Oddness Warning

Still Waters 3, Book 2, Chapter 18: Darkness: Kara

Friday, July 10th, 2009, After School

"...wow Kara, you really suck today," Kai said after the band, minus the lead guitarist, came to a discordant stop for the third time since they had started playing. She grinned to show she was just messing around, but Kara mentally kicked herself all the same; before the...the 'incident' with Ayumi, it had always been Miyako who screwed up, since she was still trying rather desperately to learn guitar. Kara had always had a good sense of the beat; it was something everyone in her family shared, and she had taken to playing the bass like a fish to water. Kara sighed.

"Yeah...I'm just thinking about Ayumi is all," she said hesitantly. "I mean...you guys know what happened. Do you think I went too far...?" she said, looking at Kai and Miyako for help.

"What do you want me to say?" Kai asked. "If you want me to say you mercilessly ripped all of Ayumi's dreams into itty bitty pieces and stomped on them when she was powerless to stop you I will, but honestly I think she pretty much had it coming." Kai fell silent for a moment, twirling her drumsticks in fancy patterns, the way she always did whenever she was bored. "I am kind of worried about her though...I haven't seen her in days, since even before this stunt, and her phone's always turned off."

"She broke it," Miyako said quietly as she fiddled with the strap of the beat-up old acoustic guitar she was learning to play on. "I don't know how, but somehow she broke it in half; there were a lot of little pieces..."

"What?! When did that happen?" Kara demanded. Ayumi loved her phone; she always took great care of it! How had she...? Kara slipped the strap of her bass up over her head and placed the instrument on a guitar stand.

"I found it a few days ago," Miyako replied as she tried, again, to make an F chord. It didn't work out so well. She repositioned her fingers and tried again; the result was...questionable, but recognizably an F chord. Miyako smiled.

"...do you think I should try to get in touch with Kakizaki-san?" Kara asked after a long, long moment through which Miyako practiced changing chords while strumming.

"I think you're trying too hard," Kai said absently, looking up from where she was inspecting the particularly worn head on one of her drums. She hadn't noticed how badly it was worn before, but it looked likely to rip at any time, and a replacement would mean spending money she couldn't really afford to spend. She turned her attention back to the drumhead. "Let her stew for a while; it'll be good for her."

"I don't know..." Kara said, looking away as she tried to recall if she had Kakizaki-san's number; Kakizaki Misa was Ayumi's favorite guitarist ever, not to mention the leader of Ayumi's absolute favorite band on the face of the Earth. Ever. If anyone could cheer up Ayumi, it'd be Kakizaki Misa...but still the question remained: should Kara do it?

Ayumi had never been the most stable person, mentally speaking. Kara had been able to see that right from the beginning; Ayumi felt the need to put up a front at all times for one thing, and not only did she rarely allow others to get close to her, she rarely allowed herself to get close to others, either, including her classmates. Kara was pretty sure the No Name Band was made up of the only three girls Ayumi had ever allowed to get so close, and to be kicked out...she shivered. 'Maybe I really have made a mistake here,' she thought to herself. 'But something had to be done...'

Kara sighed again, staring off into space.

"You really are thinking too much," Kai said, grinning as she shook her head to show her exasperation. "Come on, quit moping and give us a bassline to work with over here!"

Takahashi Shizuko laid back on her branch perhaps thirty minutes after school let out, her eyes closed and her hands acting as a pillow under her head, just enjoying the feeling of the breeze as it wound between the branches of the world tree. She liked to climb up the world tree sometimes, just to get away from her fan club if for nothing else. She smiled slightly as she recalled some of the group of younger girls' more unusual attempts to show their loyalty; they would do any manner of things to get her attention, from spelling out declarations of love with flowers planted in the grass to ganging up on anyone who dared to show any interest in getting to know her. Shizuko didn't mind their actions for the most part, but when it came to conflict with others, she had to draw the line. Some of them had been grumbling about the attention she had showed to her classmate Caro Shaw the other day when Shizuko helped her other classmate Kara save Caro from one of her other classmates, Kobayashi Ayumi. Shizuko had just been trying to do what was right; she would not let anyone be punished for it.

A slight presence appeared behind her, and Shizuko sat up and turned to see who had decided to join her on her favorite branch. She was greeted with Zazie's unblinking gaze.

"Hello, Zazie-san," she said.

Zazie just pointed down at the ground in response; Shizuko leaned out over her branch and looked down, and sure enough, there was something that needed to be done. She looked back up at the strange, mostly silent girl. "Thank you, Zazie-san."

Zazie just shook her head and gave a miniature smile before focusing her attention on climbing back up to her usual spot.

Shizuko eased herself down off her branch and clung to the trunk of the tree, working her way down with the ease of a veteran tree climber before coming down just far enough over to remain unseen by either of the other two parties at the base of the tree. She waited for a moment, listening to their conversation.

"Where is it?" Chihomi demanded in a hiss as she backed Ayumi up against the massive trunk of the world tree.

Ayumi's eyes darted around as she tried to come up with an answer that would satisfy the psycho. There were other people around, but none of them were paying any attention to what was happening; a moment later, she realized why: Chihomi's stance, expression, and everything but the look in her eyes and the hissing way she spoke made her appear to be nothing but a playful friend, if one who tended to get a little too close. To the outside world, Chihomi looked as if she might have been Ayumi's best friend. "I-I don't know," she said.

"That pair of scissors is very important to me," Chihomi said as she went right on grinning at her, her eyes eerily piercing. She stood up straighter in a pose of girlish playfulness, her hands behind her, her head dipped slightly forward, her eyes promising untold horrors should Ayumi lie to her. "How do you expect me to cut things without them, hmm?"

"W-what do you cut?" Ayumi asked in horrified fascination at the idea.

Chihomi's grin widened to a disturbing degree. "Oh, I don't know. Paper, tape, hair, a little nip here and there where no one can see, you know, the usual."

Ayumi's eyes went wide as saucers. "I-I-I don't believe you! Y-you're lying!"

Chihomi shrugged. "Maybe. But then again, maybe I'm not, right? You'll never know 'til you find out!" She bent at the waist and leaned over, holding her face a few inches from Ayumi's as she reached out and took Ayumi's chin in her hand. "...want to find out?"

"That will be enough, I think," a familiar voice said. Chihomi froze on the spot, still holding Ayumi's chin; Ayumi got a good look at the brief flicker of outright panic in the scary girl's eyes before she let go and stood up straight.

Chihomi heaved a theatrical sigh and turned to the newcomer, who, now that she was free to look, Ayumi recognized as her classmate Takahashi Shizuko, the girl who had, along with Kara, stopped her from...whatever she had been about to do to Caro. Ayumi started to edge away, but Takahashi pinned her in place with a glance.

"Stay there; I need to talk to you," Shizuko said.

"Oh? If it isn't that dopey little lazy girl," Chihomi said, resuming her girlish stance as she shot her best psycho stare at Shizuko. "I guess I'll just have to include you in my play time as well, right? What do you prefer, the tongue or the ear?" Chihomi waited for Shizuko's horrified reaction, grinning.

Shizuko just looked at her.

Ayumi could tell Chihomi was a little taken aback at Takahashi's non-reaction.

Chihomi snarled at her. "You'd better not underestimate me! I even cut a teacher once!"

Shizuko cocked an eyebrow, but otherwise didn't respond and, more importantly, refused to break her gaze.

Chihomi tensed up and Ayumi thought she was about to do something horrible when Shizuko reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of shears Ayumi recognized as the very same pair she had threatened Caro with before.

"That's mine...!" Chihomi said, reaching out for the pair of shears.

Shizuko's eyes took on a look Ayumi had never seen before, a mix of utter confidence and terrifying competency as she held them up, took hold of both handles, and, with a quick jerk, snapped the pair of shears into two pieces.

"No...!" Chihomi screamed, and leaped at Shizuko.

Shizuko simply...stepped aside, stuck her leg out, and hooked Chihomi's foot with her own as she stumbled past. Shizuko kicked Chihomi's foot back up high behind her to prevent any attempt at regaining her balance, and Chihomi hit the dirt with a cry an instant later. Shizuko knelt down and helped her up, then pointed her in the right direction and sent her away with a shove that was just a hair too hard.

Ayumi gaped as Chihomi shuffled away oddly, tugging at her uniform skirt and keeping her legs together as she sent fearful glances back at Shizuko.

"...what did you do to her?" Ayumi asked, temporarily forgetting about her own problems in light of the other girl's bizarre behavior.

