Previously on TLA: The elusive Himeru directed Musume to papers on preternatural and supernatural research to aid in whatever comes her way. In contrast, Phantom found herself conscripted as Leo's instructor.
Both came across poorly in their first meetings with Yubel - Phantom 'accidentally' punched her in the face and Musume pulled rank to settle a petty argument.
The living situation in the penthouse remains understandably uncomfortable.
Con artists have endured for millennia because they project such certainty into their schemes that victims are inevitably drawn into what they think is an unmissable opportunity and end up with no money and (at best) nothing to show for it. What had happened in the penthouse was technically akin to a confidence scam insofar as Leo had boundless enthusiasm enough to convince Phantom to teach him what she knew of magic. No, that was unfair to Leo. What he had done was unwaveringly wear her down to the point that she agreed to teach him something relatively harmless if, and only if, he performed an impossible feat of athleticism.
Sixty to the power two over two thousand is one-point-eight. Not knowing what the time was had seriously unsettled her as a child. That had led to always knowing where to find the nearest clock and a borderline neurological tic to know the current time to within ten seconds. I asked you to do two thousand squats in an hour eighty-three minutes ago. How are you done?
"Because I'm all finished." Years of idolising Jack Atlas could only have helped that smug face. "Full two thousand." Fifteen minutes had been gently weeping in the shower and an extra five to figure out how to get downstairs without the use of his legs. But anyone could gently flop from their bedroom to the kitchen – hungover people did it every day.
Ten more, right here and now, and I will give you a magic sword. Everyone in the room, spirit and mortal alike, looked down at the spasming puddle on the ground. Leo hadn't even checked to ask if there really was a magic sword before trying for the prize. Wow. Walking around, Phantom physically lifted the heroic victor back to his seat. You really did it, huh? No other reason would have prevented Leo from going for the gold.
"Yep!" And only at the cost of being able to use his legs for the next three to five hours! "And you promised to teach me magic if I could do it." Consequences of actions reared their head and pointed straight at her. Turning down Leo's hopelessly adoring face would be like smacking a baby. Except that she hated babies and would smack one under the right circumstances (mostly choking but also if the baby had a gun). Turning down Leo was like telling a dog there were no more treats and walks were cancelled when there were treats that needed eating and you had a marathon scheduled for the afternoon.
Damn. Here. Everyone in the apartment loved starting their day with coffee so she always made sure a pot was ready. Leo gratefully sipped his brew as Phantom pulled a notepad and worn pencil from the clutter drawer. Pressing the graphite onto the top of the pad, she slowly traced a faint circle on the paper. This is your standard… pentagram. She etched the five lines with a necessary flourish.
"And this is your standard wristlock," Musume explained, one hand keeping the deadly pencil high in the air while the other smashed the freezing helmet atop the demonic artwork. "What the fuck are you doing?" Any activity involving pentagrams and the spectral psychopath was bound to end in flames with the question being 'regular or hellfire'?
"Phantom said she'd teach me how to do magic spells." A roving blue eye slid to the top of the helmet to watch his rescue firsthand. It was cool how she could see from where most people had a hairline.
"Really?" Musume's hand flashed and speared the helmet through before it could escape. It wasn't fair - no matter how many times he asked, she refused to let him try the sword. "Are you a complete moron or just retarded?" She hadn't truly believed Phantom would go through with it until she'd put pen to paper.
… I was going to teach him a basic protection sigil. Even with a sword through her head, Phantom remained calm in the face of danger. So cool!
"Yeah?" She swiped right to clear the pad for viewing. "Looks like the sort of shit you see in every bad horror film." Like there were good ones. Leo would have snorted but it was usually best to stay out of her way when she got angry.
There is a reason for that. Phantom tried to raise a hand only for it to get pinned back down. Are you familiar with the followings of Marduk in Musume shook the sword until her puppet started talking sense. Pentagrams keep bad things stuck.
"Ooooh. So, you summon a demon in them and they get trapped?" Four glowing eyes turned his way in amazement. Not many would have figured out the origins behind the Hollywood stereotype.
