Lucky Souls
Chapter 25: Trust
Bursting through a stain-glass whirlpool of sickeningly bright, neon colors, Konata and her Tsunsteed penetrated the barrier of the black hole and shot straight into a new realm of unconsciousness, a deeper layer of thought where all the pretentious, nonsensical, questionable or non, morals of the human mind were laid bare for all mind-invaders to gawk at accordingly.
Dotingly the Tsunsteed perched herself on the lone location in the erratic, rainbow, flashing void. It was a single box of a room, but if the apparition of Kagami had led her here, Konata was sure this was where they were meant to be, the next step in locating Kagami's true consciousness.
The purported space they found themselves in conveyed itself as a faultless, untouched cubical room. The floors, walls, and ceiling were tiled perfectly with symmetry of the highest caliber, not a misshapen filling or stain of mixture and craft to be seen. No human error to be found in its construction, no stains or blotches of filth at all within the unparalleled cleanliness.
It sparkled proudly, its sheen glowed, but there was an uneasiness brought about by the perfection. It seemed synthetic, lifeless, and utterly non-human. No human could live here, at least, not well, and such a premonition seemed to hold true, as the sole occupant of the flawless chamber was yet another carbon copy of Kagami Hiiragi.
This Kagami sat in the center of the room, huddled into a fetal position, rocking herself back and forth at an attempt to find harmony, but none could be found for her in this dead chamber. Her eyes were glued open in a frenzied expression, bloodshot and fatigued, joined by a perfectly curvaceous set of deepening slivers of lethargy. Her hair was disheveled, her clothing unkempt and filthy, and her nails looked as if they hadn't been trimmed her entire life, gnarled like the roots of a tree. While the room was spotless, a paragon of asepsis, the sole occupant was a polar opposite of this perfection.
"Hey!" The manic Kagami screamed as she noticed the intruders entering her personal space. "Did you even think about wiping your feet!? Who knows what filth you'll drag in here! I just cleaned! Remove your filth! Do it! Do it now!" She instructed furiously, sprinting upwards from her bunched squat and charging to the thin layer of imaginary dirt and pools of gooey chocolate shed from the intruders' feet, leaving an unsightly trail of footprints and hoof prints behind them.
Immediately the dedicated custodian got to work, scrubbing the floor of its muck in a frenzy, her eyes swelling up with tears of frustration as she did so. Her tantrum of girlish sobs and squeaks almost made Konata feel sorry for the apparition. She wasn't real, but the pain she seemed to be burdened with certainly seemed as much.
"Is this the real Kagami?" Konata inquired glumly to her equestrian guide, whom whipped her light purple mane in a negative confirmation.
"No, this is Kagami's conscience." She explained without sympathy to the alien of Kagami's mind. "Here she sits day by day, ridding our mind of any and all undesirable abnormalities. In an effort to maintain perfection she's been driven quite mad." An understatement to be sure, insane was what tax collectors were, and the poor soul Konata's eyes fell upon was a broken, destitute hermit even within the safety of her own mind.
Finishing her accustomed, superfluous ritual, the ragged conscience of Kagami gathered the clarity to give a skewing glance to the intruders. "And you, what are you doing here anyway!? Like I don't have enough things to worry about, now I've got Konata skipping around in my head, touching things! Touching things with her dirty little no-good trouble making hands!" The illusion demanded to know fiercely, and while the presented anger certainly had a similar feel synonymous with a certain tsundere, this one definitely wasn't her.
"My hands are not dirty!" Konata insisted, innocently inhaling a blob of melted sweetness from her fingers. "Anyway, I'd love to stay and pry each and every little inhibition and timid insecurity from the depths of my little Kagamin's grey matter, but for once I really do have better things to do than pester you! Now hows-a-bout you lead us to the instinct, eh?" Superciliously Konata inquired, hoping to reach the subsequent layer of Kagami's subconscious just as easy, more or less, as the first two.
"No." Resolutely Kagami's conscience replied, turning her back on the twosome to resume her obsessive, compulsive duties of managing a pure, unveiled psyche.
"Great!" Konata assumed half-lidded, already moseying her way intuitively in the right direction. "Now we just need to-hey wait what did you just say!?" Redacting her praise into a sweeping furor, she nearly tripped over the twisting curl of her own hair she jutted about so quickly.
Kagami's conscience deprived the azure knight of a response, ignoring her as she silently resumed scrubbing the infringing, and growing by the second, chocolate puddles toe-painted across the white tiled floors.
"Oh no. We're dooooomed." Konata's Tsunsteed provided an emotionless display that in large was undemonstrative of the true horror the situation bestowed upon them. It somehow made Konata twice as frustrated as before.
On a mission Konata marched over to the disregarding janitor, planting a desperate palm on her shoulder to wake her from her frenzied lifework. "Hey now! This affects you to, ya know! Kagamin's dying outside these walls, and if she does so do you! How then will you be able to clean your precious floors?" Konata hoped that by reaffirming the seriousness of the situation, perhaps even an imaginary figment of another's mind could understand all it had to lose.
"Oh, I know we're dying." The conscience bleakly confessed, wringing her soapy cloth free of browning chocolate stains with the sentiment. "And that pleases me, I can't stand this anymore. Kagami...we…I, she never lets up her guard. She never stops trying to blame herself for everything that befalls…well, all of you. Her conscience is heavily weighed down; by this and that…mostly anguish only she could understand. And I'll be glad to be free of this place at last when she slips away. Free of this maddening duty." Her words exhumed relief, despite their debilitated outlook. This was not fluctuating in Konata's favor, her time was scarce, and what little allotment she was inferred by foreordination, she couldn't be bothered wasting it on arguing with an illusion.
"Gaaah! Who needs you!?" Konata irately assured to herself. "We can make it to the instinct on our own, right, Tsunsteed!?" Although a second opinion never hurt anyone, she figured.
"We do need her; she's the only one who knows the way." The phantasm reiterated the plan just as it had before.
"Yeah, but…ugh…" Quizzically the bluenette itched her head in crimped chagrin, searching for a loophole. "Can't I just use my mind like I did last time? Will us there?" She exhibited the secondary, inferior plan to her guide, but even despite the poker face the mare didn't seem to find it favorable.
"Unfortunately not." The horse retorted in between a whinny. "The rules of a mind are adjudicated by the owner of said mind, in this case…the reason we are unable to proceed is because Kagami has willed it that only her surface thoughts are visible to others. It is possible the person she displays to you in the real world is not the same person she hides deep within." A plentiful, and begrudgingly solid explanation, but it didn't really provide an answer to the all encompassing issue.
