Marisa Kirisame gave a small grin as she inspected a new growth.

It was a mushroom, which was not altogether uncommon in the Forest of Magic, and it seemed to be a new strain.

Her experimentation being what it was, the prospect of any new specimen was always exciting – both in procedure and result. Whether that meant she would need a new recipe or a new house... well, either way, it was fun, in its own particular way.

She left it for now, marking its location as only she would – right, left, through the wrong turn, up, left, right, past that tree but not the other one – in her mind. In the case that it was a new strain, she didn't want to inadvertently extinct it.

She stood, now on the lookout for any other mushrooms that looked the same.

"Hi!"

And then she jumped. Not because she was surprised, or because she hadn't noticed the person behind her, but because she was surprised that she was surprised.

Being in inopportune places at all the wrong times, Marisa Kirisame could respect. She could respect it to the point that her reaction to somebody else pulling it off was somewhere between acceptance and rivalry.

But somebody had entirely slid past any clever narrative, any joke, and just… been there. All along?

Wait, who was that?

"Whatcha doing?"

Marisa paused for a moment, and laughed out loud as she smashed cognitive dissonance aside in her own head.

Koishi Komeiji was the name, and the witch remembered her very clearly. She was next to impossible to remember, naturally sliding out of memory as anything more than the concept of Satori Komeiji's younger sister.

Marisa, however, was nothing if not insane, and had therefore made an absolute point of remembering what her mind clearly wanted to drop – if it was that incomprehensible, it had to be important. As such, Koishi was clear in her memory. She'd even written down the things she wanted to forget!

Koishi laughed back, and then hovered into the air, leaning back on nothing discernable, and Marisa took back her train of thought to answer.

"Experimenting!"

"What with?"

Koishi pointed to the mushroom that Marisa had been inspecting a moment ago, and then raised an eyebrow. "Oops."

Marisa, on the other hand, was a fraction of a second behind pointing in response to the earlier question. "Oops? Wha…"

"You answered the question before you answered the question."

"You just stole my answer! You can't just steal things from a thief like that!"

"You're really random!" Koishi giggled, and drifted past the witch. "You feel your thoughts before you say them, sometimes. What's the word Sis used… Impulsive!"

Marisa took about a tenth of a second to regain her composure. Insanity was, in her opinion, mandatory. "I'm not impulsive!"

"And you lie before you think. How do you do that?" Koishi was now upside down, as far as Marisa could tell.

Taking a moment to conceal her thoughts by, well, thinking them through, Marisa put her facts together, ignoring the whine of her memory trying to forget anything about the girl floating around her.

Koishi was a Satori, a species generally loathed for their third eye, which allowed them to read minds. For reasons mostly unknown, Koishi had sealed her own third eye, and in doing so had gained abilities relating to the subconscious. What those were, Marisa couldn't tell – it seemed Koishi had just as well stopped reading her own mind when she explained things.

But piecing things together, it seemed like…

"I'm reading your instinct? Well, you'll need to think about what you really think and what you just think without thinking, if you know what you mean."

"If I know what I—" Damn it. This was going to take a while to get used to. It was weird.

It was weird enough that Marisa Kirisame was going to take a while to get used to it. The hell?

Well, she was who she was. Only in her own mind could she actively choose a random thought to be what she would impulsively decide, free of legitimate subconscious impulse.

In a motion that was altogether awkward – any natural motion was, in her opinion, going to mark a failure – she swiped the hat from Koishi's head. How did it even stay on while she was floating like that, anyways?

A giggle from Koishi made her look, to find out they'd switched hats. Neither fit particularly well.

"Your hat is funny. Can I have mine back?"

"Give me mine back first."

"What?" The switch had already happened.

Okay, this was just silly. Marisa was a little conflicted – on one hand, someone so effortlessly getting the best of her in such a random manner was a challenge she couldn't just back down from. On the other hand, it was exactly the kind of chaos she enjoyed.

"So what were you doing with the mushrooms?"

Marisa sighed, and finally settled on a straight answer. "Just gathering up some for experiments. I wanted to try something new."

"Whatcha trying?"

"That's a secret! Until it's not. Then it's a result!"

"What's special about the new one, then?" Koishi's face was either too easy to read, or impossible. You couldn't write innocent emotions more plainly in an expression if you tried. Conversely, Marisa wasn't yet sure whether the emotions she showed had any correlation with anything.

Either way, Marisa answered.

"Well, there's a new strain of mushroom, which is always interesting, because that's three or four new qualities for experiment ammo which you've got to figure out – they could be stronger, they could be more volatile, they could produce new compounds with anything else which is as recursive as it sounds and therefore exactly as much fun at minimum, and new compounds can be mixed for new compounds if they don't oversaturate any part of the mix, and—"

"I dunno what you're talking about, but it's exciting and I want you to keep going."

"Huh?"

"I don't know anything about mushrooms, but you're excited about this and it's fun that you're excited. I can feel it!" Koishi jumped upwards in midair, again making a mockery of sense.

Marisa grinned. This was worth getting used to.

* * *

(Black white(Monochrome(two)) Witch) Marisa Kirisame! She remembered!

Nobody (Nobody!) remembered her. That might be sort of sad, but why?