Very good. Her attempt for a high-five was spurned as General Buzzkill smacked it down. Leo risked limb and, er, other limb, bumping the gloved fist in respect.
Musume reluctantly grunted as she tossed the pad across the table. "Then you weren't going to teach him how to summon demons?"
… All physical eyes narrowed at the flat lack of denial.
"Phantom?" Pointed teeth edged closer to the supposedly indestructible armour which suddenly felt very fragile. "Were you going to teach Leo to summon demons?"
I was going to teach him what not to do? From Leo's vaunted understanding, the Tender Hands sword currently embedded through Phantom's head would only kill evil. It looked like her involvement with damned creatures from the bleakest corners of creation hadn't tipped her over the edge.
"I don't," Musume punched the bridge of her nose. "How the fuck can some random scribbles do that sort of shit?" It made sense that she would be jealous - her trapping a demon had been far more arduous than artwork. If getting a fresh tattoo was all it took to stop the ceaseless screaming in the back of her head she'd be bribing the nearest ink jockey before they could notice the other Marks on her skin were glowing slightly.
Well, Musume tightened her grip to the point where bones shattered. It was a polite warning to not ramble. Intent is a key component. 'Random scribbles' are happenstance, a person has to truly mean it.
An enraged grunt was the closest Musume came to an apology as she released her victim. True enough, she'd been reading about a similar situation but that had been to do with meditation and why thinking about hurting the opponent made attacks more effective. Throwing herself back onto the nest she had steadily crafted from the couch, Musume dragged her latest reading assignment into place. It had a vaunted title like 'A Thesis on the Quantum Effects of…' She flipped back to the front cover. Right, 'of Concurrent Recurrences'. Total bullshit but it had some amusing (if drier than a sobriety meeting) lines.
Back at the kitchen island, the unnatural lesson resumed. "Do these really work?"
Leo gave a shrill scream and fell off his chair. "When did you get here?!" He rubbed the bruise already forming on his behind while clambering back upright.
"See?" Luna sighed across the table. "Told you he wasn't paying attention."
"Dude, we've been here the whole time." Jaden gestured to his empty mug. "Oh, thanks." Mistaking the implication for another, Phantom had swooped in on the refill. "We got here right after you did." Looking for confirmation from his teacher, Leo received a slow nod. "Yubel wants to know if these are what let you hit her?" The spirit was staying safely sequestered in the privacy of his soul for now.
Aye. Phantom traced a finger from hand to the crook of her elbow. Every inch of my armour was constructed with sigils and runes factored into the design. Thousands, maybe millions of combinations in all. She had stopped counting during the design. Everything had simply started weaving together as she desperately tried to prepare for every eventuality.
"Yeah, but which let you touch her?" Duel Spirits could physically manifest in the human realm at great cost but she had punched a spiritual image as if it was real. That sort of power was dangerous to too many of his friends for Jaden to not find out more.
I cannot be certain. She clenched her fist closed again. They interact and operate based on what is around me. I can tell you a combination that might work but not... which. Experimenting to discover was an impossibility. Those same glyphs which kept haunting monsters at bay also kept her locked inside, erasing them could lose her physical form.
"Can you teach me all those?" Sharing knowledge was important but Leo wanted to get down to the magic part. He was only a few drawing lessons away from casting real spells!
Cold eyes evaluated the danger of giving Leo mystical knowledge he could freely use – it was dangerously close to 'baby with a gun' territory. We will focus on protective measures for now. Extending the notepad into the middle of the table, she noticed the growing spectre above Jaden as he and Luna also leaned in. Pentagrams are found in many cultures but... I think it will be best to focus on the Wǔ Xíng variant for today. Asian origins, deep mythology, enough to keep Leo occupied for the next few days.
Leaning across the table, Jaden called Luna for a surreptitious meeting behind his hand. "When you promised me a 'magic morning', this isn't what I thought you had in mind." Though it was cool to see someone who knew real magic stuff, he'd expected something more 'Musume going full dragon-lady' instead of 'arts and crafts'.
