When Everybody Knows
"What are these?" the girls asked as a platform started to rise up.
"Weapons, they help you protect yourself since the lot of you can't really use magic. You shouldn't rely only on your magic, but also on your surroundings and fighting skills. You don't know what enemies you could be fighting." Kei explained.
Sana cheered, "So, choose your own weapon! It's on us."
"What if the school find these in our bags?" Sato asked.
"Well, that's up to you, I guess. Do you want them to be found?" Sana asked politely.
Kei said, "It's simple, you just have to go back to the house."
It was simple, they said.
You have to go back to the house, they said.
Miya absentmindedly was walking towards the school, where there's a possibility that the girls were already trying to decipher everything that happened in the house.
She also remembered summer break was already nearing. Hopefully, she could ace their quizzes, since it showed in her Math class that she was failing at her school work.
"Okay, I have to get higher scores this time." Miya said as she slapped her cheeks for confidence.
"Is that... Miyazaki...?" Ru whispered to herself as she saw a familiar sky-blue-haired girl. When she felt confident that it was Miya, she yelled, "MIYAZAKI-SAN!"
Miya looked back and found Ru shouting at her. She greeted, "Hi, Hyuuga! How're you?"
"Hey, you don't have to call me that, call me Ru." Ru grinned at Miya.
Miya nodded and stated calmly, "Then, I request that you call me Miya."
"Deal."
Ru and Miya chatted about their day. Ru, a person who didn't really open up to people, found it was easy to talk to Miya. She was happy to let other people know something about her. In the end, she spoke about her pet, CoCo.
"CoCo's an amazing pet. I really like CoCo, like a family." Ru rambled.
"Really? I bet your family loves CoCo, too, if you treat CoCo like that..." Miya said.
Ru's face paled, but replied anyway, "Yeah..."
"What kind of pet is CoCo? A hamster, dog or...?"
"Cat."
Miya widened her eyes and immediately felt sick. She replied, "...o-oh..."
"Don't you like cats?" Ru asked, silently laughing.
"I'm afraid of them."
Ru laughed, "Of cats?! They're amazing and cute!"
"I just do, okay?" Miya replied, embarrassed.
After hearing Ru laugh, Miya started to chuckle as well.
"I guess it's pretty stupid to be afraid of a cute cat..."
But everything went black.
"Ru?" Miya asked quietly, somewhat sure that the place became dangerous.
"I'm here." Ru breathed, taking out a set of her daggers.
Miya felt her surroundings, no matter how hard she tried opening her eyes, she only saw darkness. She asked, "We're not blindfolded... does this mean that it's-"
Ru guessed it right, "Magic."
It kind of made Miya angry, interrupting her confident guess. She was quite the competitive one, though, and she had a right to be confident as she was in the top of her class.
Miya pulled out her nun chucks as Ru was already throwing daggers almost everywhere.
"You know what's amazing about this power?" a girl cackled behind them and Miya tried to hit her, but with no avail.
"I have night vision," the girl (who was obviously the reason behind all of this) replied to her own question. Immediately, Miya recognized the girl's voice...
"Yui-san?!" Miya shrieked.
"Miya, RUN!"
Tsurugi felt that it was quite odd that Miya was not present in class. But Amemiya freaked out for Tsurugi, so Tsurugi didn't have to ask his classmates awkward questions about the girl who was beside him.
"Did you see her or something?" Amemiya asked.
"No," the girls stared at Amemiya as if he was losing his head or something.
"Oh shit, shit, shit!"
Tsurugi had to slap Amemiya to calm him down (which he actually did). He hissed, "Would you stop it? You're freaking everyone out."
Amemiya sighed, "I was tasked to keep an eye on her... on them..."
"Them...?" Tsurugi asked, until finally realizing what Amemiya meant. Tsurugi interrogated, "Are you under the mistress' orders?"
"Yeah. Ever since... well, ever since." Amemiya replied smoothly.
Tsurugi expressed his doubt to him, "Why is she doing this? What is her plan?"
"That... I don't know," Amemiya admitted, "she never tells us anything."
"Then why are you following her?"
"Because, Tsurugi, she's worth to be followed."
That puzzled Tsurugi more. Thankfully (for Amemiya), a person interrupted their conversation.
"Amemiya! Tsurugi!" they heard Miya's voice shouting.
