave, she’ll feed our bacon to the dogs if we’re late.”

          “A Knight of Time is never late.” I told his arm. “And, I have fifty-seven hours before I have to be a famous movie director again. It’s nine thirty-two in the morning on a Saturday. Gimme a break.”

       Karkat sighed and leaned over me, plucking our shades off of the nightstand. The shades weren’t a product of light sensitivity, this new planet’s sun wasn’t as bright as Alternia’s, but of his long-standing fear of being persecuted for his blood color. When we were younger, he’d hid it by avoiding injury and wearing gray make-up to hide a mutant red blush, but his eye color had come in with his adult molt two years ago, and though they were a few shades darker than his blood he was self-conscious about it.

          “Fifty-seven hours is like two days, right?” He plowed on before waiting for an answer. “You’ll have plenty of time to be smothered in dog kisses and update your comic or whatever else weird, pale, immortal Time gods need to unwind. I want bacon right now. And you to accompany me.” He tugged his arm out of my grasp and rolled off Jade’s side of the bed, padding over to the pile of clean clothes we hadn’t gotten to putting away yet.

       I whined into the blankets. “Totally cool, ironic, immortal Time gods snuggle their boyfriends until at least eleven in the morning.”

          “We can do that tomorrow, since then it’s your turn to cook.” He decided, and then there’s the soft plop of clothes hitting the hamper or somewhere nearby.

          “I will hold you to that. And Jade. Even though she hasn’t agreed yet.” I said as I pulled the covers more comfortably up to my chin, turning my face into the pillow. Karkat’s footsteps retreat in the direction of the bathroom, and I almost successfully drift off again before he comes back out.

          “Dave. Get up.” He huffed, pushing my shoulder.

       I hummed softly and squirmed away from his insistent hands.

          “Dave.” He repeated, poking the back of my neck. This time, I tried not to react, to pretend I had fallen back asleep, but I must’ve failed because he sighs.

       Then his arm is under my back, scooping me up, and the other comes up to more securely cradle me to his chest.

       I yelped in surprise and clung to his shirt, blinking back into awareness to glare at him properly.

       He didn’t notice, and instead began carrying me out to the kitchen, where, okay, yeah, the bacon smelled heavenly.

       We weren’t the only ones waiting on food, though; Jade’s foster dogs waited somewhat patiently for their share from the open doors to the back deck, trying very hard to look pitiful.

       Karkat plopped me down in a chair and fished my shades out of his pocket, placing them in front of me. I dropped my head into my arms and huffed as he patted my head. He looped around the table, and Jade squeaked as he pressed kisses into her fluffy dog ears.

          “Here, Karkat. Coffee’s ready.” She smiled as she plucked two mugs from the rack beside the sink. I lifted my head slightly, enough to watch Karkat pour out coffee for both of us.

       Jade already had a cup to the right of the stovetop, probably pumpkin spice flavored, so he only fiddled with one. He liked trying out all the different combinations of sugar and flavoring, but I liked mine black. He’d asked me once why I preferred the bitter taste, and before my sister Rose, who we’d gone out for coffee with, could open her mouth to give a psychological reason behind it I’d said, ‘It’s sharp like you are and dark like Jade, it’s both my dates in one.” He’d ducked his head shyly and Jade beamed, “Dave! You adorable sap!”, while Rose watched with her ‘I see your soul’ smile.

       He sat down next to me and pushed the mug at my elbow. I sat up straighter and took a sip, offering him a small but grateful smile. I still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of expressions, but we’d all been friends and then partners long enough that they could read me pretty easily when I wanted, even if I was wearing my shades.

       Jade clicked a few buttons on the stove and then began layering bacon onto the cream cheese slathered bagels set out to her left. The first time she’d made these we’d looked at her like she was crazy, but she’d convinced us to try some and now she made them whenever something big happened, like the day after I finished a movie.

       The dogs watched intently, as they would get the extra bacon with their kibble. She flipped the top halves over to complete the sandwiches, then swirled around to set the plate on the table before bringing the frying pan with the spare bacon over to the dogs.

          “Oh, look at such good boys and girls!” She cooed, scooping kibble into the dishes. “I think you deserve a treat, yes you do.” She placed a strip of bacon in each dish, then stepped back as the dogs jumped forward hungrily. She turned to smile at us, each holding a bacon-bagel, and then swept over to the sink to drop off the pan and pick up her coffee. She sat across from us and picked up a bagel of her own.