"Aren't you magic enough already?" Being the Supreme King was more than a job title. Jaden had access to the sorts of powers that most people didn't even dare to imagine existed. However, and one glance at the hovering spectre of despairing responsibility confirmed her dreaded suspicions, Luna could tell that saving the world twice and enduring multiple supernatural experiences hadn't changed Jaden from being the sort of guy who would clap at the end of a magic show.
Back on her slovenly cot, Musume broke out of her glazed expression and paid active attention to the paper in her hands. Tracing the line with an increasingly shaky finger, she dodged back a page to make sure it wasn't being taken out of context.
"Phantom!" She bellowed while lunging for her jacket. "Get your shit together, we're going to see Crow."
Leo had a few friends with autism and could already see the cogs starting to turn as she translated the phrase to an equivalent meaning. It took longer than for Musume to cram both arms into sleeves and one of her weird notepads into an inside pocket. "But she was about to tell me why not to do them upside down!"
Musume paused in the middle of dragging her prey to the door. As far as she was concerned, Phantom was a wild bitch that had chosen to curl up by their fire. Sure, she might look innocent and play along with a few silly games but that deadly nature lurked beneath the surface for the slightest opportunity. "What happens if he does them upside down?"
Possible demon summoning. Phantom raised both hands defensively. But not here… probably.
"Pointy bit at the top!" Leo paled in shock. Musume had never drawn the sword on him before. "Or I'll make you feel like a bigger shitstain than diarrhoea at a hippie festival!"
"I'm starting to like her." True, they had had some rough patches along the way but Musume's breadth of insults was swiftly earning Yubel's favour.
Fuck. Getting across the city at record speeds was becoming a new hobby but, now that she was actually across the square from Poppo Time, Musume was terrified of going in. What she needed was some liquid courage and she knew the perfect place to get some. "Park her inside. I need a drink." Having a deathly responsibility haunting her every waking moment could come with some surprising benefits. At least one spare set of hands when it came to the dishes, on-call parking, and sounding board for whatever craziness lurked up next.
Take the current crop of customers grouped inside the shop. Gone were the clusters of not-reporters and not-cops, enter the random cluster of crazies. Six teens with varying levels of in horrifyingly colourful clothes, a lady carrying a distinct aura of scrubs and animal fur, a four-eyed bluenet with calloused fingers and negligible muscles to the side of the bushiest mane of grey hair in the world and a fading ginger with a heavily mechanised clock built into their backpack to round off the troupe. But the longer she looked, the more confused Musume became.
Both the stocky girl beside the blonde boy, his darker younger brother and the azure-haired adult wore glasses yet none seemed related to the another. The meat in a greying sandwich was the obvious biological parent to the young lady with a scar above her eye but she didn't seem connected to the other mother in the picture who was shadowed (in a 'this is about to explode in our faces' sort of way) by Blue Glasses who was distinctly as far away from the other fading ginger at the far end of the line while the young black guy was eating sugar packets without removing the packet first while a once-dyed blue now natural blonde tried to pry them from his hands. All but two of the younger range were wearing increasingly crazy hats, nobody seemed related to anybody else and the only common denominator was a relaxed tension that told Musume she would probably lose in a fight if she happened to be evil enough to need obliteration.
"How about rocks?" Red dress, hook hand, grey hair, and apparent leader of the pack was currently trying to engage the barista in commerce. Strewn across the counter were the contents of a charity shop, blended with the leftovers from a skip and then forced through the mangled lens of an impressionist. It was more crap than Crow's room and the only items crappier in the city. Nevertheless, the silver fox was aggressively bartering for expensive coffees with it. "You people like rocks, right?" Mismatched eyes winked confidentially over the counter.
Stephanie instantly switched to her 'professionals are not allowed to beat the crap out of customers who only appear racist and I am going to be professional for exactly one more minute' mode. "And what does 'you people' mean?"
"Hu-" Three people instantly grabbed her arms and pulled her from the counter.
