Chapter 16: Trick Of The Light // 2.01

“The flock would be blessed…newest Lightbearer…a great day for all Japan…warmest welcome at the gathering on Saturday. Gonna be casual, no fireworks…not asking much, by their standards. Full support…commitment to safety and security…The big hook is that they want Ez there.”

Ebi delivered a translated summary of Hikanome’s 6 AM message from her customary spot over Amane’s shoulder. We’d gathered around the largest table in the lower-level common space on the 19th floor of Lighthouse Tower.

“Leeeeeverage,” Hina simplified from the stove. As part of her continuing efforts to educate me in Japanese cuisine, Radiance Sapphire had decided this morning’s breakfast was to be omurice; she was currently managing the omelette half of that equation in three pans simultaneously. “They won’t lean on the Ministry to help us with the Peacies if he doesn’t show, ‘s what they’re saying.”

Ai raised a hand to indicate she wanted to speak while she hastily swallowed a bite of ketchup-smeared rice and egg. She looked like she had slept well, for once, although there was a slightly sleepy slur to the Emerald Radiance’s voice as she gave her assessment.

“It’s casual. They’re not going to, um, senrei shite—”

“Initiate,” Ebi supplied.

“—initiate you into the cult, if you’re worried about that. It’s just a big festival.”

Ebi crossed her arms, looking down at her mother.

“Why are you supporting this? You don’t like Hikanome, and you don’t like events.”

“I’m not.”

Alice looked hungry and a little impatient, though she did a commendable job of keeping her voice steady and reasonable.

“Amane is going anyway, he won’t be alone.” She turned to Amane for confirmation. “Ne? Iku?”

“O uchi ga tazunete kuru wa,” the Amethyst Radiance confirmed in her regular voice, slightly tightened as always by chronic pain. She was doing pretty well this morning, supposedly, but it was hard for me to gauge that beyond the fact that she seemed mobile and active.

“Her family are Hikanome members of pretty high standing,” Alice explained, turning back to me.

“Can’t blame them,” I muttered. “My grandparents found God.”

After Dad had died, was the unfinished part of that sentence. It was exceedingly common for direct relatives of flametouched—both inferno and successfully integrated bearer—to treat the whole affair with some level of spirituality or religion. Bring enough people like that together, and you got the new-age cults surrounding flamebearers. My grandmother had coped with the loss of her son with the belief that he had been taken by the Rapture, not slain horribly by forces beyond our understanding. It was why I had left to live on my own.

I wasn’t going to pick at that emotional scab out loud, nor had I opened up to Hina about it last night; our passionate whispers and admissions through clenched teeth had been decidedly future-facing, not reflections on our pasts.

“All of us have some family connected to them, but Amane’s are by far the closest, so she’ll be going as a social call regardless. They were—” she clicked and tapped a bunch on her laptop, “—yeah, they were happy with just two of us showing up last time. Yuuka? You don’t have classes that day, do you?”

She looked to Radiance Heliotrope—or Bloodstone—who put down her phone to count something on her fingers. Her right eye was shrouded by long bangs, the rest of her black hair up in twintails. I shuddered as I remembered the jade-and-ruby eye that lay behind. With the spoon in her other hand, she picked at her omurice, eating around the shockingly detailed, anime-style illustration of her that Hina had drawn on the omelette in ketchup. Somehow, the sapphire puppygirl had recreated every strap and gratuitous curve of her teammate’s mantled outfit. And there was indeed a lot of curve; in her much more casual nightwear of a tank top, the way she was leaning over gave me an uncomfortably clear line of sight down her cleavage. Were those real?

I didn’t want to incur a death-glare from that horrible eye, so I jerked my gaze back over to Hina as she brought over my own omurice. Heliotrope sighed, replying to her teammate in an Australian accent I was still quite surprised to hear come from the mouth of such a Japanese-looking girl.

“Hm. Me, Amane, a big barbie in the park, chaperoning our new monsterfucker to make life hard for the Peacies? Sure.”

—

Monsterfucker. She’d applied the label after an unexpected meeting in the early hours of the morning. We’d surprised each other—I’d been woken up by the thud-shhhhmmm of her jetbike landing on the roof and realized I was really thirsty, so after a few minutes of deciding whether I wanted to leave our cozy, warm nest, I’d disentangled myself from Hina and snuck out of her room to get my water bottle. I’d had the unfortunate luck of doing so just as Heliotrope was trudging down the hall, travel bag slung over her shoulder.