       For three minutes and four seconds there was relative silence as we ate, aside from the chewing and the grumbling of Pringle the pug, Jade’s tail could be heard fwapping against her chair as it wagged.

       Then Karkat spoke up. “I promised Dave we’d sleep in tomorrow.”

       Jade tipped her head to the side. “Was that how you got him out of bed?”

          “No.” I answered before him. “He just carried me. Without my permission.”

          “Did you want to miss baconagels or what?” Karkat huffed. Jade smiled at the portmanteau, and I made my lip twitch.

          “Well… No… But I did want to sleep. Rose has a book signing at three forty-five and I should be a supportive big brother and go, but people suck.”

       They nodded in agreement, and Karkat wrinkled his nose at his coffee.

          “Weird combination? What’d you try?” Jade leaned forward excitedly as she talked, sniffing at the air with her sensitive nose.

          “No, it’s fine, just, I didn’t mix the cinnamon in well enough. There’s clumps.”

       Jade nodded again. “Ah. Pity.” Then she switched her attention back to me. “Do you really think you’re the elder brother? I thought we were all born or hatched or whatever one uses for clones at the same time.”

          “I think we were, yeah, but all my timeloops mean I’m nearly a year older than all of you.” I responded, possibly a little smugly. Jade stuck her tongue out at me and Karkat made a flapping motion with his hand, the other diving into his pocket.

       He pulled out his phone and frowned down at the screen, mouthing the English words. Though he was verbally fluent, he hadn’t started learning written English until we’d shown up on the new planet. All the rules and their exceptions irritated him to no end, but he had set up an English-Alternian blog to help him get used to it.

       Eventually, he held the phone out towards Jade. “You sister-parent-clone says her girlfriend’s cats are loose.”

       Jade leaned forward again to squint at the screen through her glasses. “Oh my god! We should go help! The poor kitties!” She jumped up from the table, literally wolfing down her bagel, and rushed down the hall looking for shoes.

         Then another, a boy, having moved from some faraway place, arrived. He knew the girl, could understand her when she ranted, laughed at a comment no one else understood. His black leather jacket was stitched with dark wings, and he was obsessed with the golden jewelry he wore every day, that covered his body and was braided into his long black hair.

         The third appeared much as the first two had done, no introduction to his homeroom class, just that the desk at the left end of the third room was suddenly occupied by the girl’s twin brother. He dressed and acted exactly like her, dark lipstick, dark hair, dark clothes, dark drawings, dark snake armband. He sat in the same corner as the other two, and he and his sister were fond of saying the exact same thing at the exact same time, especially when called on in class.

         The fourth and fifth appeared together, a set of brothers. The elder knew the third well – too well, in most people’s opinion, and didn’t talk at all. The younger smiled and laughed, and was much more approachable, but, though he wasn’t in any of the older fours’ classes (save for gym and lunch), he was associated with them. Both had long, white hair, and slight accents. As the others did, they wore black, but their quirk was their interest in deer for the elder and foxes for the younger, their clothes often altered like the second’s had been to resemble an animal.

         At the sixth, people began noticing the group, especially the newest member. The teachers seemed wary of the boy with electric blue eyeliner, a Cerberus tattoo, and a variable personality. One day, he’d be grinning lazily, scribbling on his hands in thick blue marker. The next, he’d be cowering in his seat, flinching at anything from the bells to the chime of computers starting up in math class. Rumors flew around that he was a druggie, that he’d escaped from rehab, and people began to pay attention, to notice the laughter in the corner, the odd harpy cries of the twins and the second, the straight-faced rumble of the fourth, the sudden snickering of the fifth, and the sparse, deep chuckles of the sixth.

         The seventh arrived the week after, and immediately was grabbed like a lifeline by the sixth. She seemed creepily used to it, stroking his dark hair and fixing his jacket on the bad days, poking him with her pencil until he did his work on the good ones. She had short, silver hair, and bright green eyes that seemed more robotic than human. Her innate ability at athletics never helped much with the rumor, but when sharp, surprised bursts of sound identified as her laughter began, many people became curious.