"Wen!" Warned the tan girl in the baggy trousers.
"Wendie!" Heterochromia again? Fading Ginger was probably her sister.
"We~n!" Anyone not so aggressively attractive would have sounded petulant but this epitome of beauty sounded enchantingly exasperated and had Musume questioning certain aspects of herself. "You promised to behave!" From the sounds of their voice, this happened too often to still be surprised.
There was a tense pause as everyone tried to figure out how to defuse the situation. Even a dog of indeterminate breed looked up expectantly. Cool helmet on that one, she loved the horns. "Hu-ge successes!" Screamed the insane bundle of hair. "Ha, nailed it!" Despite herself, Musume cracked a grin. This broad was all the chaotic energy of an owl given human form and a con artist's education.
I will pay for their drinks. Pressing a wad of notes into her hand from around the corner, the armour also sounded delightfully amused by the antics.
"Where did you get cash?" Waving her phone past a checkout at a chain store to trick the till into dropping the entire cost bothered her a little less than being told breakfast was ready. Still, she couldn't figure out where a formless void of armour had stumbled across a pile of money. Unless, "Did you steal from the twins?" Was it really 'stealing' if Leo happened to be asked for large gifts of currency in exchange for being shown a new attack move? Yes, yes it was.
Not the twins, no. Ah, loot. Truly the best way of getting free money. Dilucesco is safely away. I will wait outside. A chance breath of air drew her attention to one of the tables Stephanie had put out. It was nothing that anyone would have paid much attention to, merely a tatty sketchbook sliding to the ground. But she had glimpsed a page as it fell and caught it before it hit the floor.
Phantom gently brushed off the notebook and flicked open the cover with a razor line curling curiosity above her face. It was a fairly standard bunch of doodles except for what lay in the margin: glyph combinations unlike any she had ever seen. A finger traced through the diagrams in moderate wonder as she dissected the based designs. Let's see; drawn bow with two crosses, sword over bow, inverted cyclops wearing a skirt, two overlaid teardrops with a dot in the bigger one, one that could only be described as a kite wearing a pointed helmet, weirder designs still. She could take weeks, months figuring out what they meant... Oh, for the mercy of Musume! Was the author related to Leo? There was a damn index page at the front. Still, opportunity called and she spent a minute studying the list in detail.
With the contents memorised, she carefully returned the notebook to its exact starting position on the table. Anybody intending to attack Poppo Time wouldn't have left evidence simply lying around and anyone stupid enough to do so... well, Musume had a temper and Phantom had focus – it would be a short fight.
"One chai tea, two lattes, kombucha, one black coffee, coffee with milk no sugar, coffee with milk one sugar, coffee with no milk and six sugars," It had taken three clarifications and a re-evaluation of life choices to allow that one past. "A mocha, and a hot chocolate." Which went to the nauseatingly sweet couple. Musume was an equal opportunities hater but anyone being that sweet should be carrying a sign to keep the diabetics at a safe distance.
"You're a good kid." A single glance at that gold tooth and the crooked smile and Musume knew she was half an inch from being conned or adopted. "Here, have this on me." Pressed into one palm was a glass diamond the size of a thumb. Musume instinctively wanted to make a snarky comment but noticed how the coffee cup had been screwed into the curve of the Owl Lady's hook so she could hold her partner's hand.
"Any time." Urgh, these people were adorable to the point of nausea. Musume shifted aside to let the group shuffle past and collect their bags from the table outside. She tried not to notice the backpack clock face had no hands and seemed to be smiling or the way the dog was suddenly bipedal. "Hi, Stephanie." Nodding affably, Musume finally managed to reach the counter to place her own order. "What happened to business? Finally place a ban on cops and reporters?"
"No, most of them wised up and realised there was nothing going on." She jerked a thumb to the corner where a couple of grizzled faces were waiting for the days to pass. "Those two are tapped into every major news outlet in the city. Getting paid a lot to do nothing but relay anything that happens. Isn't that right?"