"I cut a couple of insignificant pieces of cloth," Shizuko replied, an odd sort of confidence in her tone as she began spinning half of a pair of shears with one finger. She abruptly shoved it back into her bag, closed her eyes, and looked away. When she again turned her attention to Ayumi, she was the same Takahashi that Ayumi knew from class.

Shizuko sat down a couple feet away, a comfortable distance, but not so far as to make things awkward.

Ayumi looked down at her shaking hands and clasped them together in her lap as she drew her knees up to her chest; she felt weak and jittery and didn't trust her legs to hold her up if she tried to walk away. She snuck a peek at Shizuko out of the corner of her eye; the other girl simply sat there, leaning back against the tree as if nothing had happened. 'But she helped Kara when she...when I...the other day,' Ayumi thought nervously, carefully avoiding any thoughts about what she had been about to do to Caro, and what Kara had done to her to stop her. Even Ayumi herself didn't know what she had been about to do...the situation had been completely out of control, and she hadn't known what she was going to do from one horrifying instant to the next. She didn't want anyone to know, but finding herself holding that pair of shears in Caro's face had been terrifying.

"You're scared, aren't you?"

Shizuko's tone was warm, kind, patient...but Ayumi nearly jumped out of her skin anyway. "N-no! I'm not scared at all! Don't talk about things you don't know anything about!" she said viciously.

Shizuko appeared singularly unaffected by her outburst. "It's okay if you're scared, you know; anyone would be in a situation like yours."

"You don't know anything about my situation," Ayumi growled, turning away to hide how white her face had become at Shizuko's shockingly accurate look into her psyche. She brought her knees up tight against her chest.

Shizuko nodded. "That's true." Ayumi felt increasingly awkward in the silence that followed that statement by her classmate, and was about to tell her to go away when Shizuko spoke again. "That's true for everyone. Everyone has their own situation. I may not know yours, but you don't know mine either, or Kara-san's, or Caro-chan's. Did you know Caro just wants to be your friend?" she asked, looking up at the branches of the world tree.

Ayumi jerked at that, stunned. She couldn't quite believe the idea that Caro of all people wanted to be her friend, and it confused her more than she wanted to admit. Before Ayumi had a chance to recover from the shock, Shizuko spoke again.

"Kara-san wants to stay friends with you too; she's very worried..."

Ayumi just looked at Shizuko as her mind ground to a halt, her doubts and self loathing, having run wild for days by this point, combined with a lack of sleep had left her utterly exhausted, barely able to form coherent speech at times. She was tired, worn down by stress and loneliness and her own imagination running wild, and she just wanted to lie down somewhere and die...

...but Caro wanted to be her friend. Kara wanted to stay her friend, even after what Kara had done to her...

Ayumi realized she was about to start crying and quickly wiped away the moisture building in her eyes, to no avail. She shook her head to clear it. 'No! I am not going to cry! I'm not!' she thought in desperation. 'I can't cry here, there are people here!' Not to mention the fact that Shizuko was right there, and while Ayumi couldn't recall ever really interacting with the other girl before that particular moment in time, she just knew Shizuko would go spreading rumors about how she was such a crybaby...

And then, much to her horror, her throat hitched and she sniffled.

It was as if a floodgate had been opened. There was nothing Ayumi could do: tears started falling and wouldn't stop. She buried her face in her hands to hide her tears and tried to hold her breath to keep from letting out those humiliating little inarticulate sounds one makes when crying, but she knew she wasn't fooling anyone. She did her best to hold everything back, but it just wasn't enough, could never be enough. She let out a muffled squeal, unable to stop herself, and then a feeling of warmth wrapped around her and, for a fleeting instant, she thought one word: 'Mama...?'

But no, she had never really known her mother. She tried to pull away, but Shizuko refused to let go.

"Shh, it will be okay."

Ayumi shrunk in on herself, humiliation at the need to be consoled warring with an honest desire to just cry her heart out on someone else's shoulder for the first time since her father had died, all those years ago. In the end, the overwhelming stress of the past few weeks won out over public embarrassment, and she let out a wail and buried her face in Shizuko's shoulder, sobbing wildly and clinging to the other girl like a lifeline. She was so wrapped up in her own misery that she barely heard Shizuko's reassurances, hardly felt the other girl patting her back or rocking her back and forth in a comforting manner. She didn't see Zazie standing nearby, or feel the barrier that had sprung up around her and Shizuko, preventing them from gaining the attention of the other people in the world tree plaza, going about their day to day business. Instead, she cried.

She cried and cried and cried, and cried and cried and cried and cried, and Shizuko stayed with her the whole time.

When at last Ayumi had cried herself out, she found herself too exhausted to move from the comfortable position she had found half in Shizuko's lap. Nevertheless, her face heated up in embarrassment as she realized what the situation must have looked like to all the people walking around. It was mortifying."...I want to die..."

"It's not as bad as all that," Shizuko said, her voice calm and collected, a pillar of stability.

Ayumi sighed in resignation and dragged herself away from Shizuko, who released her immediately. She was exhausted; she hadn't cried that hard in years. She knew she had to look like a mess, with her face and eyes puffy from all the tears she had shed and the small amount of makeup she had put on that morning probably smeared all over her face... she pulled out a mirror and was surprised to find no streaks or smears; it took her a moment longer to recall that she hadn't even bothered to put on makeup that morning. Her eyes were still puffy, but she didn't look as bad as she had been afraid she might. She let out a breath and pocketed her mirror, and leaned back against the tree, trying to collect her thoughts. Her mind was a swirl of emotion; she was tired, as exhausted as she had ever been, and she didn't know what to do. She looked around, her gaze drifting from the small bakery that sold those cakes she liked to a woman walking with a child to a bench on which sat four younger students, without really seeing them. A girl who reminded her of Miyako walked by, and she was again reminded of her band and the situation she had fallen into. "What do I do now...?" she muttered to herself.

"Apologize," came Shizuko's prompt answer.

Ayumi blushed at having been overheard, but didn't snap at the girl like she might have earlier in the day; she didn't have the energy to do much more than give the other girl a half-hearted glare that was half pout.

"Apologize to Caro, apologize to Kara. If you don't, nothing will be settled," Shizuko said, as if such a thing was too easy to even think about.

Ayumi ground her teeth for a moment as she tried to get her addled mind to come up with a suitable retort. ...it wasn't easy, not as tired as she was. "Why should I go groveling back to them?" she finally said, practically spitting the last word. "After what they did to me-"

"After what you almost did to Caro," Shizuko supplied, smoothly cutting off Ayumi's rising voice with a curt, motherly tone.

Ayumi looked at the other girl, appalled. "After-"

"After you pulled a pair of shears on Caro," Shizuko said, still leaning back against the tree. "After you skipped school for two weeks and made your friends worry. After that incident in the baths."

Ayumi just stared at the other girl, another blush climbing her cheeks as she wondered what other incidents Shizuko knew about. "How can you-"

"-talk about this so easily?" Shizuko offered. She smiled; it certainly looked like a normal smile, but it made Ayumi nervous nonetheless. "Because when I see a little girl lost in the snow, I can't help but try and lead her to safety, if she'll only take my hand. So tell me, Ayumi. Will you take my hand?" Shizuko said, turning her head to look at Ayumi as she held out her hand.

"Y...you're crazy," Ayumi said in order to hide the powerful urge to take Shizuko's hand.

Shizuko grinned. "Maybe a little," she said, lowering her hand as she looked back up at the tree. "Then again, so is everyone, a little. It's what makes us human, you know. You still need help, though, and I'm willing to give it."

Ayumi leaned back against the tree again, looking up at the branches high above her as she tried to figure out what to do. There were too many thoughts swirling through her mind, and she couldn't make herself focus on anything save the idea Shizuko had put into her head. 'Apologize...,' she thought to herself. She couldn't remember the last time she had given anyone a real apology; she hadn't felt the need to in a long, long time. But...

"-you pulled a pair of shears on Caro-"

Ayumi frowned. 'I guess I did go a little too far, huh?' she reluctantly admitted to herself. She couldn't recall just why she had picked up the pair of shears Chihomi had dropped, but they had been there in her bag, just waiting for her to grab them when the time was right...or wrong, as it so happened. "I...I guess..." 'I guess you're right,' she didn't say aloud. She didn't want to admit Shizuko was right, but... She glanced at the other girl, who sat with a slight smile on her face as she looked up at the sky. 'She probably knows I know,' she thought. It was strange...Ayumi hadn't had a clue Takahashi Shizuko of all people would be so...so wise seeming.