         The eighth was the last. He was the shortest, smaller even than the fifth, and looked unnervingly like the second, save for his eyes: gold, not red. He would answer questions with long, overly enthusiastic answers, laugh in birdlike chirps, and sing in different languages as he walked. He got excited over everything, wondering how it worked and what its purpose was. No one forgot the day he asked the history teacher how exactly did she know what happened, and his vow to find out, after she’d answered that she didn’t know for sure. The eighth didn’t seem to fit in with the rest, yet he was one of them; people wanted to know, why did he stay with them, he seemed to always be waiting for someone else.

         What made them special? What did the dark clothes and shiny jewelry hide?

         Whether they wanted to be interested or not, the other students had been dragged into it, and they all waited for a ninth. Someone to give them an excuse to find out more.

         Who would come? Who, exactly, was the ninth?

  Mom just laughs. She turns into the driveway carefully, and parks beside the other cars. The host of the party, my mother’s friend, Mrs. Bellmonte, takes a few steps down from her front deck, smiling widely. I like Mrs. Bellmonte, she isn’t fake like her daughter.

       “Julia! How are you? And how’s your handsome young man?” Mrs. Bellmonte chirps the second Mom opens her door.

       “Oh, I’m fine, Vera. And he’s just raring to go, aren’t you, sweetheart?” Mom answers as she hands over a bag of cupcakes.

  I snatch the present from the seat behind mine and jump down to the gravel. “Of course, Mom.”

  Both women laugh, and Mrs. Bellmonte peaks into the bag as we walk up the steps. “Oh you shouldn’t have, Julia! The hours you must have spent!”

  Mom opens her mouth to reply, but the front door opens and the girl standing framed is the perfect distraction. “Mary-Anne! Happy birthday!”

  Mary-Anne blinks up at my mother, fake smile in place. “Oh hello, Mrs. Grant! And thank you!” Then she turns to me, and I note she hasn’t yet figured out how to fake smile with her eyes. “Hello Hayden.”

       “Happy Birthday.” I mutter, and our mothers shoo us into the house and turn to the kitchen.

  I’m definitely not the only person there, Mary-Anne is popular and perfect by most standards, and has more friends than I ever will. The second she steps into view several girls wave and call her over. She takes a step towards them, but I hurriedly ask a question before she gets very far.

       “Uh.. Where do I put your present?” I lift the pink poodle bag that Mom picked, and Mary-Anne blinks, surprised.

  Her fake smile turns greedy as she fixates on the bag, and tosses her hand to her left. “Oh! You can put it with the others! They’re on the little table, next to the food.”

  I nod and turn, and she rushes off to the gaggle of blondes painting their nails and snickering. The table of food is mostly pink, and stacked with cake-pops and chocolate candy. There’s a gap in the sweets, prime estate for Mom’s luminescent pink cupcakes, and a shorter table in the corner is piled with wrapped boxes covered in glitter. I drop the present unceremoniously on top of a sparkling box that practically screams sexist stereotype, and then turn to survey the room.

  The TV is on, playing saccharine music no one in their right mind would willingly listen to, and the coffee table has pink bags of makeup and hairpins as party favors. The girls Mary-Anne joined are giggling suspiciously, and I have a feeling school tomorrow will involve a new demeaning nickname. Probably a half-baked reference to drag queens and/or beauty pageants, because a short boy with longer-than-normal hair hasn’t heard that before. There is a pink, lacey curtain over the entrance to the kitchen, and as I watch a yellow puppy pokes its nose through the gap near the floor. One of the girls utters an unholy shriek that might have been ‘cute’, but could have just been her arm being ripped off.

       “Winston! C’mere, cutie-pie!” Mary-Anne coos.

  Pity. The other girl must have actually spoken.

  The poor puppy bounds right out into her arms, and disappears under pink tulle and sparkly jars of something. I head to the curtain, intent on seeing if I could wrangle something that didn’t look like plastic and sugar with an inch of frosting for (not) good measure.

  Before I can disappear from the land of lacey pink sexism, my mother pushes aside the curtain and nearly bumps into me, her tray of sugar-frosted cupcakes wobbling dangerously.

       “Hayden! Don’t scare me like that!” She huffs playfully. Despite nearly having dropped the tray a second before, she shifts it to one hand to use the other to ruffle my hair.

       “Sorry Mom. I wanted a glass of water that didn’t have a glittery rim.” I hum softly. She chuckles, and returns her hand to the tray.

       “If I knew where Travis was, I’d send you off. Some of the other boys are around, though. Get your water and maybe check outside.” She winks, probably seeing straight through my lie, and shuffles over to the food table to be mobbed by girls wanting pink sugar bombs.