"No idea what you're talking about." One raised a mug while the other waved cheerfully without even looking up from their battered novel that (judging by the cover) had spent a long career as a coffee coaster.
"Guessing the cops around the corner are getting delivery?" With nobody else in the shop, the surveillance team a few doors down were probably trying to blend in as best they could. "Or does Jack do a round when he stops by?"
Stephanie's face shifted back to the same pre-eviction expression from a few minutes earlier. "If you're not going to place an order, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"It's okay." Musume responded defensively, "I'm a friend of Crow's. I thought I'd get some coffee before going inside."
Experienced eyes took in the aggressive posture, ragged shirt, and Marked face. "Whatever you say." Plenty of others had pretended to be Jack's friend or Crow's buddy from the force or a scientist dropping by to see Yusei. None of the excuses ever brought anything but contempt from the coffee shop.
A tiny shard chipped itself off her heart and dropped into the void. Stephanie had been the cool aunt with an unfortunate habit of having one hot chocolate too many lying around and was the only person Crow had credited with the ability to make coffee good enough to impress Jack (just not enough for him to admit it in detail). Now she was just a successful entrepreneur who didn't show much surprise for a complete stranger to drop a small fortune and claim to be a hitherto unknown close friend to the Signer clan. "Three plain coffees, three espresso, and a Blue Eyes Mountain." She echoed hollowly.
"And will that be cash or card?" Everyone who read up on Jack Atlas knew that he liked Blue Eyes Mountain. Ordering it now only made her customer seem all the more desperate to sell her ruse.
"Keep the change." She dropped the rest of the crumpled notes into the counter, not caring how much it was.
Stephanie dealt out the coffees first, with an espresso chaser to follow. That way, she could properly prepare the Blue Eyes Mountain. Not because there was any chance of it making it across the road to Jack but because any chance to improve her skills was taken. By the time she had turned back around, three tiny cups sat empty and steaming. "That was fast." Maybe it was worth taking a stroll to let the officers on shift know about the lady who could do three shots of espresso and not show as much as a twitch.
Musume gave no answer as she stacked her cups into a cardboard carrier and shuffled out the door. Seated happily at the bottom of the ramp with various animals clambering across every inch was the ecstatic figure of her perpetual problem. "How the fuck do you do that?" It would have been impressive if it weren't so strange.
In my defence, A chameleon crawled down her face and flicked its tongue through the air. They are very friendly. An owl nestled in the dense fur of an auburn fox hooted and blinked… well, owlishly at Musume as a white raven on her left shoulder adjusted itself imperiously as a tiny blue tit hopped adorably on her right.
By all rights, the birds of prey should have been attacking the chunky snake which should have been biting the fluffy white cat it was curled atop. And the wasp the size of a bowling ball… "Fucking lizards." Regular human eyes had a handy overlap between what was really there and what the normies could see but Musume had been struggling to see the mundane behind the magic since Paris. "Come on." She ducked under the garage door without paying it a second thought.
Farewell. Phantom gently disentangled herself from the pile of impossible creatures and gave them each one last pat or rub. It was wonderful to meet you. I hope we meet again. Running off up the ramp, they chased down the departing crowd from the coffee shop. Cheerful burbling drew her gaze to a tiny red bird peering down from the edge of Poppo Time's roof. Phantom smiled through the translucent wings as they spread to the skies before she ducked inside.
"Fuck me sideways." Crow had been enough bags under his eyebrows to start a store and had never been so happy to see the one he slept behind. He'd spent the night in a library going tracking down any lead he could on Pearson and was in dire need of a good sleep and a miracle breakthrough. All he could count on was more problems cropping up. "And what are you doing here?" Waiting in motionless sentry at the bottom of the stairs was the prison-orange overalls of Phantom.
Musume wanted to speak with you. She made no mention of the hours of waiting that had passed.
"Yay." He said heartlessly as he followed her to the middle landing. "Before we do that, I've got a question." He seized a shoulder to bring her to a halt.
Not now. Phantom didn't make eye contact.