Ayumi sighed and pushed herself upright, wobbling for a moment before her legs decided they wanted to do their job and hold her up. Ayumi didn't say anything to get her attention, but Shizuko looked over at her, giving her a bright smile.

Ayumi gave her a wary look.

"Good luck," Shizuko said gently.

Kara Stride stared down at her bookbag as it sat on her bed after another long day of school. "Ayumi..."

Ayumi still hadn't returned to class, and Kara was really starting to get worried about her. Where was she, anyway?! Kara didn't know, and Miyako said she only came back to her dorm room just before curfew and went straight to sleep.

Kara just couldn't stay angry at the other girl; sure, the image of Ayumi threatening Caro with that pair of shears that kept popping up in her head was infuriating, but...

"Dammit Ayumi, why do you have to be so stupid?" she muttered viciously as she swept her bookbag off her bed and threw herself down on the bed in its place, lying on her back and draping an arm over her face. "Stupid headache..." she mumbled to herself. For several days now she had been suffering from pounding headaches that seemed to be focused almost directly behind her eyes. It hadn't been all that bad until she had woken up that morning; it had pounded with every heartbeat all through the school day, and it hurt enough to make her eyes all watery and itchy.

She dragged her arm across her closed eyes to wipe away some of moisture. It only made her eyes itch more.

"Dammit..." she muttered again in English, a brief thrill of excitement running through her at the use of the word; her mother would never have approved. She could take the headaches, she could take itchy eyes, but both of them together and at such a level? It was incredibly irritating. Add to that the amount of worry she'd been dealing with about Ayumi—who, Kara thought peevishly, should be the one doing the worrying instead of her—and her roommate Possum, who had only returned just the other day...Kara was starting to feel overwhelmed. "Stupid Ayumi," she muttered again.

Her eyes were itching like crazy, down inside somehow.

Kara shot up to a seated position on the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes fiercely, but it offered no relief. 'Is it my contacts...?' she wondered. She stumbled her way to the bathroom and fumbled in the small cupboard there for her eye drops. A moment later, she cursed aloud; the eye drops had only made things worse. "Dammit!" she said aloud, increasingly irritated at the itching sensation she couldn't seem to get rid of. She took out her contacts and turned on the water faucet to wash her face and hands. She was only halfway through when someone knocked on the door.

"It's unlocked!" she said loudly enough for whoever was visiting to hear. She was too distracted to think much about it, focused as she was on washing out her eyes. A flash of color in her reflection in the mirror caught her attention, and she frowned, moving closer to the mirror to see better; her vision was really quite bad without her contacts. She fumbled for the small case that held them with one hand as she leaned in close to the mirror, squinting.

A sudden flash of iridescent light in her reflection made her jerk her head back at the same time as another flareup of itchiness made her rub her eyes frantically.

'What is wrong with me...?'

She wasn't aware of the other person poking their head around the open bathroom door, didn't even really recall that anyone had knocked on the door by that point; the itchiness in her eyes held all her attention.

"Um...Kara...?"

"Kara...?" Ayumi said awkwardly. Kara didn't react to her voice, just kept rubbing her eyes in front of the bathroom mirror. She just stood there for a moment, confused and increasingly irritated. Was Kara ignoring her, after she had come all this way to apologize and taken so long to clean herself up?

"Rrgh!" Kara let out a growl of frustration and continued rubbing her eyes.

Ayumi swallowed back her pride and plunged ahead. "Kara, I'm, I...I'm...I mean...I came to, to say I'm s-sorry." 'There, I said it,' she thought reproachfully.

"GraaGH...!" Kara let out another frustrated growl as the speed with which she was rubbing her eyes picked up.

Ayumi was taken aback. She cut off the retort that seemed to come up of its own accord and clenched her teeth as she waited for Kara to respond; instead, the other girl just kept rubbing her eyes. Ayumi watched nervously for a moment. Kara was being awfully rough... "Are you sure you should be doing that so hard?" she asked after a moment. "What's wrong, did you get something in your eye?"

"It itches, dammit!" Kara all but shouted.

Ayumi heaved an irritated sigh. 'Such a stupid situation,' she thought reproachfully as she reached forward and grabbed Kara's forearms. Kara tried to pull away, so Ayumi went with it and made her back up until she almost tripped over the toilet and sat down hard on it, nearly tipping over backward.

"Hey...!" Kara shouted, still rubbing her eyes.

"Stop being a baby," Ayumi said as she finally managed to jerk Kara's hands away from her eyes. "I swear, you're just like—" Ayumi's voice cut off the instant she caught sight of Kara's eyes.

Normally quite a pretty shade of blue, the other girl's eyes had taken on a swirling mass of iridescent color, hypnotically beautiful to look at. "...your eyes..." she said, suddenly finding it quite difficult to think, much less speak. 'So pretty...'

She distantly realized Kara was acting as strange as she herself felt; Kara was staring at her, a predatory gleam like a big cat's in her eyes as she stood up and moved forward, her form suddenly moving in a highly disconcerting slinking manner. Ayumi backed up a step; whatever was going on, the one in front of her wasn't Kara. Her mind came up with dozens of explanations for such an absurd idea even though she felt slow and stupid: split personality, stroke, demonic possession...

"S-stay away from me," Ayumi said, backing out through the bathroom door. She tried to shut it and lock Kara inside, but Kara darted forward and tackled her to the ground before she could react. Ayumi laid there for a moment, dazed, before her mind cleared again and she realized Kara was on top of her, her face inches away as her gaze locked with Ayumi's, that alien presence still in place. "G-get off..." 'A dozen kids, give or take...'

Kara cocked her head to the side, then ducked down and kissed her on the mouth. Hard. And she wouldn't stop.

Ayumi tried to fight her off, but those hypnotic eyes kept staring at her and, feeling strangely weak and unmotivated, she soon let her arms fall to the floor and stopped fighting as she gave in to the sensation of the other girl straddling her and doing...whatever she was doing with her tongue.

"Holy SHIT!"

Kara immediately looked up at the doorway, from which a voice Ayumi dimly recalled as belonging to her classmate Possum Cade had come. Why was Possum there...? Ayumi wanted to shake her head to clear it, but she didn't have the energy. All she could think of was those hypnotically beautiful eyes as they stared into hers...

Ayumi barely even noticed the sounds of a brief struggle out in the hallway; they seemed distant, unimportant to her as she laid there on the floor, giggling lightly now and again.

"...heheh...heheheh..."

The sound of someone shouting came to her, only to be suddenly muffled. "...heh...Possum too," Ayumi said aloud. "...joined us too...heh heheh...heheh..."

Student Number fourteen, Yoshida Ume, heaved an irritated sigh and smacked her pencil down on the top of her study desk. "How am I supposed to get any homework done if they're fooling around in the halls?" she said hotly to herself as another series of thumping noises, giggles and other sounds she couldn't quite make out drifted through the door. "Honestly..." Her dorm mates were so noisy sometimes...! 'Like a bunch of little kids,' she thought reproachfully. She closed her textbook and headed for the door, pausing for a moment to take a deep breath and hide her irritated expression, quickly replacing it with the friendly one she always showed to her classmates. She opened the door, fully prepared to guilt trip whoever she found outside...but what she saw made her freeze in place.

Possum was on the floor of the hallway, Kara was on top of her, and their lips were touching.

Ume's eyes went wide and her face went red as her mind went into overdrive. 'Kara is kissing Possum...Kara is kissing Possum!' She had a brief thought of something along the lines of 'Weirdo Americans' before Kara suddenly looked up at her and Ume caught sight of her eyes, and the bright swirls of color where there had only been blue before.

Ume hesitated, and that was her downfall; Kara was on her an instant later.

Up and down the halls she went, thoroughly kissing anyone she found. Those who were kissed were uniformly left giggling on the floor until they, too, stood back up and began searching for survivors. Inside of twenty minutes, almost everyone on the floor that housed the second year students of Class 2-A as well as the floors above and below was infected.

Almost everyone.

Suzuki Keiko snapped upright, a piece of paper falling from where it had become stuck to her cheek when she had fallen asleep at the desk in her room. She glanced at the digital alarm clock that she kept on the dresser, and frowned. "Mako's not back yet?" she said aloud, only then realizing just how quiet the building seemed to be. Normally at this time of day, the place would be full of girls moving around and talking out in the hallways. Instead, she heard...nothing. Mako's absence was more worrying, however...she was always back early unless she was out with Sato-san, in which case she would have called. She had an understanding with Mako...the two of them looked out for each other; Mako was a sensitive girl, she needed to be treated carefully, and Keiko helped her deal with any problems that came up. They were quite good friends, in their own quiet way. Keiko wasn't crazy about Mako's other friend Sato-san—the girl was far too sarcastic for her liking—but Mako seemed to like her well enough. She had just gotten up out of her chair when someone started yelling somewhere on her floor. She went to the door, frowning, and looked out through the peephole. She couldn't make out what was being said—it was far too muffled by the walls and door—but it sounded as if someone was panicking and shouting.