Well, people thought it was sad. Sis (Satori (Third eye(Still without sense)) Komeiji) remembered her too. Sis wasn't happy, was she?

Was she? (Who knows? (What's knowing?))

Sad was okay (or not okay, but okay in not okay) because she didn't feel it. Everything came, everything went (But not the witch?)

Kirisame (black-white) remembered her when people didn't. No memory is sad (whatever sad means) so that would be happy (happy more than fun?)

Actual thought! She should drop by again (would she still remember(it was fun anyways(again, again!))).

I wonder if she'll be back again. Kirisame (Marisa(Witch)) pre-thought.

Now she was upside-down (maybe). Probably. Maybe.

* * *

For the first time in… well, for the first time she could remember, Marisa Kirisame was interested in dwelling on the past. Not because she was actually interested in the past, let alone spending time in it, but because she now had a host of memories with a person that her mind was still trying to slide out of her perception.

It had been mildly tricky to hold on to her first memory – it had been an interesting duel, but it was one spell card battle after a lot of spell card battles, after the main resolution of an incident. Even though she'd written each card and her thoughts about them down with the rest – it was her grimoire, after all – it was still easy to forget the person behind them.

Now… well, now it was different. Her memory might still have wanted to push Koishi out of perception, but what had happened had been entirely unique, in a chaotic way the witch couldn't see anybody else offering. What happened had both been exceptional, and defining of Koishi's character, and that meant that the experience – which would not itself slide out of memory – was clearly defined.

Marisa wondered what story her mind would make up if she could somehow forget the person involved, and it was one of those irritating curiosities, being that its fulfillment would have a price. One, she thought, which she wasn't particularly willing to pay – not yet, at least.

Her mind still dwelling on the earlier events, she scribbled down some quick notes on the new strain of mushroom, filing them away into a disorganized pile of paper that only she could ever navigate.

That still left a few hours in her day, and she took a moment to decide what else to do – she was always pretty active, in one way or another. Most of the indeterminate free time was devoted to bothering people – through theft or otherwise – and today didn't seem to be an exception.

Today, she decided, would be relatively low-key for the remainder – she'd just go bother Alice, who was both close enough and relatively used to Marisa's many, many shenanigans. She paused a moment, still a little distracted by how unusual the earlier interaction had been, and then grabbed her broom, leaving her mess of a house behind.

* * *

"Then don't "borrow" anything!"

Alice sighed, somewhere between amused and frustrated – a feeling Marisa inspired with little exception.

Something was slightly off. Alice was never sure where the genesis of her attention to detail was – whether it was in puppetry or spells, or whether her eye for unwritten patterns had drawn her to it.

That attention to detail, to small unwritten patterns, now told her that something was different. Marisa, while entirely herself in her antics and irritating habits, was… ever so slightly distracted. There seemed to be a tiny cognitive reserve, where usually whatever she was interested in was absolute, for the moment. Her mind went from topic to topic in an insane rollercoaster, but each moment of attention was usually complete.

It wasn't the first time she had ever seen Marisa at less than full capacity, but it was a rare occurrence, and she noted it. Ammunition was rare, and something about the speed and thoroughness with which Marisa squirmed, denied, and then recovered on the rare times she was caught off guard just made it worthwhile.

What exactly had caught her mind, on the other hand, would take a while to even guess at.

Alice sighed. Even as she gathered data to gain the upper hand, she still felt like she'd merely been dragged down to the witch's level.

This wasn't, at least, a particularly new feeling.

* * *

Marisa found herself stumped, which always lead to frustration. She knew what exactly was unusual about Koishi. She knew why she was keeping her mind on it, seeing as failure to do so would be to lose the memory. She knew why, at base, she wanted to hold on to it – because she was a contradictory, insane, Ordinary Magician and would be damned if she let her mind do just whatever it wanted.

But it was still distracting, and it was still captivating. And the fact that this wasn't just a casual, disjointed fact about her own take on things, to be used, played up, lied about, or brought about for amusement, was annoying, because something that meant something to her that she didn't have a complete choice in… well, it was a vulnerability ill-suited to insanity. And she liked insanity.

She could tell why it would stick the way it did. Koishi was so patternless, there was nothing to predict, no natural conclusion to call and dismiss as losing its novelty. She didn't know if the satori would show again tomorrow, or the day after, or if she'd remember anything in any meaningful sense. And it made sense, because what a patternless, unique entity would do next was inherently interesting.

Did she want her to show again? Well, that was dangerous thought, but the introduction of a new level and kind of chaos was something she could earnestly hope for. What she couldn't? Well, there were a lot of things on that list.

Thankfully, going on entirely stupid trains of thought for inane lengths wasn't on that list. Without a rapid, ever-changing train of thought at a hopeless speed, it would take effort to confuse people, or leave them behind… or, well, to be Marisa Kirisame.

It was late. And also dark out. Marisa, against the image she gave, tended to get a decent amount of sleep – it was hard to remain entirely active without at least a few hours. Not, at least, without missing a beat, which was something that she felt was important.

Years of de facto training had allowed her to sleep, even as her endless trains of thought ran from subject to subject, in a way that made sense to her and only her. She took a glance out her window and the stars, laid back, and allowed sleep to coincide with her many, many idle thoughts.