“Um—mornin’,” I’d blearily greeted her. In classic Ezzen fashion, it didn’t occur to me to inquire politely about her travels until the moment had already passed.

She’d just gaped at me.

“Aw, nah,” she’d groaned. “You’re sleeping with her?!”

“Er—no, we didn’t have…” Even in my half-awake state, I’d managed to muster some embarrassment. “We’re not dating.”

“Not dating. Even though she calls you ‘cutie’—yeah, I remember! You showed up three fuckin’ days ago, if my maths is right, and you’re already fucking?” She pushed past me toward the door of Hina’s room hanging ajar. “Kemono! You cunts are about to make a whole bunch more red, and if that keeps me up even a second longer—”

Hina appeared next to her and grabbed her wrist, yanking it off the doorknob.

“Go to bed, Yuu-chan. No, cutie and I didn’t have sex, but we are sleeping together, because sleeping together is awesome. Yell at us once you’ve gotten a few hours of sleep yourself, okay? You need it.”

“Oh, fuck off, you…ugh.”

Heliotrope had been so dead on her feet that this did indeed seem to smother the embers of her wrath, and she pushed Hina’s arm away with a grumble before finishing her voyage down the hall. She did expend the effort to cast us a death-glare before entering her room, though. Hina didn’t dignify that with a response and instead sidled up to me and led me back into her room, through the dark—back to bed, insofar as that word could describe her den. By now, the candles had all died, so only the even, soft, yellow glow of the city lights through the floor-to-ceiling windows illuminated the room. The contrast, yellow on blue, made her eyes somehow even more impossibly, gorgeously vivid.

“Sorry ‘bout her.”

“Tell me that’ll be the worst response any of them have.”

Yesterday’s discussion with Ai, and the implicit judgment of monstrousness she had levied upon Hina, came back to me. She’d equated her personality to the PCTF’s organized abductions—and in the same breath, also forgiven her and said it wasn’t her fault, so I wasn’t actually quite sure where the Emerald Radiance stood on her teammate.

“Mm. Should be! Don’t worry about it for now.”

Hina flopped back down onto her pile of bedding, unconcerned. I remained standing, looking over to her washroom.

“I’m not great at not worrying.”

“Practice makes perfect. Seriously, don’t let her get under your skin.”

How was I supposed to do that? For now, by changing the subject.

“Er—was going to get my water bottle. Thirsty.”

“Need your fluids, yep. Gotta lubricate.”

“You do know how that sounds?”

She hopped back to her feet. Now that she had been roused, it seemed that she was firing up with the same late-night energy of a cat or dog with a case of the zoomies.

“Cutie, we made out for like two hours. Yeah, I know how it sounds, I’m not that oblivious.”

She stalked past me silently, too-blue irises shining in the gold lights of the city. They glimmered as she stopped and turned to me, brushing a hand down my forearm to loosely take my fingers in hers.

“Is—I’m not being oblivious, right?”

I returned the gesture, holding her hand gently. Her skin was soft, and her relaxation hid her alluring, monstrous strength. Here in our little pocket of the night, she and I weren’t predator and prey. We were the same kind of creature, albeit in different stages of our metamorphosis. Ebi had called us mates, as a joke—I pushed down that direction of thoughts. I held onto the agreement we’d made.

“You’re not. You’re doing really well, Hina.”

“‘Kay. Thanks.” She squeezed my fingers, then averted her eyes. “Can I bite you?”

Yes.

“…Where?”

“Um—chest? Near your heart. I won’t break skin, I just kinda wanna…gnaw? Is that the word? Gnaaaaaw. Gnaaaw. Hehe,” she giggled giddily.

“Yeah, it is, that’s the word, you got it,” I rambled, heart rate rising, the turmoil of excitement beginning to bloom in my belly. “Yeah, I’d—I’d like that. But, um…” My hands, already pulling up the hem of my new, generic shirt, stopped at my belly button. “I’m…fuzzy.”