Keiko hesitated. Was there a fire...? Had the dorm been evacuated? If so, she hadn't heard any alarms, and she didn't smell any smoke... She opened the door a crack and peeked out. Whoever had been freaking out before had quieted down; she couldn't hear anything but silence. And yet...

Keiko frowned. The dorm certainly didn't feel empty. She had been in large, empty buildings before; she knew what it felt like to be alone. When people were around, something, perhaps the very air itself, felt alive. Was everyone hiding...? Keiko's frown deepened. Youko had told her to trust her instincts, and her instincts were screaming that something was wrong. She crept out into the hallway, pulling the door shut after her, doing her best to do it silently. She went to the next room down, the room shared by Fujiko-san and Chachamaru, and tried the doorknob, which was locked. Chachamaru was never there, but Fujiko tended to come back early and leave the door unlocked until she fell asleep. Keiko's frown grew as she moved on to the next door and tried the knob this one turned under her hand and fell open, and someone jumped out, clapped a hand over her mouth, and yanked her into the room.

Keiko squirmed frantically in the stranger's grip, doing her best to bite the hand that covered her mouth like she had seen people do on TV shows, though she couldn't seem to make it work. She started to kick, and the stranger lifted her up off the floor. With her arms pinned to her sides, she couldn't do much, but—

"Oh come on, stop it already!" the stranger hissed into her ear.

Keiko stopped struggling. "Akashi...san?" she asked hesitantly, her voice muffled by the woman's hand. Akashi Yuuna had been assigned as the temporary dorm mother after the previous one freaked out and stormed out of the building, screaming something about 'ignorant brats' a little less than halfway through her month-long duty in the position.

"That's right," the woman replied.

"Why are you in Shizuko and Sophie-san's room?" Keiko asked when Yuuna had let go of her.

"Hiding," Yuuna replied easily enough.

Keiko looked around curiously; she had never been in Shizuko and Sophie's dorm room before; the small amount of light making its way through the heavy curtains covering the closed blinds made everything look spooky...she shivered and moved to stand a little closer to Yuuna. "What's happening...?"

"Dunno," Yuuna said, shrugging as she moved to look out through the peephole in the door. "It's like the whole dorm's gone crazy; I've been in contact with Max, and it looks like it's only this building. Good thing only a few of you guys came back early today. Were there a lot of club meetings today or something?"

Keiko cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "Yes...most of the clubs had mandatory meetings today to discuss new guidelines the school decided on." That was all very interesting, but it didn't answer her question. "Is everyone alright?"

Yuuna glanced back at her, then back at the peephole. "...dunno."

Keiko's eyes widened at that. She liked her classmates, she really did, and she didn't want anything bad to happen to them... "This is scary," she said quietly, hugging herself.

"Yeah," Yuuna said absently, still looking out through the peephole. Keiko didn't think she looked very scared. She was about to speak up with Yuuna suddenly tensed and raised her hand warningly, stepping quietly back from the door. Keiko nervously backed away in the small room until she bumped into the bunk bed, and looked around for something, anything, she could use to defend herself from whatever was outside the door. It took her a moment to spot the baseball bat on the floor at the head of the bed, and she didn't hesitate to pick it up. She knew from her training with Youko and Haru that while most improvised weapons were often useless or worse, having something between you and an attacker was a very, very good thing, even if it was just a stick or, in this case, a bat...and Youko had even shown her how to use it. She wasn't good at it, but she could make someone think twice about trying to get in close.

Yuuna nodded at her and mumbled something under her breath, and Keiko realized the woman was holding a gun. "Electric, like a stun gun," Yuuna said as quietly as she could, never taking her eyes from the door. A moment later, someone startled fumbling with the doorknob, and Keiko tensed. Yuuna signaled for her to be quiet and aimed at what would be chest-height for the average girl.

A door opened and closed with a slam somewhere far down the hallway, making them both jump. Whoever was messing with the doorknob stopped and took off running down the hallway.

Keiko watched in confusion as Yuuna whipped out what looked like some kind of tarot card and started talking to herself. A quick thought ran through her mind: Was Akashi Yuuna some kind of mage...? Youko had told her all about mages and Keiko had seen several at the Youkai Festival, but...wait, Yuuna had talked about 'Max'... Max Linell, the P. E. teacher? Was he a mage, too?

The door came open just as Keiko asked herself that question, and she let out a scream as a woman leaped through, tackling Yuuna to the floor. 'No, that's Kara-san,' Keiko thought absurdly as she watched her classmate kiss the temporary dorm mother. Yuuna stopped struggling almost immediately and a moment later, Kara looked up at her and Keiko was struck by the swirl of pretty colors in her eyes, almost too much so to think, let alone realize that Kara had already grabbed her.

"How's the situation?" Asuna asked as she trotted up at a run.

"Bad," Kotarou replied. "Probably some kind of hypnosis," he said, jerking his thumb toward Nodoka, who had her pactio artifact out.

Asuna trotted over to her. "Hey, Honya. How is it?"

Nodoka looked up at her, and Asuna realized she was probably beating herself up for being so responsible as to be there at the dorm rather than with Negi, still lying unresponsive in his hospital bed. "It's bad; Konoka and Setsuna went in there fifteen minutes ago and haven't come out, and now..." she said, looking back down at her book.

Asuna looked at the page. Nodoka had it tuned to Konoka's thoughts, which were simply one word, repeated over and over again: 'Beautiful'. Accompanying it was a drawing of a surprisingly beautiful pair of eyes, even drawn as they were in the sketchy style that showed up most commonly in Nodoka's mind reading book artifact. Toward the bottom of the page, a small phrase broke the string of 'beautiful's: 'A dozen kids to start with...'

"That's..." Asuna said, trailing off. "Wow. I don't know who that is," she said, pointing at the eye drawing, "but it's not Setsuna. Who all's gone in?"

"Konoka and Setsuna of course," Kotarou said. "Ku Fei went in; so did Madoka...Misa got worried and went after her a few minutes ago. We haven't heard from any of them."

Asuna looked back and forth from Nodoka to Kotarou and back. They were the only two present. "Where's everybody else? The new kids?"

"In there," Kotarou said, clear irritation in his voice. "The teaching staff is keeping most of 'em late at the school, but they were too late for some. Nodoka thinks there's something like forty or fifty students in there, plus all the people we sent in," he said, looking increasingly dissatisfied. "I would have gone in, but if whatever's in there got people like Madoka and Ku Fei..."

Asuna nodded. "Not to mention Setsuna and Konoka together," she said in agreement. If whatever was in there got all of them, Kotarou alone probably wouldn't be able to handle it; probably even Negi alone wouldn't be able to handle it... She looked up. "Hey, what about Yuuna? Isn't she—"

Asuna cut herself off as the front door of the dorm opened and a girl stepped out, dragging a familiar girl with long purple hair by the wrist as she stepped out onto the steps and paused, looking around as if in a daze as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Even at this distance, Asuna could see with the brilliant swirling colors in the girl's eyes.

"Is that...? Hey, that's Kara, right? In Negi's class? Asuna asked, peering at the girl. Her gaze drifted down to the girl's chest. "Yep, that's Kara." When she didnt' get a response, she glanced at Nodoka, only to find her staring at the girl on the steps. Nodoka dropped her pactio artifact and took a slow step toward the girl. "Hey, Nodoka! Stop it! Kotarou, help me..." Asuna said, trailing off as she looked at Kotarou and saw a wide-eyed, slack expression on his face almost identical to the one Nodoka was wearing. "Hey! Hey you two, snap out of it!" she said, waving her hand in front of Nodoka's face. Kotarou broke into a brisk, stumbling walk toward Kara, and Asuna grabbed Nodoka by the arm before she could do the same. Nodoka shocked her by throwing a wild punch that glanced off Asuna's cheekbone, startling her enough to let go. By the time Asuna realized what had happened, Nodoka was twenty feet away and gaining, and she let her go. "What on Earth...?"