"Well…" Konata stuttered, scrunching her face in contemplation. "Everybody does that, right? People put up walls; don't show their true selves to all but a few. How is this any different?" She wondered the question aloud more than she imposed it, now lost in the slippery truth of Kagami's intensely structured mind.
The guide clopped a hoof to the ground involuntarily, arcing her head towards the more frenetic representation of their collective thoughts, the manic conscience. "I fear Kagami is an extreme example of this conventional human trend." Providing the answer Konata feared, it brought with it a new host of unanswered riddles. Kagami was a worry-wort; she was obsessive, compulsive, premeditative, apprehensive, and acted as though she were wildly harrowed by all around her. It never really occurred to Konata before this moment that perhaps these temperaments exposed a much deeper issue, granted it was a very clandestine one.
Konata's pity for the burdened child was great, but no viable commiseration could be given, and even were there such a comfort it would not be hers to give. To understand another, truly, absolutely, and without barrier and restraint was not something easily attained by even the closest of friends. While Kagami was her dearest friend, most trusted confidant in all things, and her most prodigious treasure, still to this day she learned new things about the deferential, studious, oft cantankerous woman.
It was a painful admission, but her understanding of this individual most sacred to her was perhaps not the most deeply attuned in the correct ways. She knew more about Kagami than anyone, except perhaps the girl herself, or her twin Tsukasa, but as she boasted such a claim only then did she realize the meager extent to which she truly knew her.
And these troublesome accountabilities, an albatross on the girl's mind, crushing her always under a storm of guilt and uncertainty, tainted happiness seen through a crooked, sly grin. Konata never bothered to look deeper past this cloak; perhaps in her over-fondness of Kagami she was blind to such perceptions, where perhaps others could notice them readily.
A curse of being an Izumi no doubt, one born with the desire to see and understand all, only to be discommoded by the grandeur of the task and see and understand so little as a result. A hasty character trait, an unparalleled eagerness to grow offset by the inability to care long enough to dig deeper past the surface.
It was a mistake she had made countless times before, but not one she would make now. "Hey…Kagamin?" Konata bothered another reply from the custodian, who forwardly noticed the change of intonation present in her heckler. "I…I take it back, I do need you. I need your help. I never realized you were under such stress…I never noticed a lot of things, I guess." Shamefully she recounted her thoughts aloud, gleeful when the ragged specter finally met her sight.
"I just want the burden to end…" Meagerly the conscience repeated, lip aquiver as imaginary forlornness weakened her already weary state.
"I know." The hasty Izumi concluded understandingly. "And I promise I'll do whatever needs to be done to ensure you don't have to carry that burden by yourself anymore, okay? But in order for that to happen, I need you to lead us to the instinct." Despite the urgent assertion she meant it absolutely, when the danger had passed, she would surrender all her attention to heaving her fair share of Kagami's hardships. Under the burden of her task of destroying the Old One, and of locating her missing father, what could one more burden hurt?
Kagami's conscience was placated at first, cheeks rosy from embarrassment, but this side of herself shown itself visibly only at a brief discretion. It seemed the deredere side was powerful within imaginary constructs of her friend's mind as well. "Follow me…" She conceded, dragging her feet with a bit less heaviness than before. "But make it quick! If I have to look at all that…ugh, disgusting filth you're tracking everywhere any longer I am gonna lose my mind…again!" Wailing the conscience frothed, marching to a distinctly separated tile of the patterned walls, slightly chipped and cracked, worn unlike the rest.
"The instinct…?" Konata inquired hopefully, and her inquiry was approved by actions. Salivating denotatively as the pearly square of mixtures was pressed inward like a button, collapsing all surrounding tiles to the side as the wall opened like an entrance to a mighty castle, creaky hinge rustles and sounds of a war-machine beaten door and all.
As she approached the entrance within the gate, Konata saw a blinding blackness, a spiraling staircase into the void the same as last time, going even deeper. Yet this time, no mysterious black hole could be seen at the base of the vortex's staircase, instead, a structure took its place. A large, ceramic-looking pagoda, almost as if it were an oversized dollhouse. It was decorated, likely not for ceremonious purposes, with heavy iron chains strapped around the entirety of the building. A construct designed around the purpose of protecting, or sealing, something. It was the only entity in the mysterious, black void, a true abyss composed of nothingness.
Mutely, as if in a trance, Konata speedily descended the staircase, joined soon thereafter by her two ghostly companions. The plunge to the nethermost reaches of the staircase was a journey far more easily reached than the previous one, no gusting winds or winged horses were required for this journey.
Upon reaching the base, Konata was instantly imprinted with the impression of looming danger, foes unseen, troubles ahead; it ached in her senses with an itching fever. She couldn't have materialized a blade in her hands with her mind fast enough, and her bare nudity splattered thoroughly with chocolate had to be outfitted with more appropriate attire, the same ratty, hand-me-down chainmail and oversized shirt and trousers she always wore were the first thing to come into her mind, and by consequence the armor that adorned her.
"H-Heavy…" Konata breathed with a snicker, wiping the grin off her own face with a shake. "This place feels heavy." She noted in regards to the oppressive atmosphere, seemingly stemming from the monolith of security before them, a veritable Pandora's Box they would no doubt be forced to open, as of course the adventure trope would demand.
Perhaps it was the lack of clarity that brought this uneasiness she wondered, the empty blackness around them was completely obscured, only the slick brick-ground at their feet was shown through the genial flicker of the pagoda's lone twin set of torches on either side of its big, red door.
"Of course." Kagami's conscience stated obviously, to a resident of the mind anyway. "The human instinct is a near forgotten thing, built and layered over throughout our species' evolution by more profound thoughts and feelings, we don't have to rely upon it nearly as much as we used to now that we have things like rationality, and comprehension." An explanation that soared over Konata's head, she wasn't much for the sciences.
"Indeed." The Tsunsteed added in interjection. "Yet here it lays, primal and dormant. Ready to act without thought, prepared to thrive on sudden impulse, with nary a forethought or afterthought to be had in regards to its actions and consequences that may stem from them. The uneasiness you feel…after centuries of repression, the instinct is…testy." Konata's guide related, with a rare stumbling of words. Even the emotionless one seemed troubled by the nasty vibes the area seemed to have in scads.
As if savvy to the group's agitation, the pagoda rumbled ominously with a shuddering beat, unleashing an eerie chorus of a thousand chattering, jingling chains. The torches flames whipped to and fro as if beset upon by a breeze, but no hissing airflow could be felt, just dead, weighted space. Loose tiles and shingles from the building tumbled off the neglected structure, peeling themselves from no-longer sticky filling, shattering into shards from age as they littered the slick ground.