"Hey!" Screw that! If he was going to put the work in, the least she could do was lend a hand. "You're the one who told me to find a god so it's only fair" A hand gripped his wrist with all the indomitable might of the winter season as she finally met his gaze.
Crow. Those icy eyes stopped his fury dead. Not now. Then she dragged him the rest of the way up the stairs.
He instinctively looked to the bundle of anger on the couch for backup. If there was one thing Musume was good for, it was keeping her pet in line. Except that she hadn't reacted to anything else in the room since sitting down.
Letting go of his shoulder, the armour carefully shifted to block the view of the blank television. Musume? Crouching down in front of the couch, Phantom gently nudged a knee to gain her attention. Crow is here.
"Huh?" Her focus gradually returned to the present. "Right, Crow. I brought coffee." She pointed to the cardboard carrier sitting on the table.
Crow picked one at random. "Empty." He shook a second. "Glugged." Picking up the entire tray revealed the absence of any caffeine. "See, most people bring coffee for the people they're visiting as well." Her inner Jack was showing. But she was clearly too distracted to notice. "Okay kid," Crow sighed. That nap was going to have to wait. "What's up?"
Musume's eyes glowed faintly as she looked at her companion. "Can you give us some space?" That was another unusual change – she tended to be more direct in her orders.
Of course. Nodding respectfully, Phantom took two sharp steps and vanished down the stairs.
"She still creeps me out." There had been less clatter this time. Maybe she was finally learning the intricacies of interior design.
"Really?" Even her tone sounded like it had checked out as she finally stood up. "Anyway, I was reading this earlier." Despite being folded in her pocket on the ride here, the paper was barely creased. "I wanted to know what you think."
Crow took the open page with a careful glance. He knew the crazy story of Himeru directing Akiza to an obscure tome stored in the SRC library. What he instantly picked up on was the quality of the paper. This was heavy stuff. Too thick for boring science writing. Expensive enough to sell onwards to buy dinner. "What is it?" He was proud of himself for apparently raising someone who could understand the gobbledygook on the page. Sure, individual words made sense but anything past the second sentence was lost to him. Let's see… Quantum, of course. Meta-temporal…
"It suggests that, at least I think it means, but I don't know anyone else who might be working on this sort of thing so there's not many people I can ask, and Akiza's got enough on her plate that she doesn't need to" She hadn't taken a breath for the entire sentence and was (besides getting nowhere) was turning an alarming shade of red.
"Musume!" Crow raised his voice enough to bring her back down to reality. "You're rambling." Worse than Jack trying to explain why it wasn't fair that he did his share of chores. "Ten words or less it for me; what's it say?"
Taking another deep breath did nothing for the colour in her face. "People who have their timeline rewritten remember their original lives."
Okay. First thing Crow did was count her words, all ten. Definitely his kid. Second was realise that the Tender Hands was still clenched in one fist like a lethal stress toy and the only person it seemed useless against was downstairs out of reach as a defensive weapon. Here's hoping the truth didn't hurt (him) too badly. "Sorry Sprout." He waited for her to take the papers back before he continued. "Only memories locked up in my head are mine." There was an odd look on her face. A non-violent one. "You okay?"
"... Sure." Crow hadn't expected her to concede the point so easily. He knew what a lot of orphans would give to have a loving parent back in their lives. "Damned thing says it might never be more than a weird feeling." She rubbed both eyes on the back of an arm, because of the dust in the old house. "Keep me in the loop if you remember anything?"
"Of course." Much as he wasn't ready to be an overnight father, Musume was the sort of person who could persuade you to fill the adoption forms in for the tax breaks and then only drop by to hide from the police or help out with mild renovations. She was kinda cool like that. (Crow privately gave himself a pat on the back for being so great at childrearing.)
"Look, I've been up all night already. Unless there's anything else, I'm gonna collapse for the next ten hours." Crow had never been so happy to be allowed to go to bed. That smile was creepy. Too many sharp teeth.