Asuna watched in horror as Kotaoru reached Kara's position only for Kara to grab him by the arm and throw him to the ground as he came in. She then climbed up on top of him and kissed him so thoroughly that it left Asuna gaping. Right about then, Nodoka arrived, and the girl did the same thing to her for a good fifteen seconds before finally standing up and looking around in that same slow way she had used upon first exiting the dorm. "What the h—"

"I see, it's already progressed that far..."

Asuna whirled to see who had snuck up on her, and was surprised to see a stranger, a woman in a sharply tailored skirt suit who looked to be in her late thirties with her hair in an immaculate bun, her expression sharp and unforgiving, and her clothing precise. A girl in her early teens in more casual wear carrying several small black cases in addition to a rather overstuffed backpack stood behind her, trying to catch her breath as if after a long run. "Who are you?" Asuna demanded. "You're not allowed to be here! This place is dangerous—"

The woman cut her off with a sharp glare, not unlike that a teacher might give to a particularly dull student. "You have no idea how dangerous it is, I assure you of that," the woman said, then turned her attention back to Kara, still standing up there on the porch.

"Who are you?" Asuna asked again. She didn't know what to make of the woman at all, much less the whole bizarre situation. What was wrong with Kara? Why had Nodoka and Kotarou run toward her like that? Why had she kissed them?! 'None of this makes any sense!' she thought in frustration. Asuna knew she wasn't the brightest of bulbs, but she felt like she was really missing something here. "What's wrong with Kara?" Asuna demanded. A thought crossed her mind. "Is it something like pheromones?"

"I am her mother," the woman said, glaring at Kara. Asuna glanced back and saw that Kara had locked eyes with her mother. "And you may believe it is pheromones if you wish; it isn't correct, but it's more believable than the truth. Bethany?" the woman said, never breaking the gaze she held locked with Kara even as she held out her hand toward the younger girl, who seemed a little dazed.

Bethany quickly snapped out of it, however. "Did you want the Maggini?" she asked, holding out one of the cases.

"No," the woman said. "The Amati." She accepted the case the girl held out, knelt down and set it on the ground, and opened it up to reveal a rather expensive-looking violin.

Asuna watched her curiously as she prepared the bow by drawing it across a weird little block several times, and then turned her attention back to Kara, who still stood on the steps, her gaze still locked with that of her mother.

"Stand back," the woman said with the air of a strict teacher as she brought her violin up and settled it under her chin. She ran through a couple of quick finger exercises on the violin the same way Asuna had seen Ayaka do, back when she played regularly, and paused for a moment, apparently waiting for something.

Asuna looked down at the strange girl as she took her hand. "What...?"

"Come this way, you're too close," she said, tugging Asuna's hand insistently.

Asuna let the girl lead her away until they were perhaps twenty yards from the woman. "What's going on?" she asked.

"She's going to stop Kara," the girl said, fearful for Kara and yet clearly intrigued.

Asuna looked at her for a moment. "Are you her sister?"

The girl looked up at her, surprised, and nodded, smiling. "Yes. I'm Bethany Stride, pleased to meet you," she said, holding out her hand.

Asuna took it in her own. "Kagurazaka Asuna, nice to meet you, too," she said, shaking the girl's hand. "Is that your mother?" she asked, gesturing at the woman, who was running through a rather bright and upbeat little tune on her violin, picking up speed the whole while.

Bethany nodded. "Yes, we're here to—"

Bethany was cut off as her mother abruptly drew the bow sharply across the strings of her violin to create an eardrum-shredding squealing hiss.

The steps Kara was standing on promptly exploded, sending her and her three most recent victims flying.

"What the fu—"

The woman had kept playing after creating that first squeal, and Asuna was cut off herself as the woman did it again, and again, and again. Asuna had seen music-based magic before, but never had she seen it used so expertly. The woman slowed her playing for a moment, settling into a simple piece that even Asuna, with her almost complete lack of musical training, couldn't mistake as having been written as anything more than practice for a beginner.

"Why is she still playing?" Asuna asked. She had only seen a couple mages who used musical instruments in the past, but neither one of them had bothered with anything beyond making noise with their instruments...Kara's mother was doing something different, and Asuna found it quite intriguing. "Does it have something to do with power?"

Bethany nodded. "Yes, you're exactly right! Music has power; anyone who's ever been to a good concert knows that," she said helpfully. "If you combine the power of music with a natural talent for manipulating it and skill in playing, you can do all sorts of things," she said, finishing up with a bright smile.

Asuna smiled back; she couldn't help but like the girl, and what she said made a certain kind of sense; Asuna personally knew all four members of one of the best local bands in the area, after all; music did indeed carry power. She looked back toward the front of the dorm, only to see a figure stumble up to its feet in the drifting dust still present from the woman's attack.

"Bethany, accompaniment," the woman said, barking it like an order.

"Yes!" Bethany said as she quickly put the instrument cases she was carrying on the ground, slipped off her backpack, and opened the snaps on the biggest case. She opened it up and pulled out what Asuna supposed was probably some kind of cello; to her eyes, it looked just like the violin Bethany's mother was using, but bigger and thicker...not quite as large as Asuna thought a cello was supposed to be, though.

Bethany looked up at Asuna after putting rosin on her bow. "Ah, please set up that folding seat in the backpack, okay?" she asked pleasantly.

"Er...sure," Asuna said as she dug into the over-full backpack while Bethany's mother continued playing, slowly picking up more speed and complexity as she went. "Here it is."

"Great! Please put it there," the girl said, pointing to an out of the way spot.

Her part done, Asuna stepped back out of the way and tried to peer through the dust clouds in a failing attempt to figure out who was standing up over there. She couldn't see, but she had a feeling it was Kara... Then Bethany started in on her cello, matching her mother's tempo with ease, her own instrument's deeper tone supporting the violin—and the power its music carried—wonderfully.

"Faster," Bethany's mother said sternly.

"Yes," Bethany replied, adjusting her playing.

Asuna shivered and the little hairs on the back of her neck stood up as something seemed to click into place between the two musicians and the air suddenly felt charged with electricity. She looked back at the shadowy figure only to see it had been joined by a second. The second one held something out, and the first figure took hold of it, reached up as if putting something over its shoulder, and lowered its hand.

"Oh, hell," Bethany's mother muttered under her breath.

The sound of a plucked open E string on a bass guitar amplified to an extent no normal amplifier could manage, shook Asuna down to her bones. Bethany let out a startled cry and her mother let out an almost silent grunt as the the neck of her violin snapped away from the body. Asuna had just managed to catch her breath when the sound came again, and again, and again, stronger each time. She fell back to the ground on her butt and clamped her hands over her ears; she could almost feel her teeth rattling.

"Bethany," the older woman said, standing tall and her voice steady in spite of the havoc the steadily strengthening beat was wreaking on both her daughter and Asuna. "Move back."

Bethany crawled back on her hands and knees until Asuna helped her up and the two made their way further back, until they were far enough to withstand the thrust of the bassist's musical assault.

"I didn't know that girl could do anything like this," Asuna said.

Bethany's smile was haggard, but it was a smile. "Yes, she's really very good...way better than I am," the girl said, just a hint of sibling rivalry in her voice.

Bethany's mother looked down at the broken violin in her hands. "A pity," she said aloud. "That Amati was almost four hundred years old. I will be sure to wring every dollar of its repair fee out of you, daughter of mine," she said, dropping the remains of the violin at her feet and stepping away from it, ignoring the power of the bass beat assaulting her. She reached up and pulled the hairpin that kept her hair in a bun and let it fall free, a waterfall of shiny brown hair identical to Kara's hanging all the way down to the small of her back. She unbuttoned her fancy suit jacket and undid the top three buttons of the white shirt she wore beneath.

"You have underestimated me, daughter," she said, her voice ringing through the sounds of Kara's bass guitar.

She raised her left hand high in the air, her stance wide, and a shape began to crystallize into existence. It took the shape of a glowing line a few feet long, slowly expanding at the bottom until it formed a sort of upside-down 'V' shape, while the upper half straightened, the upper tip forming a similar, if much smaller, bulge as the other end.

Bethany's mother grabbed the glowing shape with her hand, and it snapped into existence with a blast of sound.

"That's..." Bethany said, stunned at her mother's actions.

"I'd know that shape anywhere," Asuna said, surprised. "That's a Flying V..." She realized Bethany was looking at her, and hastened to explain. "A friend of mine really likes that style of guitar," she said, recalling how many guitars of that particular shape Ako owned. She knew Ako would love this one as well, though she thought this particular example was more Misa or Madoka's style. Gleaming blood red and black, it was a real beauty. Bethany's mother slipped the wide leather strap up and over her head to hold the guitar in place.