“I don’t mind!” She leaned in slightly, peering at me, examining me in sapphire. “But you do. Uh—hm. I could just zap the one spot. Not gonna do your whole front, that’d take like an hour or two, and you should shave first, but I can totally clear a couple square inches. How’s that sound?”

That was meandering awfully close to the element of our arrangement I had most strictly forbidden. Did it count? Possibly. In a literal sense, she was proposing to change me with pain, and that was a line I wasn’t willing to cross—not if it were my own Flame being hurt. But was I really crossing that line? She would be the one doing the magic, and the necessary pain was part of what she was. It was her sin, not mine. Not entirely faultless, perhaps, but buoyed by more conventional desire for further contact and skinship, in the face of that 3 AM temptation, aglow in the city lights, rationalizing was easy. I wanted to be smooth and sleek; one of the muttered, breathless admissions I’d whispered at her earlier in the night, before sleep had taken us.

“Yeah, um, I’d—yeah.”

She giggled again.

“Aww. You’re fuckin’ cute, cutie. Well—” she hummed. “That’s obvious, I guess.”

Then she closed the gap between us entirely, angling her head up and tugging me down by our joined hands into a soft kiss. I felt the rumble of her purr resonate up through her body and against my lips. I found myself again trying to imitate her, a kind of growl rising in my throat like I was trying to clear it. A rough, mucosal sound, not at all the soothingly feline rumble of her own anatomy. But she still enjoyed it, jerking slightly before wrapping her other hand around the back of my neck to pull me deeper, rising to her tiptoes and deepening the kiss, her own purring intensifying. When she came away from me, a huge, dopey smile was plastered across her face, fangs tinted a soft cream color by the yellow light.

“You’re not a very good kisser yet.”

“Uh. Sorry, I—”

“Which is fine ‘cause it means we can do so much practice!” She was bouncing a bit; her switch was flipped, somewhere between predatory mania and puppy excitement and surreal, unbelievable attraction. She took a deep breath, eyes lingering on my lips. “Okay, I really want to give you your zappies and nibbles, but I need to work off this energy first or…”

Or she wouldn’t trust herself. The tacit acknowledgment of her limitations, of her desire to prove she could control herself around me, made my chest all fuzzy. A cute grimace flickered across her face.

“Gonna do my rounds. Can get you a glass while I check on something. Cold or lukewarm?”

“Cold, please. Your…rounds?”

“My rounds!”

And she trotted out the door before I could reply, off to guarantee the security of her territory. Was that just the penthouse, or was she about to scour all twenty-three floors of Lighthouse Tower? While she was gone, to settle the pounding of my heart, I groped around for my phone where it had lay discarded.

Skychicken had finally replied to my apology.

—

My omurice stared up at me. The ketchup embellishments took the form of hearts and flames. Hina was making no attempt to hide her proclivities. Alice poured me a glass of juice from the pitcher and passed it to me—some mix involving oranges, from the look of it. It was hard to gauge the exact color under the warm lights of the common area; they bathed everything in cozy tones that warded away the winter’s chill outside. A sip confirmed that it was orange and mango—maybe some grapefruit in there too.

“Ebi, will he be well enough to go next week?”

Ebi didn’t respond to Alice, instead gently prodding Ai with a leg, who looked up at her, and they seemed to silently bicker for a moment. Ai rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand, then looked back to Alice.

“Don’t rush him.”

“I’m not!” Alice harrumphed. “I’m just cognizant of timetables.”

Ai turned that gaze to me.

“Ezzen: do you want to go to the rally?”

“Not sounding like I’ve got much choice, does it?”

She frowned. Alice winced, but covered it quickly.

“Of course you have a choice.”

I looked over her shoulder and wondered how much it cost to heat the enormous open floor plan of the penthouse. Maybe nothing at all; it seemed like a task for which the Frozen Flame’s natural heat emanations were well-suited, so perhaps it was just their own magic. Wait, she’d asked me a question. Choice?

“Do I? I’m, er, not as savvy as you all about the politics of the whole situation, so…I guess it depends on how much they’d shield us from the Peacies, if I’m following.”

Alice and Ai both sighed. Hina probably did as well, but it was buried under the sizzle of the pans and clanging of metalware and brief fwooshes of the kitchen faucet as she labored for our sakes in the kitchen. Ai spoke over Alice.