Said boys were actually quite relieved that Miya appeared, but what she said next was something Amemiya knew had something to do with the current opponents the mistress tasked them to kill.
"It's Yui-san, she captured Ru."
Immediately after school, the six remaining girls (along with four curious boys) walked together to the house.
"Do you think they'll know where Ru is?" Ai asked.
Kari looked at her and replied, "I don't know. Hopefully, they would know how to bring her back."
Miya sighed as she looked down. Regretting that Ru had to sacrifice herself just so she could not be captured (and to think that she was annoyed with Ru for stealing a little guess... it made her feel guilty).
"It's alright, Miyazaki-san, I'm sure it's not your fault that Ru-chan is not here with us." Kari comforted the said girl.
Miya smiled in reply, before correcting her fellow schoolmate, "It's Miya, Fujisaki-san. I'd like all of you to call me that."
"Okay, then. Also, I'd like to ask you all a favor: call me Kari." Kari requested.
The others quietly nodded.
"Call me KAI! No, Iwasawa-san this nor Iwasawa-senpai that. It just doesn't suit me!" Kairi-or Kai- also stated to all of the girls (well, I only called her Kairi to differentiate Kai from Kei and Kari).
"With your attitude like that, I think it's clear that we all forgotten that you were our upperclassmen, Kai." Sato chuckled, however agreed to what Kairi stated quite a while ago.
Eri grunted in agreement.
Kairi grinned, as if that was a huge compliment for her.
"Aiko." Ai quietly spoke up.
The others looked at her in question.
"I want all of you to call me Aiko. Masaki does it, so..." Ai spoke quite in a hurry.
"Okay, Aiko." Miya chuckled.
"And my name's Sato for you lot. I don't like all of you to call me Okazaki nor Airi." Sato said, going with the flow of the conversation.
"Why Sato, though? Just curious, though I'm quite sure I would still be calling you Okazaki." Eri smirked.
"Good question, Kurokawa," Sato smirked back and continued, "If you write my name in kanji, 'Airi' is written somewhat similar to 'Sato'." (And for your convenience; in Japanese, Sato is village.)
Eri grunted.
"If Ru was here, I'm sure she'd like to be called 'Ru', too." Miya guessed, confidently.
"We have to ask her first, though." Ai stated.
"Assuming she's alive." Eri said, pessimistically (she's alive, just so you know).
Ai shook her head, as if saying that Ru was alive, while Sato glared at Eri.
The boys at the back merely kept quiet until they all saw the house.
"So, what happened the last time you girls were here?" Kurama interrogated their own schoolmates.
"Nothing much..." Kari said, purposely leaving out any clue that the girls kind of did some gym routines.
"Are you sure?" Tsurugi asked.
"..."
A loud crash startled everyone. The sound was quite deafening to the ears, and the visitors of the house were quite sure that the floor was already destroyed because of that.
"Ah, you guys are here! We've been waiting!" Sana's cheery voice was heard. Soon after, Sana's appearance was seen along with Kei (possibly to shake hands with the guests, again).
"Tsurugi Kyousuke, Kurama Norihito, Kurumada Gouichi and Nishiki Ryouma." Yuu rolled their names on her lips, while appearing quite suddenly behind the said boys.
It made Kurumada jump in surprise as Nishiki stuttered, "Y-yeah...?"
"The mistress wants to see you." Yuu said quietly.
"O-oh..."
"Come with me," Yuu stated as she walked straight. The four boys had no choice but to follow Yuu, leaving the same set of girls in the same location (like that last time they gathered there... was that from the last chapter?)
"Today, you'll be finding your own powers!" Kei said
Kei said, "Well, let's do our best!"
(The trip to go to the 'gym' were full of the apprentices requesting their instructors to call them by their nicknames and it quite surprised the two instructors.)
Sana and Kei had told them that the 'magic doesn't necessarily come to you immediately, you have to call out to it first just so you may use it'. It didn't help it also that they had quite a few hours to find and use their magic.
"Will you find Ru, though?" Miya asked Kei and Sana.
"Well, we have a sinking feeling we know where she is. We'll do our best to find her, and maybe you could help." Sana said.
"Really?" Miya asked, not expecting that kind of reply.
"Sure, I think the mistress needs you more than you think." Kei stated. After, she put a finger over her lips, just so to show that what she said was a secret limited to the three of them.