"I didn't know she could play..." Bethany said, clearly in awe.

"You've done well, daughter of mine," Bethany's mother said. "But let's see how you fare against this."

A shining pick shimmered to life in Bethany's mother's right hand, the fingers of her left pressed down on the strings to form a chord, and she brought the pick down.

The sound that rang out across the city was like nothing it had ever heard before, a sound no normal guitar, no matter how well built, had ever managed to achieve; students looked up from books, shoppers stopped arguing over every last yen, babies laughed, the elderly smiled, and desperate office workers recalled what it was like to dream again. A fierce and primal joy burst into life within every heart that sound managed to reach, and the steady bass rhythm came to an abrupt halt as the ground exploded under Kara's feet. She was thrown screaming through the air to land in a heap fifty feet away.

Asuna tried to rush forward; the impact from that had been far stronger than what had come before, but Bethany's mother held out her hand.

"Wait."

"But—"

"She's right!" Bethany called out from behind her. "Listen! Don't you feel it?"

Asuna paused for a moment, doubtfully, unsure of what she was supposed to be listening for. A long, near-silent moment passed before she heard it: the deep thrum of an E string played open on a bass guitar.

"I sheared the neck from her bass with that last one," Bethany's mother said in a matter of fact tone, her long hair flying in the gusty wind as the bass note repeated again and again before branching out into different notes as it the bassline began to gain speed, volume, and complexity.

Asuna's eyes widened. "She's—"

"I wasn't aware she could summon one of these," the woman replied as she moved her guitar to a more comfortable position, then glanced back at Asuna, her eyes bright and vivid and full of devilry so unlike the mask she had first presented. "I wasn't aware she could play at all, and I had intended that she never learn. Kara is dangerous, after all." Asuna couldn't help but notice the huge, excited grin the woman couldn't seem to hide.

The sound of the bass note abruptly filled out, the sudden change staggering Asuna, while Bethany cried out and fell to the ground. Kara's mother stood straighter than ever, brought her pick up, and went into a series of power chords, faster and faster, climbing up the neck of the guitar in a complex series of chords and single notes as power built before slipping into a blazingly fast series of notes unlike anything Asuna had ever heard before. She had heard Misa and Madoka both at their fastest, but neither one could approach Kara's mother. She thought Ako might have been able to manage it eventually, but it would take her years of practice to regularly approach that level.

Kara's mother finished it up with a tremendously loud power chord that cut through the bassline Kara was playing, cut through the swirling dust in the air so that Asuna caught a glimpse of Kara, holding her own instrument, an unsteadily glowing guitar shaped not unlike her now-destroyed Rickenbacker bass, just for an instant before the power reached her.

Kara stood in the path of that power, her hair wild and her uniform bloody and ragged, her skin bruised and torn yet still playing, until the force hit her, throwing her through the air like a ragdoll, arms and legs flung out limply until she hit the side of the dorm building, bounced off, and hit the ground, unmoving.

Kara's mother stood there a moment as the sound from her guitar slowly faded away, and finally relaxed. She let go of the guitar's neck, and it shattered into a myriad of tiny glittering shards that faded from existence before they reached the ground. She glanced back at Asuna and Bethany, still unable to lose the excited grin she had been wearing throughout the duel with Kara, and spoke.

"It's over."

The first thing Kara felt was her body and the way it ached all over, as if she had been hit by a freight train.

"Urgh," she said intelligently. 'What's going on...?' she thought woozily. 'What happened to me?' She felt worse than she could remember feeling even after the worst of her training sessions with her mother. The last thing she could remember, Ayumi had shown up in her room, and then...what? She didn't know; she had a vague feeling that some amount of time had passed between Ayumi's appearance and waking up in the hospital, but she couldn't for the life of her recall what had happened between.

"Heya big sis. I must say, I'm impressed you learned how to play bass like that so fast."

Kara groaned again; she had made the mistake of trying to breathe. She worked her eyes open and sat staring up at the clean, sterile ceiling above her for a moment. "What...?" Her eyes widened as she realized who had just spoken, and she winced as she turned her head to see her little sister Bethany, that Asuna woman she had seen a lot with Negi-sensei, and, worst of all, her mother. Here. In Japan. Kara started to panic; if her mother was here in Japan, that meant that she knew Kara had been lying in her many letters back home about a great many things.

"Welcome back to the world of the living, daughter of mine."

Kara started to sweat. By the set of her mother's mouth, Kara knew she was in big, BIG trouble. Any lingering thoughts about how she had ended up in a hospital fled her mind.

"Ah, er...hello, mother," Kara managed to say.

"You have been a bad, bad girl," her mother said, standing up from her chair and moving to the side of the bed.

Kara tried to swallow the sudden lump in her throat as she looked up at her mother fearfully, the woman's sharp suit and hair perfect in a terrifyingly businesslike way.

Kara's mother stood there for a long, long moment as she looked down at her, and finally heaved a sigh, knelt down beside the bed, and pulled Kara up into a hug. Kara's arms went up almost of their own accord to return the hug, and tears started to fall.

"I'm sorry for lying, mama, I'm really sorry! I just wanted to fit in..."

Asuna and Bethany wisely took the opportunity to exit the room.

Asuna pulled the door shut behind her as she followed Bethany out into the hallway. The two of them stood there awkwardly for a long, long moment before Asuna decided to break the silence.

"So, have you ever seen anything like that before?" she said, looking over at Bethany. "The whole 'making guitars come out of the air' thing?"

Bethany shook her head, looking quite distracted. "No...I didn't know either one of them could do that."

Asuna waited for Bethany to continue, but the girl seemed to be determined to clam up. "I couldn't help but notice you were pretty good with that cello. That was a cello, right?"

Silence. Bethany nodded a moment later.

Asuna heaved a sigh. 'And she was so talkative before...,' Asuna thought. 'Is she worried about Kara? Or...oh. Oh.' She sneaked another look at Bethany from the corner of her eye. Now that she looked at her, she realized the girl seemed quite troubled. Jealousy of her mother's show of affection for her big sister...? Asuna nodded to herself. Most likely. Though she didn't have much—or any—experience in such matters herself, she knew it was dangerous ground...she would have to tread carefully. "Kara was pretty cool there for a while, wasn't she?" Asuna asked, then mentally kicked herself when she realized how the girl might take that. Bethany's reply, however, surprised her.

Bethany made a little smile. "Yeah...it looks like she's become pretty cool, doesn't it?" She paused a moment, her eyes distant and unreadable. "I saw a video of her playing in a band up on a big stage, you know? I almost couldn't believe it was her..."

"Oh, that was at the festival last month, wasn't it?" Asuna said.

Bethany nodded. "She's changed a lot. Did you know she used to only wear what mama wanted her to wear? Button up shirts and slacks?" She waited until Asuna shook her head. "I showed her some different stuff she could wear, but I was worried about her...did she ever find any friends here?" she asked, looking at Asuna.

Asuna grinned crookedly. "Yeah. From what I hear, they made a band of their own—it's not the one you saw from the festival, she was just subbing for the usual bass player there—and I hear they're pretty good. I'll have to get a copy of the video from when they played in some kind of band tournament back in May. I think they won second or third place...? Pretty good for a new band," Asuna said, grinning as she recalled some of the incidents Misa and the others had gotten into over the years. "How long are you two going to be in Mahora?" she asked.

"I dunno," Bethany said, shrugging. "Mama hadn't even planned on coming here until she saw that video of Kara playing online. I think she'll want to meet up with somebody from the shinmei—er, pretend you didn't hear that," she said nervously, cutting herself off. "Okay?"

Asuna cocked an eyebrow as she gave the girl a measuring gaze. "You know about the Shinmeiryu, huh?"

Bethany looked away, embarrassed at having spoken of such a secret thing. "Err...wait...you know about them too?" she asked, looking up at Asuna.

Asuna grinned. "Know about 'em? I'm a member!" she said proudly. "What do you need with the Shinmeiryu?"

"Well..." Bethany said, trailing off as she looked at the door to Kara's room. "Our family dojo was started by a former member who moved to the US a hundred or so years ago; mama hopes to become realigned with them to help keep us going; they sent an ambassador a while back, but they went back to Japan a little later and we haven't heard a word back. Plus, we've had trouble lately...someone's trying to force us to shut down," she said by way of explanation upon seeing Asuna's curious look.

"Oh, I see," Asuna said as she tried to recall what she knew about the Shinmeiryu's history. She knew that members had gone off on their own to other lands to establish their own dojos many times since the start of the school. Some had merged with local styles and all but vanished, such as the Dragon's Fist school in China; others had gained enough of a foothold to maintain their identity, but none were as strong as the original, founded in Kyoto. "What's your branch's name?"