“Ignore that for a moment. Do you want to go?”

I took a moment to give it real thought. A big crowd of a religious persuasion I found a little unsavory? Potentially being outright put on display as a pawn between major VNT entities? Being outside in the cold all day?

“Not really.”

“Then don’t. Your comfort is our biggest priority right now.”

Alice accompanied that with a reassuring smile. It broke when Heliotrope elbowed her.

“He’d be more comfortable without the Peacies breathing down our necks. And Hikanome is our ticket for that.”

“Yuuka, no, it is his choice,” Alice maintained.

Heliotrope turned to me, leaning forward, elbows on the table.

“Way better to be in bed with Hikanome than the Peacies, long term.”

She examined my face, and I felt that horrifying, creeping sense again, the idea she was looking through me, under my clothes and meat and directly at my Flame. I attempted a protest.

“I’m not used to crowds.”

“What’s wrong? Nothing there will be scarier than that thing.” She pointed past me to Hina in the kitchen. “If you can get in bed with her, nothing there will spook you.”

I suppressed a sigh. For one, I didn’t appreciate the extent to which Heliotrope seemed willing to openly deride Hina—and neither did Alice, who was glaring at her goth teammate.

“He’s had a really hard few days, Yuuka. Come off it.”

“Amane’s had worse, and you don’t see her complaining.”

That sent the two of them bickering, slipping between English and Japanese. I felt like I couldn’t reveal exactly how little I wanted to do with public spaces full of people without explaining the situation I’d had with my stalker, and I knew that would lead to more yelling. I glanced over at Hina, my accomplice in the charade-by-omission, but she was studiously avoiding eye contact for the duplicity’s sake. I would have appreciated the support here, but left out to dry, I just waited for the two to settle down. Amane, seemingly now more clued in on the topic of conversation, prodded her draconic girlfriend with her prosthetic arm to shut her up, then glanced up at Ebi. She and the aqua-blue robot discussed something in rapid-fire and highly emotive Japanese—one of Ebi’s replies made Heliotrope fall silent as well and go back to eating, shamefaced.

“Amane thinks it’s rather unfair of Alice to be pushing you to meet with Hikanome’s head honchos while also citing your hardships,” Ebi explained. “Also, Heliotrope, you’re being a jerk. That one’s from both me and her.”

“Sorry, Ebi,” the Bloodstone Radiance muttered, finally relenting in her aggression.

A few moments of silence fell over the table. I found myself the one to break it.

“Er…thanks.”

Amane nodded in reply, rubbing Alice’s shoulder. The dragon looked grumpy, then caught herself.

“Um—apologies, myself. I’m getting impatient because I’m…hungry…”

The way she trailed off in embarrassment and sipped from her glass of juice with both hands was endearing, even familiar, and thus easy to forgive. Somehow, I found myself in the conversational pilot seat, and now that Amane had entered the picture, I felt her role in all this could use some clarification.

“Your family are members? Of Hikanome?”

I was a little worried we’d run into a language barrier problem, but she seemed to get it fine, and directed her reply up at Ebi, who spoke in her stead again. You couldn’t ask for a better real-time interpreter; she took on an approximation of Amane’s voice as it would sound in a Japanese accent around the strength of Ai’s and free of the tightness of chronic pain.

“Parents and brother. It was a big upward move for our family.”

“So…they’re good people?”

Amane frowned.

“Of course.” She conferred with the others for a moment, a snappy back-and-forth that circled the table and returned to her. “Wait, do you mean my family, or Hikanome as a whole?”

“Er—Hikanome. I didn’t mean to insult your family,” I added hastily.

The table fell silent again. This was why I wasn’t to be trusted with control of the conversation. Alice’s tail thumped.

“They are now,” she ventured.

“Ah. Suga…hara? Did he…do this to you?”

Ebi eyed me as she interpreted that for Amane. Alice opened her mouth, then paused, glancing over at Amane. Ai grimaced, but didn’t volunteer. The black-haired girl nodded, less hesitant about this than her teammates. They seemed nervous to weigh in on this topic in her stead, so she took point, still speaking through Ebi.

“Sugawara, and yes, indirectly. Sounds like you could use a history lesson.”