"Okay…" Konata muttered, gulping a throb of saliva. "Now that we're here, what exactly do we do? My keen adventurer's instinct tells me to open the big scary door, but I'm probably not going to enjoy what's behind it, am I?" Befittingly she sweated to her guides; silent nods were her replies, an acknowledgement that she would surely die. She recalled her noble Tsunsteed had told her the dangers within the curious places of one's mind were just as real as those found within the hazardous vistas and villainous castles of Boletaria.
Cautiously she advanced upon the daunting, fearsome looking pagoda, one hand clenching the hilt of her imaginary blade for all it was worth; she could've sworn there were imaginary welts forming in between the cracks of her palm from the pressure. With the other she felt the surface of the door, which her senses strangely could register as wood, chipped over and scabbed with splinters at every curve, the paint on its surface looked as if it hadn't received a once over ever. It was splotched and weary, what was likely once a fiery hell red was now a duller, mahogany thing, yet this added age did nothing to quell her shaking boots.
Curiously she knocked on the door with a closed fist, leaning in as close as she could without touching it, feeling the outer-extensions of her tumbling hair brush up against the bolts and chains across its surface. She listened, but heard nothing; she tested fate by succumbing to the urge to knock once more, far more barbarously this time.
The authoritative and impatient calling proved effective, regardless of the foolhardiness of its practice or practitioner. The interlocking cobweb of chains slithering around the area were suddenly pulled and tugged by unseen forces, sucked into small square slits adorning the pagoda every several feet up its foundations, which Konata only now noticed. Soon the castle lay bare, unlocked, and the still staggeringly despotic red door creaked open, scraping across the ground with a shifting, broom-sweeping sound.
Konata glared within, eyes twitching and soaring everywhere, trying to examine every inch of the straw floors and patterned, scroll-plastered walls for any sight of an enemy, the progenitor of that alarming unrest that continued to cause a painful hammering in her chest. She thought she saw movement in the darkest corner of her eye, but it was her mind playing tricks surely, as she quickly thought she saw a similar insect-like scurrying in the opposite corner.
She took her first careful steps in, placing her exiguous collective weight into her sloppy battle stance, grounded and stiffened legs. The rest of her paltry might was soaked into gripping her blade, prepared at any moment to pull the pin from its plug and strike at the eyes that scrutinized her from the obscure shadiness.
"K-Kagami…?" Nervously she whispered loudly, a call almost completely overshadowed by her husky breathing, and the snap of rigid straw beneath her feet.
The signaling registered within something, as a powerful twirl of wind encircled her, brushed past her and forcefully pulled the doors behind her shut with a deafening slam. Konata wasted no time in reaching for the door, pulling on it with all her strength, slipping from its distorted door handles that refused to budge and falling hard on her rump.
"Kagami…darkness…instinct…broccoli, whatever unseen horror you are, I come mostly in peace!" She guaranteed the impalpable hellion, stumbling to her feet blindly, hypocritically letting loose her blade.
The dogma of peace the Izumi had brought seemed unwelcome; the pagoda shook far more rebelliously than before, fighting against the meddler's will to remain within its secluded walls. The ancient tapestries and stacked pillows and futons toppled over into hilly heaps, mussing the room into even further disrepair.
"Instinct, please! Kagami is in danger…if we don't work together on this, you'll die! She'll die!" The tried and true argument that had failed last time, perhaps it would work with a more simple aspect of Kagami's personality. A meaningless effort it seemed, the pagoda's shaking increased, becoming fiercer by the passing second, it wrenched Konata to her hands and knees so she could maintain some measure of composed stability.
One of the lone, wax-melted candle-torches on the outer side of the castle's doors had apparently shook free, as the flame had now wildly began to gnaw and tear at the flimsy, no doubt very combustible wood of the red entrance door behind her.
This fulgurating lambency provided the sight Konata subconsciously craved that was absent in the blindness of the building until now, but the revelation before her, the visage her enemy took was perhaps something she had been better off not seeing.
A writhing, slimy, scaly, and formless mass of jet black tentacles, twitching anticipatorily. Within the maw of the nameless horror, a Kagami like all the rest, skin snow white, her body hung like a whipped rag-doll from the eldritch horror ripping out of her spine, covering the base of the shafts of tentacles with her own dried, crusty blood. This Kagami looked dead, lifelessly she swayed connected to the far more lively bunches of twisting, stomach-churning links and tubes of fluttering, sweat-soaked flesh.
"Holy innuendo." Konata barely had that brief impasse to crack wise before the aggregate mass of spindly, thick tentacles whipped and slammed throughout the structure at the sight of its foe, crunching holes into the walls, floor, and roof and leaving the pagoda even weaker than before with the elimination of any and all timeless gravity maintained stillness.
The growing flames encircling the hut began to grow as they consumed more and more mass in their hungry daze, the wind-sweeping beget from the tentacle-monster's motions almost seemed to kindle their fury into an even greater menace.
Collapsing debris, brumes of blanketing wood-dust and sprinkling hay, it gathered in the air like a tempestuous snowstorm. Konata fought to see, shielding herself against the onslaught of household appliances and bits of building composite with her thin, ineffective blade. The cacophony concocted an awesome cyclone that effectively leveled the entire structure in seconds. The mind-invader had barely enough time to react to the caving pillars of wood over her head that threatened to crush her like an insect.
With mere inches of breathing room she rolled herself to safety, losing her blade to the accumulations of wreckage. Despite the impetuous maneuver, the bulk of the shapeless, shifting horror allowed it to erase any breathing room she might've gained, stiffening its tentacles into a piercing hold and stabbing into the unfilled orifices of the temples walls and ceiling. This gating technique completely sealed Konata's doom; she was surrounded on all sides by the behemoth of headless snakes.
It occurred to her at this prospect of imminent demise that she currently resided in a realm of infinite possibilities, limitless imaginings were possible here in this most peculiar of places. It seemed to be a recurring theme with her; the most ingenious of ideas always seemed to find their way into her mind at the worst possible moments, after she had already dispensed reasonable plans in favor of astonishingly stupid and inane ones.