'Sprout'. Short for 'Sproutling'. Akiza had been the Black Rose and it was obvious to Crow that plant puns were the perfect choice for dad jokes. 'Sproutling' for being an offshoot, 'Sprout' for being short, 'Bud' for growing out of 'Sprout'... More bad jokes that she didn't want to remember. And none that she had told this Crow.
It had happened, somewhere out there. And maybe other people would remember or maybe only one would still think back fondly in the days ahead. But even one person was enough, when it mattered. Even if the rest of the world had forgotten, there would always be hope in the hearts of those who remembered the stories.
In the bathroom, Crow hummed hopelessly out of time to himself as he brushed his teeth. It was his key remedy to getting a song out of his head and he'd had Frère Jacques internally playing on a loop all day for some reason. His bedtime ritual was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. Anyone else would have been sent to his voicemail but Luna was the eternal bastion of peace in their group.
"Yellowp?" He balanced the phone on his shoulder while running both hands under the tap. "Hang on a sec," Cracking open the door, he leaned out while drying his hands on the towel hung behind it. "Hey, Musume! Any idea why Yubel is bouncing between the ceiling and floor?"
"What?" She glanced at the innocently shrugging figure cresting the stairs. "How many pentagrams has Leo drawn?"
Crow relayed the question and tried not to raise alarms. Musume had doubtless cleared this one already and she needed to learn to take responsibility for giving out permission. "About a hundred." This brought no reaction from anyone in the room as he finally stepped out to join them.
"Did he do any of them upside-down?" Huh. Last time he'd seen an Izinski with that expression, things had been flying around the room. This version only had a smouldering stare and an impressive wingspan. Aesthetically speaking, a bit of a downgrade.
"Lemme check." Crow repeated the question down the phone. "Says no but that he did try a tri... tryq..." Most people with this level of panic used profanity and he was forced to not automatically censor every fifth word.
Triquetra? Phantom was already rubbing a tiny circle where her eyebrows used to be as she instinctively tried to abate her headache. Two problems instantly presented themselves; firstly, as a non-corporeal being, she didn't have a head to ache and was stuck with a general sense of conscious discomfort, and secondly was the issue that Leo wasn't a source she could easily erase. With or without a circle?
"Does it make a difference?" When had his life become this? What was the worst that could happen from drawing a circle? Or reading a book, having a birthmark, or playing a card game. "Hey, Luna? Any of them trikes got a circle?" Fresh screaming sounded in the background. "Okay, that probably wasn't very smart of him, was it?"
"Let me guess; he added a circle to one to see what would happen?" Everyone had the urge to push boundaries just to see what happens but most people had an inkling of self-control. Leo was like the cat that knocks a glass to the floor to see if it bounced and the second glass to see if it responded differently from the first. "How bad is it now?"
Crow listened to the incoherent panic for another few seconds. "Sounds like Yubel is bouncing off all the walls and Jaden is, one more time?" Luna repeated her understandably alarmed shouting. "Right, Jaden is stuck on the floor and spinning in circles." Boyish curiosity wondered if King of Games the Second would be capable of Turbo Duelling or if he was about to discover motion sickness.
"YOU!" Nobody else on the planet could be less threatening pointing with a finger instead of the sword on their hip. "We're going to fix this shit!" Even though Phantom was trying her best to explain that this was probably due to the quantum indeterminism of merged souls operating with a localised scope, she was seized by the scruff of her collar and dragged down the stairs by the very personification of 'I told you so'.
"Yeah, they're on the way. Have you tried taking the pencils away from Leo?" A childhood alongside Jack had given Crow fairly strong resistance to stupidity yet it took a couple of seconds to process Luna's next sentence. "Now, when you say 'stuck to the wall'?" All he wanted to do was figure out a way to raise his friend from the dead, not waste time preventing the children's drawing contests from conjuring demonic forces. Musume could handle this one, she'd been raised by the best guy around.
I want to round this chapter off with heartfelt gratitude and admiration to Dana Terrace as her magnificent Owl House comes to an end much too soon. To borrow a little energy from the epitome of chaotic neutral on our way out:
Hooty-hoo, leave a review!