—

[Direct Message] skychicken: hey ez sorry it took me a couple days to get around to this

skychicken: apology accepted, i get why you were upset, its been a really fucked up few days

skychicken: you holding up okay?

Laying in Radiance Sapphire’s blanket-bed, trying to quell the jittery nerves that anticipated what we’d do when she returned, it was easier to distract myself from what I had done yesterday. The murder still weighed heavily on me, of course, and if I let my thoughts wander too long they’d inevitably return to that grisly sight of the final moments of a person’s life abstracted down to those few pixels, but the guilt was easier to dispel with Hina’s agreement that she’d stop me next time. She was strong enough and direct enough to cut through it all.

ezzen: I’m alright, all things considered. Long day yesterday, did paperwork with Opal, and Sapphire took me shopping.

skychicken: oh youre up, thought youd get to that when you woke up

skychicken: isnt it like 3am for you

skychicken: late even for you

ezzen: Still adjusting to the time difference.

Technically true.

skychicken: ah yeah that tracks

skychicken: shopping huh

skychicken: interrupted by the rig stuff?

ezzen: Sapphire freaked out and took me back, but nothing really came of it.

Aside from the people we’d killed together.

skychicken: hina been alright to you?

“Hina?” First name? It made sense he knew her personally; he’d called her to bail me out in the first place, after all, but I wasn’t sure of their relationship beyond that.

ezzen: She’s been pretty good. Nicer than first impressions.

ezzen: Not gonna tell me how you know her?

skychicken: answering that would require revealing some personal stuff

skychicken: …which i’d say you’ve earned with everything, and i feel bad for keeping you in the dark

skychicken: to start with, yes, i know what shes like, teeth and all

ezzen: So you knew what you were getting me into.

skychicken: ill bite

skychicken: what exactly have i gotten you into?

Could I admit this to him? I’d previously decided I trusted his confidentiality; plus, he was one of the handful of people other than Star to whom I’d admitted my Vaetna dysphoria.

ezzen: We’re…dating? Maybe? Not sure about labels yet.

ezzen: But we’ve been physical.

Wow, did that feel weird to say. Good, but weird.

skychicken: damn okay, happy for you

skychicken: confession:

skychicken: i knew you’d be into each other

skychicken: or suspected as much, at any rate

skychicken: (now would be an okay time to rescind your apology, i get it)

ezzen: Did you SET US UP?

No other way to ask. Had I wound up here instead of the Spire solely because Sky had thought it would be funny for me to get with Hina?

skychicken: lucky bonus?

skychicken: ez i say this with love but

skychicken: you’re a bottom. everyone knows you’re a bottom

skychicken: yeah, i figured you’d be compatible with hina, eventually. once stuff settled down a bit

skychicken: got boundaries, all that? healthy relationship stuff? i can yell at her if shes being a shit

ezzen: yeah

That was pretty telling.

ezzen: Thanks, I guess? Still working it out

ezzen: But don’t dodge the question.

ezzen: Did you set us up?

skychicken: no, not in that sense, she really was just the best string i could pull in that moment

skychicken: i contacted her pretty much the moment you told us what had happened to you

The reiteration that this hadn’t all been planned out, that there really just had been some serendipity to all this, made me feel better.

ezzen: Okay, I buy that. How DO you know each other?

skychicken: ah fuck here we go

skychicken: do i have your confidentiality?

ezzen: of course

skychicken: you promise? this is serious and it’ll change the way you see me

skychicken: absolutely sure you want to know?

ezzen: You’re only making me more curious, sky

It took him a minute to respond, the little icon blipping to indicate that he was typing. I rolled over onto my other side and waited, noting distantly that this pillow carried a hint of the same floral scent as Hina’s hair, barely detectable under the incense. I shut my eyes and took a secret sniff—she could never know that I did that, or I’d never hear the end of it. I reopened my eyes to see Sky’s message.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

skychicken: i’m a flamebearer

“Oh.”

—

Once Amane broached the topic, she seemed comfortable to hand the actual explanation back to Alice, instead digging into her own omurice.

“Sugawara founded Hikanome, along with three other flamebearers. I won’t mince words: until three years ago, they were a doomsday cult. Lots of blood magic, and they made a significant portion of their money and connections doing…human trafficking, supplying flamebearer flesh across Asia. And beyond.”