"Alright then! Cower and behold, giant phallic-monster! At the awe-inspiring, pants-wetting-ly awesome, fan-girl scream inducing, earth-shattering, run-on sentence preferring might of KILLER KONATA!" At the disclosure of her mind-numbingly autocratic introduction, the azure knight felt the sonority of the dream worlds boundless power ring and chime a potent blast of energy from within her, pouring outward. Her bodies mass increased five-thousand fold, and she became a towering, skulking colossus that reigned above the now feeble pagoda menacingly. She laughed proudly, boasting her might by stomping on one of the collections of tentacles and gleaming as they squealed like swine, spraying their deep purple blood in droves.
More importantly, Konata gazed down her shirt, triumphantly beating a hand to her chest with a sneering cackle, groping herself without shame. "Hey look, I actually have boobs now!" She japed delightedly, setting aside her sudden growth spurt to claw at the scrambling mess of tentacles below her and scoop it up into her hand. The horrifying beastie was now no larger than a mouse to her, and wickedly she pawed and prodded at it as though she were the feline that had just secured its meal.
"Were I capable of pity, I would be feeling it in alarming amounts for that gross, squishy monster." Konata's Tsunsteed rued tonelessly as she she stared displeased at the wreckage of the pagoda.
"I wouldn't…disgusting thing." The conscience professed dissonantly, trying her best to shield her eyes from the unclean, unsightly monstrosity.
Holding the archaic evil in the palm of her now morbidly slimy palm, Konata prodded and nudged the defunct Kagami clone attached to it in hopes she would awaken. The annoying shoving seemed to stir some germination of life within the girl, fluttering, blood-shot eyes lifted themselves tiredly to acknowledge the giantess crushing its host of tentacles.
"Hey!" Konata greeted, her booming voice producing a whip of twirling wind, ripping the bow-ties from the instinct Kagami's locks, mussing it unconcernedly. "So you're the instinct, huh? Don't talk much do ya? Good, because what I've got to say is pretty important." She announced to the vision, ensuring the tales eminence. "Kagami, you, I mean, you're gonna die in the real world if you don't do exactly as I say. Pretty soon there's gonna be a big mess of something entering your body, this something is gonna be able to sustain you in the real world from…well, you got hurt pretty bad okay? I need you to show me where Kagami is, the real one, I mean. I really need to talk to her." Urgently she replicated, praying her test of might against the age-old warrior had given it some respect for her, perhaps even enough to aid her in this oh so simple of tasks.
"Set me down, please." Kagami's instinct requested humbly, finally speaking up from her passive silence.
Honoring the desire without question, Konata set the formidable foe at her feet, preparing to step upon it with the heel of her giant foot if it made any undesirable movements. But the beast seemed in the mood for obeying, it squirmed away to the destroyed hovel that was once an elegantly crafted home, curling itself into a ball and adumbrating its Kagami within a constriction of feelers and sticky limbs.
The instinct began to brighten, flush a febrile deep orange, as if it had suddenly taken one of the spreading flames to its body. Steam began to ramify outward, fogging the castle's interior in a misty smokescreen, which Konata blew upon to erase the fog in case the monster had decided to make a cowardly run for it.
With the smoke cleared, the instinct was indeed gone, but something took its place. Perhaps it had heeded Konata's words after all, for a preciously crafted, gold-studded and jewel-lined cage of sorts replaced the missing monstrosity. It looked eerily familiar, not unlike the greed imbued staircases of dream landscapes she had ventured to earlier, but she paid it no mind, the only matter she attended to was its purpose.
Konata willed herself back to normal size, face suffused with melancholy as she lost the ability to tower over a building, and instead found herself looking upward once more at the former splendor of zenith. She began to take the first few cautious steps inward again, until she noticed her traveling companions had gone missing, they too seemed to have disappeared.
With a slight tingle of regret at not being able to thank them properly, or wish them a heartfelt farewell, Konata pushed it aside to attend to the cage. Evocative, startlingly so, these architectures of exorbitant grandeur invoked a certain feeling of dread, reminiscent dread. Konata hoped their significance would be lost upon her, but she felt something just as she had before, these hoggish workings were of her own mind not Kagami's, but the why, she could not deduce. She could only guess that these redoubtable contraptions would no doubt seek to pervade her mind another day, but not now.
Almost regrettably she stepped into the swinging open doors of the cage, hearing them click and lock shut behind her, trapping her within their metal claws. She waited for something to become of her, or the cage, and it did, it submerged into the dusty ground like an elevator. It brought her down, deep into the nothingness through which her eyes could not perceive, she saw only a daft blankness.
Yet even without the proper mechanisms, or so much as a courtesy rope, the elevator seemed to have a destination in mind deep within the subconscious. It was several minutes of awkward silence alone with only her thoughts to keep her company before Konata was startled from her daze as the creaky bars of the door swung open, revealing to her something straight from a fairy tale.
A forgotten temple courtyard, eaten away by nature, sprawling with tangled vines and bushes of the brightest red roses. Loose tiles and overturned trees littered the path leading to a derelict fountain, no longer sprouting trickles of fresh water, dry as bone. Light rustles of the wind shook the few standing trees, tugging their saplings from their hold to the ground below to make lives for themselves, sapping thirst from a precarious flowing stretch of stream that leaked through a hole in the high stone walls roping about the courtyard.
How long had this temple been forgotten? What purpose did it serve back when it held one? No signs of battle, in fact no signs of human or animal life to be found anywhere. Neither buzzing of cicadas, nor tweeting tweets of birds were heard, only the blow of the wind and the trees. It occurred to Konata only after such a thought that perhaps it didn't matter, in an imaginary space that defied natural law, perhaps it had always been this way.
Konata found that she was oddly enraptured by the place; it drew breath from her, not words. For one who could never stop talking she found that strangely she had nothing to say, there were no words fitting enough to describe the places beauty anyhow.
As she stepped into the courtyard, she heard the crunch of snapping marble walkway plates beneath her feet, it seemed as if imaginary life hadn't set place in this gentle abode for quite some time, even the tiniest pressure was enough to endanger the perfectly preserved specimen of time. She had to remind herself again the defilement of this place was purely imaginary, it wasn't a real locale, a real time swept fantasy, just your run of the mill figurative fantasy.
Entering the lone, broken down door of the inner area of the sanctum, Konata finally found what she had come for, she thought anyway. A large, fluffy, sky-blue covered bed sat unconventionally in the center of the room, fresh looking in contrast to the antique place. Kagami, the real one she hoped, lay sleeping peacefully nestled within a nest of blankets and pillows, her long violet hair free and waving across the hilly fabrics of the coverings. As she gazed upon her, she doubted the specters of Kagami's mind would lie to her, this had to be the real Kagami, as per her instructions the girl before her could be no one else.