  I duck through the curtain into the kitchen filled with mothers chatting over tea and creamy hot chocolate that might have coffee hidden in it. There are a few smiles thrown my way, and several raised eyebrows. I nod at them all while scuttling over to the glasses cabinet, and have to reflect on just how many times Mom drags me along to Mrs. Bellmonte’s parties because I definitely shouldn’t know where the cups are in someone else’s house. When I can’t accurately remember how many, I am somewhat unnerved, but the sink is clear so I fill my glass and step out the other door.

  Thankfully, the back hall is just as pink-free as the kitchen, and the backyard even less so. The treehouse has a new sign, ‘No frills allowed’, so I walk over to the foot of the large oak it is nestled in and call up to the occupants.

       “Hey, does anyone know a good way to escape the clutches of sugar-high living Barbies?”

  My question is answered by a blonde boy with a crooked smile. “So far trading off levels of LEGO Star Wars Three is working nicely.” Travis kicks down the rope ladder, and I drop my glass in the massive potted bush to my left with a mental note to pick it up later.

  The other two poor siblings hiding from the pinkpocalpyse with Travis are Mark and Bella, who are currently thrashing pixelated LEGO clones and trying not to fall over or hit anything with their controllers. I curl up in the corner opposite Mary-Anne’s elder brother, and nod at the screen.

       “How long have you been up here if you’re already on the third game?”

  Travis groans, rubbing his head like I’d given him a head ache. “God. Two days. Give or take sleeping and bathroom runs.”

       “He was playing the Hobbit this morning.” Bella adds, “You’re lucky your mother had work today, I had to help decorate because reasons.”

       “Probably related to you being a chick.” Mark yelps between button mashing.

       “Yeah, and because Becca was exempt because she’s the one who’s actually invited.” They then yell as something big and mechanical jumps onscreen, several lightsabers in clawed hands.

  Travis pokes me in the shoulder with a cereal bar. “I don’t know why you’re always roped into this, man. You don’t even have any sibs Mary-Anne would care about.”

  I take the bar gratefully, and considered his unasked question.

       “Your mother probably has mine on speed dial.” I decide on. I am the only one without a sister or two in the pink living room, as mine is in college and therefore eight years older than Mary-Anne’s clique.

  He shrugs helplessly. “Then I guess you can be, like, a junior member of the We Hate Pink Club.” He grins again, and pats me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, initiation is having to deal with her, and you do that all too much.”

           One by one, they flickered back to life, now with angry blue and pink flames that crackled ominously. The flames lit in a spiral, closing in slowly on the summoning circle opposite me.

           The last candle sparked as the soft, thrumming music swelled into chanting. Whatever I had summoned definitely had a flair for timing. Inside the summoning circle, the shards of glass darkened, and smoke from the candles began to swirl around the circles, both mine and the summoning. I remained silent as the smoke coalesced into a vague gray shape that floated over the offerings at the compass points.

           East, the point closest to me, was first. The bowl of water from the river at the edge of the property disappeared under the half-formed creature, and only the bowl remained when it drifted clockwise, to the Southern point. The delicate origami rabbit, made of crimson paper, vanished beneath the smoky form, leaving a burn on the rough concrete. The smoke continued West, to a single cupcake, decorated by yours truly in blue and pink as the grimoire described, which was circled twice before being swallowed by the cloud. Then it flew to the Northern corner, where the final object lay, dripping quietly. A pink rose from the front gardens, my blood on the thorns to complete the offering. The smoke demon plucked it up, and it, too, was obscured.

           The blood that had fallen to the floor was ignored, and the smoke writhed in the center of its circle, growing in size until it was a pillar that brushed the ceiling and the mirror shards below. Another pulse of wind whipped through the room, and again the candles went out. The form darkened and solidified into a humanoid shape. Runes sparked along its limbs, suddenly hidden by skin, then clothes, as the demon chose its shape.

           The smoke drifted off, leaving the demon standing alone in its circle. It looked about my height, with dark crimson hair and pale, heavily freckled skin. It had copied my clothes in paler colors, and was blinking around at the darkened basement.

           I took a breath, and finally spoke. “What is your name, demon?”

           Its head snapped up, its eye meeting mine. They were glowing swirls of pink and blue, set in a face obviously modeled after my own.

           “Me?” It chirped in a thick Cockney accent, “I’m Oliver, your perfect dark reflection.”