The pieces were coming together. I looked at Amane again with dread. She met my gaze and poked Alice with a sort of “get on with it” attitude.

“That’s to say…they were how Amane ended up with the PCTF.”

Of course.

“Because her family are part of the—” Me and my stupid mouth, already forgetting that not half a minute ago Amane had hinted it wasn’t their fault. “Sorry.”

“They didn’t know,” Heliotrope asserted gravely. “We checked.”

Ai sipped her coffee. When I’d been coming down the stairs, I’d seen her spike it with Red Bull. Did that work? She fixed an accusatory glare at Heliotrope, some of the tiredness returning to her face.

“Alice and I checked. You and Hina…”

“They were monsters.”

Hina echoed the sentiment as she came back over.

“Yep, so we’re cool now. If it makes you feel better, most of them killed each other. Big ‘splodey inferno.”

“Which gave you plausible deniability,” I inferred. I hated going down this line of reasoning, but I couldn’t allow myself to miss the mortal element in their work again.

“Mhm.”

She passed a double portion to Alice, who accepted it almost desperately and immediately dug in, eating as fast as she could without looking completely deranged. Heliotrope was wearing a smug not-quite-grin, which had me a little puzzled. If she and Hina largely agreed on the principle of violence, why did the former seem to dislike the latter so much? Aside from the obvious, at any rate.

Amane pushed past the dark topic, through Ebi again.

“I’m not proud of that part. It had to be done, but…anyway, the parts of Hikanome that remain are good people, I swear. I don’t agree with their—” she coughed. All three of her teammates plus Ebi were all immediately on her, and she waved them away hurriedly as she rubbed her chest. She poked Ebi’s thigh, who resumed interpreting, the slightly exasperated expression on her digital face not betrayed in the tone of ‘her’ voice. “—their beliefs, but they’ve been really good to me and my parents.”

“I believe you,” I said hastily, feeling like I’d bungled this interaction somewhat. Did her parents know the full story? It seemed tactless to ask.

Alice broke in awkwardly, clearly wanting to hurry this along. She said something apologetic to Amane, who sighed and returned to eating in her slow, careful way. Alice turned back to me.

“Uh—anyway, the timeline: Blue Spark Incident, Hikanome sort of imploded and had a schism, Sugawara went to prison.” She listed the events on her fingers. “Now they’re under a new name, new doctrine. Same flamebearers other than him, though.”

“New name? That’d be Sun’s Blessing?”

Ebi sighed, speaking for herself now.

“No, it’s a bit of a clusterfuck. They used to be Hikari no Megumi; now they’re Hi kara no Megumi.” She tossed up a hologram to show the names spelled out, which only sort of helped me get it. I could see the different kanji, at least. “Still Hikanome, but switching from ‘light’ to ‘sun’ helped fix their branding, pushed it away from Sugawara’s focus on the Flame.”

“Huh.”

“They’re chill now!” Hina declared, trotting away toward the kitchen again.

Alice nodded in her direction.

“‘Chill’ enough that we’d feel safe sending you next week along with Amane and at least one of the rest of us, at any rate. That’s my main point,” Alice summarized. “Again, your call, Ai is right, but…the PCTF are coming. I’m expecting some official diplomatic proceedings to start sometime in the next forty-eight hours, and if we’re going to shelter under Hikanome’s wing, I’d rather have them on the same page as us sooner than later.”

I raised my hand once more.

“Um, didn’t they work with the PCTF?” I still wasn’t quite clear on that. Would they really take our side?

Alice was stopped from answering by a poke in the side from Amane’s robot hand. She explained via Ebi.

“It was through a series of intermediaries. I changed hands between…at least two different groups other than Hikanome, and the ones I actually ended up with are technically private military, not the PCTF proper. Um—were private military, I should say.” She spared a meaningful glance in Hina’s direction. “Internally, all those elements got either purged or followed Sugawara in the schism, and what exactly happened isn’t quite public knowledge. But they did successfully reform, and these days they’re a much more conventional…well, still distinctly culty, but no more doomsaying, no more blood magic, and no more human trafficking.”