"Kagami…?" Konata breathed heavily, creeping up to the edge of the bed slowly as not to awake the sleeping girl.
Konata saw only perfection as she dawned upon her friend's sleeping form, absolute brilliance, resolute pulchritude in its most pure of forms. Such sights were hard to describe, far easier to simply understand. Konata understood plainly, that this woman, this paragon of all she held dear, was undeserving of one who would place her in such jeopardy. Even now as she stood selfishly wasting time regarding something as trivial by context as beauty, she did nothing but place her in harm's way. No time to brood, excogitations could be saved for a less pressing hour. The increasingly pensive Izumi seemed to have a nasty habit of reflecting in the most tumultuous of times, she'd have to work on that.
Daintily she stroked Kagami's sleeping face, patting it convivially to provoke her. The slumbering girl's nose twiddled and twitched at the sensation, eventually stirring her from the dead sleep. It took her a rubbing of the eye, a crack of the neck, and a long, hard stretch to the skies before she noticed the bedside squatter presiding over her recently sleeping self.
"Oh god…" Kagami muttered as her vision became clearer; she saw all the blue hues she needed to recognize who it was. "You didn't…drug me or something, did you? Or worse…" At the disturbing thought Kagami peeled her bedspread off of her torso, sighing with relief when she noticed some form of clothing was still intact.
"I wish, but we've got somethin' pretty heavy going on right now." Konata solemnly explained, obviously not her usual self, a peculiar trait of minor note to her still groggy friend.
"Great." Kagami muttered bitterly, rubbing her eyes in frustration. "Lemme guess, I died and went to hell and my punishment is spending an eternity alone with you?" She balked resentfully, crawling herself to the edge of the bed to sit dejectedly.
"Even worse!" Konata asserted, trying her best to maintain a composure that was anything but her usual self. "Kagami this is gonna sound pretty stupid, but please, I'm begging you to bear with me." She ingeminated profusely, clasping her hands in a begging shake to prove her sincerity.
Kagami scoffed sarcastically with a harrumph, but she complied, deciding to give the twerp the benefit of the doubt as her expression actually looked quite dire. "Coming from you I don't doubt it, but I'll bite, what's up?" Ponderously she inquired, sluggishly standing from her bed and giving another snapping stretch.
"Okay." Konata started with a sigh, holding in her breath for another long-winded explanation. "This is a dream; in the real world…you're dying. The others are doing all they can to save you out there, but they'll need some help, your help. When the time comes…and I have a preeeeetty good feeling you'll know when that is, just accept it, alright? It's the only way to save you." Mysteriously she conveyed her orders, knowing if she went into specifics the manifestation of her friend would refuse in an instant. Kagami was lax to do even simple idiotic things for her friend, if Konata told her to accept the soul of a powerful demon into her body, there would be absolutely no discussion on the matter.
"You're right, that does sound stupid. And accept what?" Indignantly Kagami asked, hoping for at least one meaty detail, but Konata seemed button-lipped on the matter.
"Just please. Kagami, I swear to you…I…" The azure knight's speech disassembled into sputtering mutterings of frustration, she was desperate at this point. "Please, for the love of all, have you ever seen me beg like this? Why would I grovel if I wasn't sincere? My adventurer's pride wouldn't allow it! Please, I'm begging you, just accept it!" She implored weakly, dropping to her knees to authenticate her candor, her absolute fealty to this cause.
"Pfft." Kagami fluttered, ticking her fingers away at her sleeve. "I can think of plenty of times you've begged like a child to get your way, I'm not really seeing the difference this time. Whatever it is, I refuse; now get out of my dream before you do something stupid." A heated rebuff, Kagami was consummate in her answer, turning away from Konata to admire the dreamy world she found herself in, figuring she ought to bask in the view while she found herself here.
Konata racked her mind for something, anything to hold onto. She stumbled in the dark, grabbed at anything she could, she needed to prove to Kagami her probity, she couldn't allow herself to be done in by her own ways that conditioned Kagami's mind into disbelieving her when the time really came that she was genuine about something important.
"Y-You uh…" Konata blunderingly began. "Uh…um…" Another faltering bumble, but the third time was the charm, it hit her just then. "You r-remember back home, when we were kids…we used to sing that stupid song, I can't remember how it went, do you?" Steadier, and with a humbling laugh she reminisced, a throaty choke in her voice that Kagami had suddenly become aware of.
"Sorta…" The apparition of Kagami wondered aloud, doubtful of her memory. "Something about skirts and stars…I don't really…why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?" She asked perplexed, coming around ever so slightly to Konata's demented tale.
"I just sorta remembered it, I guess." The bluenette shrugged, fiddling with her ahoge. "Brain fart." Acting as if she misspoke, Konata recounted her steps, tiredly rubbing her arm in disgruntlement.
"I just remember Tsukasa's voice cracking on the higher notes." Kagami snickered, beginning to recall the memory more vividly. "Oh! And we used it as a secret trust phrase or something to get into our little forts…and even though you made the song up, you could never remember it." Humorously she educed the remembrances out of hiding, culling them warmly from her amnesia.
"Yeah! So you do remember!" Excitedly Konata cheered, balling her fists with a toothy grin. "And I remember one time I messed it up and you guys wouldn't let me in our tree fort, and one of the neighbor's dogs started sniffin' around…he chased me for two blocks before you guys realized I wasn't pulling a prank." Her simper faded slightly at her recollection of that particular event, but the warmth the memory brought about still remained.
"So…" Kagami began deducing, confronting Konata once more. "This is the same deal, then? You're using it as a trust phrase to get me to believe you about your wild story." Sharply analyzed and concluded, expected of one such as Kagami, but it took her friend by surprise nonetheless.
"Yeah." Konata admitted, feeling her voice go hollow near the end of its emission. It wasn't hesitation though; it was far stronger than that, it seemed supernatural. "Unfortunately…I think I have to go now." She figured as her words became lighter, more slight and disquieting in their ghostly howl.
On the edge of the waking world and her dreams she crept, she could've sworn with each blink of her eye the real world panned out before her, then the dream world, shifting with each heavy flutter of her eyelids. She shook her head to maintain her dream body as long as she could, shutting her eyes to reality. Kagami's illusion seemed frightened, she called out to her momentarily, mouthing words Konata was deaf to, she could no longer hear the resplendent stillness of the overgrown garden.
"So, I really hope you believe me, because I think I've done all I can. Accept it. Sayonara!" The dream walker proposed one final time, fading into obscurity until she had ceased to be entirely, washed away in a willowy plumage of smoke.