"Holy..." Eri whispered as her hands were turning into icicles.
Sana broke into a grin, "Explore more of your magic, Kurokawa-san!"
Eri's face constructed, and her hands suddenly went back to normal. Eri sighed, knowing she doesn't have full control of her power. Still, she felt that she was making progress. Occasionally, she stated, "I'm the Ice Queen, huh?"
Others were facing the problem on how to make their 'hidden magic' to appear. It was quite simple, though, (as with other fantasy-related stories) it was about your heart... about your will to make it. This is why if you had no will, no motive to use magic, it will never work.
Though, that fact doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. There were few rare cases of people who could use magic but have no will to drive them... they were the feared ones.
Kei and Sana, however, purposely left that part out. The apprentices had to know it, discover it, by themselves. That was proper training, it had to be experienced (I mean, let's be honest here, there are thousands of slogans saying that 'experience is the best teacher').
Kari proved this to be true as when she willed herself to focus on the task... and pretty much objects around her started lifting up. When she saw it, her focus was already broken and the objects immediately fell.
"Concentration is a part of it, you know." Kei hinted, "After practicing a lot in concentrating, you may use your magic breezily."
Miya, who was rather competitive, grew rather jealous at the progress of everyone. She concentrated (she would have to be one of the girls who actually was good at concentrating and used to it) and sighed as she started to feel dizzy. Leaning on a treadmill, she immediately jumped in surprise as familiar churning of the treadmill rang throughout the room.
She glanced at her hand and felt sparks coming from within. She whispered, "Electricity...?"
The next to progress was Sato, a girl who was calm most of the time. Sato merely closed her eyes as she focused on finding her hidden magic. And when she opened her eyes and held out her hand, a barrier had came out.
"Barriers, huh? What a weird thing to have..." Sato chuckled.
Ai was a soft-spoken person, so she was clearly the person who had least expected to have such control of her powers, but she seemed to focus welll enough to cause a strong wind to blow in her direction.
"Amazing... the feeling, it's..." Ai whispered softly.
Kairi was another one to have reached such level of control on her powers. She was always the impulsive one (as so the teachers tell her) and would act before thinking about the outcome. Even through that, she had her adventurous streak in her blood, and with that... it made her a willful person.
She breathed in and out. Her eyesight became fuzzy, and when she blinked, she was in front of a door. There was a symbol in front of it, a red substance (which suspiciously looked like blood) that was splattered on the front door. It marked: A.
Kairi pressed her ear on the door, knowing the possibility of a person inside there.
"So, why did you call us here?" Tsurugi asked rudely.
Kurama sighed at the antics of his best friend. Still, the person they're talking to was a girl... and Kurama didn't like the tone Tsurugi was using. But, he saw that the mistress paid no mind to Tsurugi's rudeness.
"Well, nothing much, I just wanted to recruit you," the mistress said.
"Why is that?" Kurumada asked the mistress.
"Is it not obvious? It's because you have the qualifications," she said dismissively.
"What do you mean, ma'am?" Nishiki asked politely.
The mistress sighed, "Do you really not get it? Do you not feel that you were always left out? That you do not belong to the society... that you can't manage to be in their standards?"
The four boys considered this. Kurumada stated, "I still don't know where you're going with this."
"Magic. You boys are gifted, blessed by the heavens to help this world," the mistress explained.
"What on earth are you talking about?" Kurama asked the mistress.
"Do you not believe in fairies? Pixies? Or even unicorns or trolls? Do you believe in fairy tales?" the mistress asked the boys.
Nishiki sighed, "Those are for little kids, ma'am. We're past that stage already."
"Are you saying that these are real?" Tsurugi snapped.
"Well, they are. But that's not what I'm here to talk about... do you believe in things that could possibly be not real?" the mistress asked again.
Tsurugi asked, "Like fairies or other shit like that? No, we do not."
The mistress smiled, "Even humans do not know the real state of the universe. Regardless, those things that you think are not real... are real."
"What are you talking about?" Kurama asked again.
"Magic is real, boys. And you use them daily without thinking about it. You are gifted... far too much if I can say."
The boys stared at the mistress, silently.
(Kairi used this time to teleport back to the 'gym' and try to forget everything she heard.)
Don't worry, the next chapter will be filled with action!
So, what do you think of the boys possibly having magic powers?
Anyway, see you next week, again! :D