Bethany smiled awkwardly. "Er..." she mumbled the name; Asuna couldn't understand what she said.

"Say again?"

Bethany let out a sigh. "...Sakura's Lie," she said in English. "It's kind of an embarrassing name..."

Asuna blinked. It certainly was...original. Who was Sakura? And why did she lie? Asuna shook it off. "W-well, I just happen to be in a position to help you guys, I think." She couldn't help but smile when Bethany perked up immediately. "I happen to know the future head of the Shinmeiryu herself," Asuna said, grinning in amusement at the way Bethany's face lit up.

"Really? Really really?" Bethany asked. At Asuna's nod, she let out an excited squeal. "Oh mama's going to be so happy!"

"Eh heh...heh." Asuna wondered how Konoka would react to these people, but shrugged it off. Konoka liked everybody...it'd be fine.

"State your name," Takahata Takamichi said as he and Shizuna began the questioning of Kara's mother some time later.

"Alyssa Stride," the woman replied, her expression distant and unreadable.

Takamichi recorded her name on the questionnaire he was working from, and continued on to the next question. "Date of birth?"

"October twenty fifth, nineteen seventy-nine," the woman said, fixing him with a stare.

Takamichi carefully ignored the surprised sound Shizuna made as he recorded the date. He glanced up from the paper and saw the challenge in her eyes. If she had been born in nineteen seventy nine, she would have just turned fifteen when her first daughter Kara had been born. Looking her in the eye now, he had no doubt she was fully aware of what most people thought about that sort of thing, and was ready to argue if he showed any sign of looking down on her. "Reason for coming to Mahora?" he asked.

Alyssa Stride's eyebrows went up at his lack of questioning about her personal life, but answered the question smoothly. "To prevent my daughter from making a fatal mistake."

Takamichi looked up at her again. "Such as?"

The woman looked at him for a good long time, then over at Shizuna, who stood by the desk wearing a glare—she was playing the part of 'bad cop' to Takamichi's 'good cop'—and sat up straighter in her chair. "The Stride family possesses certain...abilities, passed down from generation to generation."

"Abilities?" Shizuna said, cocking an eyebrow.

"Yes," Alyssa said, glaring at her. "It isn't that unusual, you know." She turned her attention back to Takamichi. "The Stride family possesses an ability that, in most of us, simply results in a little more charisma than the average person. In some of us, however, it manifests in a much stronger form."

"Hypnotism," Takamichi said. He had heard the reports from Asuna and others who had been present during the incident in the girls' dorm building earlier in the day; hypnotism of a particularly powerful type had been his first thought.

"...in a manner of speaking," Alyssa said, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Tell me, have either one of you spent much time around my daughter Kara?" she asked, looking from Takamichi to Shizuna and back.

Takamichi felt quite uncomfortable as he recalled the brief amount of time he had spent teaching that particular class in Negi's place one day the previous month, when Negi had been forced to take a day off to take care of certain duties he had in connection with the local magic association. He could tell by the way Shizuna shifted her stance that she had had a similar experience.

"I see the both of you have," the woman replied. "Not just hypnotism: attraction; both physical and emotional. Tell me, how many children did you want to have?" Alyssa asked, giving Takamichi a piercing stare.

"...a dozen or so," Shizuna said, surprising him as she finally gave up the 'bad cop' role she hadn't been able to really get into yet. "I thought it odd at the time as I have never been attracted to women, let alone a child."

Alyssa nodded. "And you?" she asked, turning her attention to Takamichi.

"...the same," he said reluctantly. He wasn't looking at her, but he could feel Shizuna's sudden glare. Time to deflect attention... "This strikes me as a particularly dangerous ability, especially the way it completely overpowers the victim's preferences."

"Indeed it is and, unfortunately, it works both ways: whatever the victim feels, Kara feels, if to a lesser degree," Alyssa said, nodding to herself. She sat up straight, gave Takamichi another piercing glare of her own, and continued. "It is highly dangerous as we have seen today, and it will only become stronger from here on out. There are ways around it of course, but they are not always practical. The effect, like most forms of non vocal hypnotism, is centered around her eyes; the presence of any sort of solid material between her eyes and the victim's weakens the effect...the use of a properly prepared pair of glasses is essential. Unfortunately, my daughter seems to have been neglecting the glasses I prepared for her and opted for a pair of contacts instead. They had some effect I'm sure, but..."

"With an ability like that..." Shizuna said, trailing off as she frowned.

"And not only that," Alyssa replied. "My mother's family also possessed a unique bloodline ability; I am sure the two of you are aware of music-based magic?" Takamichi and Shizuna both nodded. "Indeed; all one needs to confirm its existence is to attend a rock show," Alyssa said, her expression briefly bringing to mind the image of a feral cat before she regained control. "My mother's side of the family possesses the ability to bring out what she always called 'the instrument of her soul'. In my case, an electric guitar, and in my daughter Kara's case, unfortunately, a bass guitar."

"And what would be the difference between them?" Takamichi asked after he had written a few notes reminding him of certain things to look up after the interview was over. "Relating to your family's form of music based magic, of course."

Alyssa paused to gather her thoughts for a moment, then continued on. "Instruments are divided based on their role and the way they are played; the way I play my guitar, for instance, would make it a leading instrument: immediately useful and quite powerful when used the right way, but ultimately unable to accomplish much on its own. Kara's bass, on the other hand, would be a supporting instrument." She paused, waiting for them to make the connection. When they didn't speak, she said it for them. "Every army needs to march, every song needs its rhythm section, Takahata-san, Minamoto-san. The bass is a major part of that; it isn't created to be flashy, it is created to manipulate, to get your blood pumping and shake your bones with its sound, if it's strong enough...and Kara is strong. She was able to use it offensively with relative ease, whereas most who utilize this style of magic never develop such an ability. With her ability, especially at her young age, I hate to think of what she may be capable of in the future...if she takes the wrong path."

"Asuna said the sound hit her like a wave," Takamichi said thoughtfully. "I think I am beginning to understand. And does your local magic association know about this?"

Alyssa's stance became defiant. "Yes. There has been more than one attempt on Kara's life, and my local magic association, in their infinite wisdom, suggested locking her away in a hospital and keeping her in a drug-induced coma for the rest of her life."

Takamichi sat there, stunned though he tried not to show it. He shot a quick glance at Shizuna, saw the horrified expression on her face, and looked back at Alyssa. "I see."

And he did see. He saw how someone who truly understood the girl's abilities could suggest such a thing, how it could be argued as justified, how someone could do such a thing and retain a clean conscience.

He didn't care.

He paused to collect himself for a long, long moment before looking back up at Alyssa, seated across the desk from him. "Kara Stride..." he said thoughtfully. He hadn't realized just how big a threat she was, but when it came to big threats in the form of little girls, Mahora certainly housed more than its fair share. The Twilight Imperial Princess Kagurazaka Asuna, The Dark Evangel Evangeline A.K. McDowell, the White Oni Kondo Kai, a magic eater, psychics, ghosts, mercenaries, mages of all stripes...Mahora certainly had more than its fair share.

One more wouldn't hurt.

"She may remain in Mahora," he said. "She will be safe; we know how to protect those who need it. And, now that we know the nature of her abilities, we can develop ways to prevent this sort of incident from happening again."

Though she tried to hide it, he could almost feel Alyssa's relief that her daughter would be safe. When she had regained control of herself, she spoke. "You have my thanks."

"It's unnecessary, but you are welcome," he said, writing some more notes on his questionnaire. "Now, what about your other daughter?" he asked, looking at another sheet. "Bethany?"

Alyssa smiled. "Bethany has the same abilities, but they aren't as strong as they are in her sister; a good thing, as she will be able to lead a normal life...or as normal a life as anyone like us will ever lead," she said.

Takamichi nodded in agreement; mages and those who possessed such unusual abilities as Alyssa Stride and her daughters could never lead a really normal life; they simply had to hang in there and do their best to find a balance.

Alyssa smiled, a rare thing from what Takamichi had seen thus far. "Bethany will be fine; she's a strong girl."

Friday, July 10th, 2009, Evening

"Um...Shiina-san?" Mako Sylvester said hesitantly after the taxi had dropped them off on a dimly lit street corner. "Where are we?"