"God…stupid thing…ice cream…" Was all that could be extemporized from the distant, abstract speech filling her ears as Konata woke with a winded, raspy clawing for air. And even then she was being generous to the ad-libbing, it may very well have just been intelligible babble, over the twisting snap of the deleterious storm above head even the monsoon of rain found itself overtaken by volume.
"Kagami…?" Konata hoped drowsily as she eyed the figure looming over her, thankfully using their body as an umbrella to shield her from the painful, icy drops of rain.
Alas the provisional parasol was in fact Hiyori Tamura, features awash with not only the feculent sop of the oily rain, but relief at girl's sustained existence. "Ah good, you're alive! I mean awake, awake is what I said. How was it? Trippy right? I still remember my first time…ah, memories. It was awful." Inappropriately she harkened back to irrelevant pastimes, extending a hand to the waterlogged Izumi to assist her in standing.
"Trippy isn't the word I'd of used but…" Konata unsurely grumbled, the literally earth-shaking boom of overhead thunder forcing her more awake than she preferred. "What happened…? I remember you were gonna show me how to get into Kagamin's dreams and then…" Struggling to recall, Konata's eyes fell upon her cousin Yui, collapsed upon the ground next to her with a pulsating lump sprouting from her locks.
"Hm…I…uh…oh!" Hiyori panicked as she followed the azure knight's line of sight, innocently chuckling to herself with a sheepish twirl of her eyes. "Yeah, she got…tired. Huge battle while you were gone, crazy stuff happened…I told her it wasn't a very inconspicuous place to rest, but boy did she insist! She insisted so hard that I decided to…sing her a lullaby, yeah, let's go with that." Transparently she lied, if only Yui had understood that it would take too long for her cousin to fall to sleep naturally, but no, she had to protest with sword in hand, rocks may or may not have been thrown and the guard captain may or may not have lost consciousness and inherited a wallop of a bruise and possible head trauma.
"Tsk tsk, and I thought I was supposed to be the irresponsible cousin." Naively the still-conscious of the cousins reprimanded, rubbing the back of her wretchedly palpitating skull as she gazed upon the utterly rampageous Storm King, who in her absence had apparently gone full berserk and decided the fairest course of action was so eliminate every temple, dead tree, and scorched skeleton that had ever called it names.
"Yeah, he's pissed…gonna make this part harder than I envisioned." Hiyori morosely pointed out, not exactly fervent about the next step of her grand plan to transplant the soul of the demon into Kagami's body. The conditioning of her mind, even if Konata might disagree, into accepting the soul was easily the more manageable of the steps, especially since she hadn't really intended on several factors concerning removing the Storm King's soul.
The removal of the Arch-Fiend's soul didn't seem to be a plan in mind for the awry demonic entity however, likely because it had little mind left to speak of. The senescent mass of life had descended into a rampage thanks to variables unseen, it screeched with a booming bellow, hurling thousands upon thousands of lightning-infused projectiles to the shadowed temples below.
Their heat and by extension speed, turned them into venerable wrecking balls, everything they collided with, be it tall, daunting structures or humble dead trees was violently annihilated by the spears of nature. Rubble seemed to rain as regularly from the resounding explosions as much as the watery rain itself, and even the torrent wouldn't be enough to extinguish the growing walls of raging fires that began to devour everything in sight.
In the distance, Konata was certain she saw the western apex of the shadowed lands cliff-sides begin to collapse in upon themselves, submitting to the raw earthquake that wracked their foundations, plunging entire sections of the temples downward into the ocean or tumbling down endless mountain tops into the fog below.
It was only a matter of time before the destruction consumed not only the abandoned buildings, but the one they currently inhabited as well, by this logic Konata wasted no time in wearily standing to her feet when she spied the encircling Storm King make a pass directly in the monolithic church's direction.
"No! Bad! Really bad! Run!" Konata screamed with all her might, using her meager, flaccid muscles to drag Kagami from the wreckage of the dilapidated church as best she could. Thanks be Hiyori followed suit, dragging Yui for several steps before she noticed the captain chose quite likely the worst day imaginable to be both belligerent towards her antics, and a heavy armor user.
With strong enervation, and slight perversion, Hiyori ripped and tore every plating and buckling she could find on Yui's person, freeing her from the absurdly crafted set and finally being able to drag her tediously from the smoldering church just as a collage of fiery tactical incisions upon the earth were made from above, a hailstorm of angry lightning bolts that utterly obliterated any skeletal remains the structure had left after both Dregling Kagami's assault on it and the untimely torrent after that. A disrespectful set of terrible coincidences for the now defunct house of worship, to be sure.
"Man, and you really wanted action like this? Thrill seeker, eh? You're more like a death seeker." Hiyori huffed out in between gasps, moaning with equanimity as she soaked in the sight of the smoldering church, thankful she hadn't joined it in the conflagrant crater where it used to stand.
"Death is exciting, don't judge me!" Konata defended her temerarious ways, wiping her dribbling lip with a snicker as she stood from the filling puddles of rain drenching her bottom.
Luckily for their non flame-retardant, soft, squishy and fragile human bodies that could take no more of colossal stalagmites flung like arrows and blasts of compacted lightning hotter than the sun itself, what few humans remained in the path of destruction the Storm King wrought would be safe for the time being. In its hysteria, the Arch-Fiend had begun to rocket its volleys of lightning bolts into a far off plateau of the lower shadowed temples, a reprieve that likely wouldn't last long.
"Okay, for real. This isn't good…Kagami might be in trouble." The witch Hiyori griped as she clawed at her glasses, smudging them more in her effort to rid them of the endless rainwater than the actual downpour itself. Focusing in on the Arch-Fiend far away through the blurs of heat on her spectacles, she felt only a twang of bleakness; this little detour she had taken across the shadowed temples seemed to be getting worse all the time.
"Er…how so?" Fearfully Konata asked, disturbed that architect of the idea that would save Kagami had suddenly become fidgety and apprehensive.
"Ahaha…ugh…" The mage chortled nervously, tugging at her collar to alleviate a sudden and profound feeling of slight asphyxiation. "Well…I hadn't really anticipated on this thing still being alive for one, and two I had sort of hoped he would be…stationary." Unrealistically she had bet upon, but to a paragon of a prodigy, simply a minor setback. "No matter, no matter though! The fault lies within me for thinking anyone but someone as amazing as myself could fell this beast in a timely matter. I suppose I'll have to do it myself…oh, and you're coming whatever-your-face, somebody has to carry the baggage after all!" Unabashedly she admitted, though apparently lax to explain further. She would require a steady blade, or at least an all-purpose shield of flesh to defend her against oncoming slings of arrows and daggers she'd no doubt come face to face with.
"Coming…? Baggage…?" Konata misunderstood, hovering a spiraled wrist over her brow-line to stay the torrents of rain.
"Right-o! Your dead friends…I mean friends, alive ones…with all their blood still in their bodies, obviously ran into some trouble when trying to slay the Storm King. So you and I will take a trip northward to have a soul to soul chat with Mr. Thunderclap up there ourselves, savvy?" An unreasonably unsympathetic and incautious plan submitted by quite likely the least accredited person for the job, it would have to do. Her plan already in motion, Hiyori dutifully dragged the unconscious Kagami and Yui out of sight over into the first derelict building she could find, where she hoped they'd be safe in her absence.
However even without minding the unconquerable gap of hundreds of feet of empty, typhoon spun air over jagged mountains or the raging sea; one would need a proper grasp and hold to even attempt a climbing up to the Storm King. At the prospect, Konata speculated on just how her friends were even able to surmount the leap, because such a feat certainly seemed impossible from where she was standing.
"How are we gonna reach 'em, though?" Rightly the bluenette inquired, lacking the wings that would be wholly necessary for such a caper.
The most ignominiously mischievous, warped hoot of a cackle exploded from Hiyori's gullet at the rather appropriate sentiment she was confronted with. She creaked her head slowly, maniacally in Konata's direction, bent sideways with a certain resounding cocky absolutism to her barred grin. It could only be described as the expression conveyed when one's egotism bordered on autocratic, in that they, and only they, held the answers necessary to solve everyone's problems and without them their hopes would surely be lost.
"So glad you asked." Hiyori crowed proudly, revealing her hands to the questioner, which had begun to emit a most curious violet aura.
"So glad you asked!" Misao yelped as the twisted tower of flesh at their front slowly expunged, caving in upon itself and languishing the remains over the bending treetops. "I assume die, because I'm drawing a blank. The others are probably all dead in the time we've wasted attempting to destroy this thing." A disparaging answer for the hit-woman Kuroi, who in her childish fright turned to one of far greater inexperience for help.
"This is a bit beyond even my cunning, I fear." Kuroi augmented to the despair, steadying herself on one of the few still standing trees around them for leverage against the typhoon's winds. "The witch didn't exactly say we'd be up against a creature the size of a mountain." Scornfully she reflected on her orders, criticizing her judgment up to this point. A plan in mind could have made all the difference in their exhilarating ride to the behemoth's back, yet as she stood upon the plains of its hide her mind seemed vacant.
Regarding the cemented sinkhole where Yutaka vanished, Misao knelt to observe it closer, scraping her sharpened nails across the thick mud to ascertain its essence. Grass, fulminations of filth, no wound to be seen despite what the priestess of Umbasa had hastily escaped into, more sleight of hand and magician tricks, things beyond her comprehension. The average individual's ability to fathom is subjective and based wholly on a level of experience concerning the matter.
Magic she knew nothing of, but the concept seemed altogether less avant-garde than the extraordinary shivering hush of an otherworldly breach of space that fortuitously seemed to tear the air in front of her in a swathe of an indigo scar. This portal like entity had appeared from seemingly nowhere, and it appeared ominous to be sure.
"What the-!?" Misao barked in surprise, hopping back like a startled feline and bunching herself onto her haunches in a prepare-to-lunge assailing position. Kuroi and Tsukasa instinctively flinched at the sight of the oddity in space time, shifting the palette of their faces fittingly to that of horror.
The ripple of purple breadth hovering in the air furrowed like a swell in the sea, eventually peeling apart at either side of the seams, devouring space around it entirely as it engorged itself. Its shape was becoming reminiscent of an eye, pulling the threads of its lashes higher vertically to the sky and dirt; yet at the epicenter laid no pupil, no iris, just a confusing coagulation of various colors splitting against one another.
Surprisingly, a human foot wretched itself from the vibrating portal hanging in the air, feeling for presumably solid ground beneath its foot before planting itself firmly. Following the appendage was a dusty, and ragged cloak worn with the ages itself, the garment could have passed for royalty's at one time, but the sundried coloration and moth holes would at best land it in some decrepit museum.
As the figure slowly revealed itself, flipping an upped hood from their head, the assassin amongst their group nearly felt the weight of her own astonishment mingled with understandable anger condense her brain to the size of a plum.
"Tamura…?" Kuroi illegibly muttered, cheeks-a-twitch with justifiable confusion.
"Oh! You guys made it up after all! And are also alive! Stellar!" Exultingly Hiyori replied, as if she hadn't just stepped through a purple hole that had spawned in the air from nothing. Behind her, from the depths of the portal's sea of colors, followed another figure, easily recognizable by all at the sight of a raucous blue mane.
"Kona-Chan!" Tsukasa called delightedly, rushing to her evidently dizzy friend's side to grasp her as she stumbled.
" Tsukasa! Hey-AUGH!" A heartfelt greeting in response, cut off by a mistral of pasty green vomit that arced so perfectly in balance with Misao's rotten karma, splattering itself all across the drudge's head and face in accordance with what she usually deemed as divine equilibrium.
"I don't even care anymore." Misao apathetically claimed, shaking the rancid property from her body with an animalistic shiver.
Hiyori cackled in amusement at the sight, sympathetically patting her rift-hopping companion, Konata, on the back with a smarmy smirk. "Yeah, sorry, sorta forgot to mention. Sometimes the body doesn't really agree with the whole temporal displacement thing, it's a side effect. Uh, incidentally if your pee is purple for the next couple days that's perfectly normal, also just a minor side effect of the transference process." Ambiguously she explained, dropping esoteric terminology only she was perceptive to.
Almost drained of sense Kuroi concavely slumped, snapping from her euphoria as the breach in space behind the sudden arrivals snapped shut with a willowy flash. "Okay, really? I mean, really? What in the heck was that?" Ponderously she asked, still taken aback from whatever it was she had seen.
"Temporal displacement! Moving matter from one point in space, to another." Honestly Hiyori explained, with nary a dollop of wonder in her tone, such a conversational topic was fairly conventional to one such as her it seemed. "Remember back when you 'hired' me back in the Latrian prisons, Nanako? Well, sorta glad you did, because before that I was attempting to perfect this particular magic to ensure my escape from that cage…but true story, I woke up one morning and that infernally hard to create warp bubble I made was just gone! Coulda sworn I was working on it…anyway, the magic in particular uses a similar theory as those Nexus talismans of yours." Candidly did the inter-dimensional hopper unravel the secrets behind her rather unique method of travel.