"Yachiyo, in Ibaraki. Oh, and call me Sakurako. My dad's 'Shiina-san'," Sakurako said happily, peering around to see what she could see in the fading evening light. There wasn't much to see...it was a pretty typical smallish Japanese town surrounded by farmers' fields. There were a few shrines and things, but there was more of that sort of thing back in Mahora. "Come on, I think it's over this way!" she said, bouncing away down the sidewalk.

Mako looked around at the strange town nervously, and hurried after Sakurako. "Where are we going...?" she asked when she had caught up to the energetic woman.

"Hmm...there's a place somewhere around here..." Sakurako said, pausing on another street corner just long enough to make sure she wouldn't get run over before plunging out into the road.

Mako followed along behind, doing her best to keep up. She hadn't known what to expect when Shiina Sakurako had approached her just after school had let out, but she knew the woman in a roundabout way from her training with Gin-san and the others in Eva's resort, so she had agreed to go along with her when Sakurako asked for a favor.

She was beginning to regret that decision.

"Come on, it's this way, I can feel it!" Sakurako said, hurrying along the sidewalk for a moment before darting across the road to a tall brick wall built around what looked like some kind of warehouse at the edge of the town. Mako followed as best she could, narrowly missing getting run over for her troubles. She made it safely to Sakurako's side a moment later, but Sakurako was already moving along the brick wall, looking up at the top of it. She paused after a moment. "Hey, think we can jump?"

Mako just blinked at her. "...huh?"

Sakurako grinned and shook her head. "Yeah, stupid idea. Let's keep going!" She resumed walking, turned the corner, and trotted over to a heavily built metal door built into the wall. "Let's see..." she said, trying the doorknob. When it didn't turn, she pulled out a hairpin and got to work on the lock.

Mako watched, aghast. Had Shiina-san—no, Sakurako-san—taken her along to help commit a crime...? "You probably shouldn't be doing that," she said nervously.

Sakurako glanced up at her, grinned, and shook her head. "Nah, don't worry about it, Mako-chan! It's not a problem at all!" Something in the doorknob clicked as Sakurako spoke, and she stood up, giving Mako a confident grin. "See? Piece of cake." She opened the door and stepped through, holding it open for Mako.

As Mako stepped through the door, she was surprised at how thick the brick wall was: easily six feet across, enough space for a small utility room to be built inside it. Standing in that room, she waited while Sakurako picked the lock on the next door, which opened much more quickly than the previous one.

"Heh~ I'm getting good at this," Sakurako said. "Come on, Mako-chan! Just remember, stay in the shadows and be very, very quiet!" she said, winking back at the younger girl as she slipped out through the doorway. Once outside, she waited for Mako to get out of the way and shut the door as quietly as she could.

Inside the walled-in lot, Mako found herself in what looked to be a half-empty parking lot with a large, well lit building on the other side. To her consternation, a fair amount of the vehicles present seemed to be castoffs from some military organization; most of them appeared heavily built, and a few even had cannons of various sizes sticking out of them. She didn't see any actual tanks, but such a thing would have fit in with the rest perfectly. The sun was long gone by that point, and shadows stretched across the parking lot in spite of the lights set up everywhere.

"This will be fun!" Sakurako whispered to her, then darted off for the closest military vehicle, which she crawled under.

Mako hesitantly followed, wishing Sakurako had at least given her a chance to change out of her school uniform before making her crawl around under jeeps and things...

After a sequence of surreptitious movements like something out of a videogame, Mako found herself standing beside Sakurako at the side of the big building, right next to another locked door. "Maybe we should go back..." she said nervously. She just wanted to be back in her nice, safe dorm room, where she wouldn't have to struggle to keep her ability from activating and flooding her mind with images any time she touched anything. Her dorm room was warm and pleasant and happy; besides, her roommate Keiko would be worried about her...she hadn't had a chance to call and tell the other girl she'd be late coming back.

"Nonsense," Sakurako said, smiling as the lock clicked and she opened the door to reveal a clean, well-lit hall. "Now come on and remember to be quiet, okay?" she said, leading the way without even bothering to look back and see if Mako had followed her.

"Okay..." Mako said reluctantly as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her.

Sakurako went up the hall to where it ran into another hall and ended, and peeked around the corner before motioning Mako to come up.

"Is it-"

"Shhh." Sakurako put a finger up to her lips as she made the shushing noise. She abruptly took Mako's hand in her own.

"No...!" Mako said, trying to tug her hand away to avoid the inevitable onrush of emotions and occasional memories that always came when she touched another.

Nothing happened.

Nothing happened.

Mako blinked in confusion. It was extremely rare that nothing happened when she made contact with someone like that; the other party, every time her ability had failed to kick in, had always been extremely withdrawn, unwilling to show any weakness. From what she had seen, Sakurako was nothing like that, and yet... She blinked down at the woman. "I...how?"

Sakurako winked at her. "You can call it divine intervention, ne~?" she said cutely, then led the way around the corner and along the next hall. "We're looking for a room where they would take things to be studied," she said, then guided Mako's hand to the wall.

The sudden influx of information staggered Mako and almost dropped her to her knees; the only thing preventing it was Sakurako, who supported Mako with an arm around her waist.

"Hmm..." Sakurako said. "Do you see anything?"

"...huh?" Mako said, still a little overwhelmed as she stared off into space. Now that the flood of information had slowed enough to become somewhat manageable, she could actually make out what some of it meant.

"There are six cars, they were in a lake. Do you see anything?" Sakurako asked, her voice almost hypnotically gentle.

Mako squinted, trying to sort out the mess of information. "They...they were in a garage, they are in a garage, and two of them are up on that thing they use to lift up cars," Mako said.

"A car lift?" Sakurako offered. Mako nodded. "That's good. Are there any people in there?"

"No..." Mako said, then looked off in another direction. "Someone is coming..."

"Oh, well then, we can't have them bothering us, can we?" Sakurako said playfully as she took Mako's hand from the wall.

Mako snapped back to herself and staggered. Sakurako moved to support her, but Mako waved her off. "What did you do to me? What did you do?" she demanded, half afraid of the answer. Sakurako had done something to increase the strength of her clairsentience to turn it into something terrifyingly invasive. For just a moment, her ability had gone far beyond merely feeling emotions; she had been able to see everything, from the fact that one of the mages working in this building was contemplating cheating on his wife to the fact that the strongest mage in the place was the janitor. It had been exhilarating...and terrifying. "What did you do?!" she demanded again.

Sakurako smiled at her, a little more gently. "I just supercharged you, that's all. It's not good to do it often, so I won't do it again unless I have your permission, okay?"

Mako looked at her suspiciously. Could she trust Sakurako...? She felt strangely inclined to, but while she hadn't really known her before this, now she felt she had a reason to distrust her.

"Come along, this way," Sakurako said, hurrying down the hall, leading Mako by the hand. She darted down another hall apparently at random, opened a door to a locker room of some sort, hurried across the floor, and opened one of several doors on the opposite side, leading to a large garage, where six waterlogged cars sat in the process of a thorough search. There was no one in the room, so Sakurako hurried to the nearest car, a four door sedan from the early 80s that had to have seen better days even before being submerged in a lake. "Okay Mako-chan, tell me what you feel," she said, pressing Mako's hand to the side of the car.

Mako stiffened, expecting the same flood of information as before, but all she felt was...exhaustion. "It's tired..." she said, confused. She hadn't ever felt an object with its own emotions before...was this something new she could do...?

"Yes, this guy's tired. He's had a long hard life, and he's ready to sit in a salvage yard," Sakurako said a little sadly, hurrying Mako on to the next car. It was a newer model, something from the mid 90s, Mako thought, a big sedan that resented its treatment. Sakurako hurried her on to the next, and the next, until the only cars left to check were the two currently sitting high atop car lifts. Mako went to the nearest one and reached up to lay her hand on a tire, just about the only thing within easy reach. Her mind was immediately flooded by a fairly simple tune.

"It's...it's singing," Mako said in surprise.

"Really?" Sakurako asked. "What's the song like?"

"Um...something like this," Mako said, doing her best to hum the tune. Sakurako stopped her after a few seconds.

"This is the one we're looking for," Sakurako said, smiling wide as she stepped back to look up at the car, a remarkably generic four door sedan from the 80s.

"What's that song...?" Mako asked.

Sakurako grinned wider than before. "It's called 'Drift Away', and it's Ako's favorite song. Some guy from America made it. Now come on," Sakurako said, again taking Mako's hand. "We need to find out everything we can about the people who took Ako. Want to try another supercharge?"

Mako looked up at the car and hesitantly nodded.

Author's Notes: Yeah...that was a little odd/intentionally cheesy. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that, but I was probably on cold medicine at the time.