"Huh, fair enough." Kuroi accepted, far less weary of the procedure when it was placed in bounds she was familiar with. "But what are you doing here? Weren't you saving Hiiragi?" She argued optimistically, somewhat for her own conscience, she prayed the absent-minded magician hadn't completely forgotten her duty.
"Yup, and your sorry buns too!" Cordially the group's apparent rescuer replied. "Now how's-a-bout we get down to business? The Storm King…not dead, why?" Affrontingly Hiyori grated, tapping her foot childishly as to await a proper answer.
"Uh…we ran into some trouble?" Misao indicated, and rightfully so, had Yutaka not stalled them like she had they may've found a method to fell the creature by now.
"BZZT!" Hiyori heckled juvenilely, re-setting the frames of her glasses atop the bridge of her nose. "No! Because you're grade-A losers! Which is why I, a grade-A winner of the highest caliber, have come to assist you! Bask in the grandeur that is me!" Boastfully she suggested, pushing herself past the rabble so that they might drivel at the very sight of her.
"W-What're you gonna do…?" Konata inquired, still holding her shifting stomach in her hands, mind still attempting to cope with the indefinable horrors she witnessed in between the layers of space.
That same creepy facet of Hiyori pre-teleportation resurfaced again at the notion, yet this time with doubly the arrogance. "A little mind molestation…" Sinisterly she specified, greasing her palms together in readiness for the mental exasperation. "Take care of my precious body, won't you? Oh, and word to the wise, you're gonna want to hold onto something." Hiyori both ordered and advised, placing the imperative protection of her form within the hands of the closest confidant, Konata.
"Huh?" Konata quizzically mumbled, mighty perplexed at the order given.
Tsukasa, equally as perturbed, so eloquently expressed her concern by breaking down into a sobbing mess of a child. "H-Hold onto something? What're you t-talking about!? Please d-don't tell me you're going to do something c-crazy…I don't think I can handle any more crazy today…" Disapprovingly Tsukasa griped, wiping a bubbly snot-bubble escaping from her nostril.
"Dear child…" Hiyori paused mid-strive, swinging her body around in a display that oozed style, giving special prominence to a heroic pose that had all but a spotlight to accentuate it. "I am Hiyori Tamura, and crazy and I have an established understanding, it provides me with the insanity and lack of apprehension required to make all the zany things I do possible! And in return, I provide it with the best seat in the house with which to watch the chaos I sew! Not crazy is not an option with me, I'm afraid!" An intimidating proclamation to be sure, perhaps Konata had been unwise in selecting the very first person who offered to save her dear friend.
Kuroi, savvy to the absurdity that both resonated from and followed Hiyori Tamura on a regular basis, nervously groped at the mage's feathery cuff to stall her mad advance. "Hey, and what about us!? Hold onto something…indeed! You get us down from here if you wanna play crazy, I'm not game! Living has benefits I'm not quite ready to shed! Use that…whatever the hell you did to get us back to the plateau!" Begging was what the request came off as, and Hiyori wasn't completely heartless, she feigned the sappiest pout she could muster.
"Can't, it can only be done once a day." Truthfully Hiyori asserted, shrugging her shoulders in another bluff of sympathy, hoping for another well-earned screech of adorable frustration from her amusing newfound allies.
"Who made that stupid rule!?" Grievingly Kuroi wailed, shaking the clutch of the mage's frilly silken cuff in a huff.
"Me!" Jovially she pointed out, flicking a finger towards the still-swaying Konata. "Prolonged exposure to the forces that guide us from one spot to another…eh well, not so good for the body, especially when done in quick succession." Ominously Hiyori stated, cautioning her fellows was all she could do, she certainly couldn't risk their lives by showing them first-hand the fatal side-effects of such dark arts. "So! I take it I've made my point and I can get to work in succeeding where you've all failed?" She asked annoyed, tapping an equally miffed finger to her chin in displeasure.
Kuroi wasn't one to relinquish her own security in any situation, by her hand, or at least sating herself in her mind under false belief, that she was in control of every element opposed to her was something she required to thrive. Hiyori was the most anomalous of rogue elements, impossible to control, far harder to idly allow to carry out her whims; this was something beyond her authority. And as she had no superior ideas, and had a somewhat strong, though critical opinion of Hiyori as a whole, she truly believed the magician to be the only one with the know-how to fell the demon at this point.
Shaking her head resentfully, and scrunching her eyes beneath her taught leather grip, Kuroi ushered the words she'd sooner die than say again. "I leave it in your hands, Tamura. Don't take long, don't do anything stupid, and don't disappoint me." Embittered, but more trustingly, she posed.
Hiyori gleefully sneered in repose at the almost kind words from the usually aloof assassin, rubbing the underside of her nose in pride. "I'd have settled for 'don't do anything stupid', thanks Nanako." With those rare words of admiration from a more straight-faced, genuine Hiyori, the sorceress turned heel to dig herself into the ground stoutly.
Whatever bewitched séance the mage had gathered herself to perform, it was brief instance of a ritual, and decidedly unspectacular, or at least in comparison to the tear in space she had opened but moments ago. Her raven head lolled back, jaw unhinged, followed by a fulgurating glare of silver and gold substance that tore itself from the sunken gullet of her throat, looming in the air briefly with a chattering swoop and a whistle, before the disembodied soul of Hiyori responsively rocketed off into the blur of the trees away from its empty shell.
Those left behind in its departure huddled around the befallen shell of Hiyori Tamura, body still and insensate, awaiting the return of its departed soul. Those unaware, which in the current context encompassed everyone, of the mage's special gift for removing herself from her own body were positively perplexed, yet a semblance of understanding seemed to gleam in Nanako Kuroi's eyes.
"Do I even need to ask what that was?" Probed Misao, somewhat glad to see she wasn't the only one amongst their number with an unconventional potential, but still rather uneasy that such a peculiar individual had been assisting them for the brief tenure she had.
"That…" Kuroi began, lifting the unconscious and soulless Hiyori Tamura into her arms in a cradle. "Was Hiyori Tamura."
Author's Note: Next chapter, the exciting conclusion to the Shadowed Temples Arc! Will the Storm King fall? Will Yutaka and Minami succeed in their plot to stop Konata and her ploy to destroy the Old One? Will Misao stop being the butt of every single joke? And will I ever stop writing this crappy, terrible, awful story!?
Stay tuned, or don't. Love you either way.