Maybe this was an editorial choice by Ebi, but her tone regarding her own situation was remarkably lighter than the gravity with which her teammates always discussed the matter. She was serious, to be sure, but it was matter-of-fact—in much the same way I spoke about Dad, actually.

“We checked,” Heliotrope repeated.

“So, yes, they’d help shield us from Peacie interest if we appease them by having you show up on Saturday,” Alice summarized.

It was in everybody’s best interest for me to go. It protected Todai from being under cross-pressures from Hikanome and the Peacies. How bad could it be, really?

“Um, would I have responsibilities if I went? How much publicity would there be? It’d…make my face public, wouldn’t it?”

“All good questions,” Alice conceded. “It…depends on what exactly they want. They probably do want you to go public, and actually I’d guess that they want you as unassociated with us as possible. If they can sell you in the public eye as a sort of floating flamebearer, rather than explicitly a Todai member, it gives them more influence over your image.” She caught herself, conscious of how chessmaster-y she was coming off, waving her hands hurriedly. “I know you don’t like that, so…we can push back on that part. Just meeting with the leaders, maybe.”

“Nope. Veto,” declared Hina, returning to pass a double portion to Alice. “Sugawara might be put away, but I don’t want cutie to meet Miyoko without me there.”

“Worried she’ll steal your boytoy?”

Heliotrope’s snark was ineffectual. Hina just looked at her blankly.

“No, I wanna see if she’s down for a threesome.”

—

ezzen: WHAT

skychicken: flametouched 2017

skychicken: can’t give too many details, if you dig you can probably trace me

skychicken: the important thing is that i met hina when todai were on the trail for amethyst

Which would have been earlier in Hina’s metamorphosis, noted some part of my brain.

ezzen: Wait, so, the forum???

skychicken: magic discussion needed a neutral nexus for online discussion outside of the pctf’s grip on data in the us/eu

skychicken: you already know that part, ofc, but now you know how im able to maintain that neutrality

skychicken: im positioned to resist intimidation, and its way more of a difference than i could make doing vnt work

“Hey, cutie. Coast’s clear.”

“Um, hey.”

Hina passed me the promised glass of cool water, and I sipped from it gratefully. Crisp and refreshing, it helped me stabilize after the revelation Sky had just laid upon me. The water caught the low light of the room, casting wavy patterns onto the wall behind it when I put it down on the small table that functioned as the nightstand.

“Your heart’s up.”

“What are you, Ebi?”

“Sorry.” She shrank. “Too invasive? Still calibrating.”

“Um…no. I don’t mind. It’s—” I held up my phone. “Our ‘mutual friend’ was explaining how you know each other. I didn’t know he was a flamebearer.”

Hina purred, silently lowering herself to lay next to me, sapphire eyes glinting.

“He is. You jealous?”

“What about?”

Her eyebrows went up as she seemed to put something together, a playful smirk on her lips. I rather wanted to kiss her.

“Oh. He hasn’t talked about it yet?”

“…no? I’m assuming…something about your transformation?”

That was a bit of an overshare on my own part, to be honest, veering a little too close to my own deep, dark desires when it came to her mutations. But Hina literally waved the topic away, swatting her hand in the small space between our faces.

“Ask him later. Right now, you’re mine.” She paused, catching herself before the growled purr could be realized in physical contact. “Uh. Unless you want to back out. Which I’m giving you the opportunity to do. Now. If you want.”

How on Earth could I have said no to her? Desire was electrifying me, flooding every muscle in my body, the desire to run and stalk and pounce and fly under the open sky, the desire for her to embrace me and ply me with her strange magicks and stranger affections. I inhaled a jittery breath, lingering incense filling my throat, a smell I’d always associate with her.

“All yours.” I was rather proud of my delivery, the flirtatious honesty—but of course, I couldn’t just leave the moment there. “Is—you get what I mean by that? In the limited context of our agreement and what we want and the boundaries we’ve previously—”

Thankfully, she shut me up in exactly the way I’d been hoping. Her lips only lingered on mine a few moments before drifting down to my chin and then to the right side of my jaw, where I felt those sharp, sharp teeth graze my skin. Her breath tickled my cheek, distracting me from the way her hands were coming up. Of course, once her fingertips grazed my waist and began to raise my shirt, that became all I could think about, each caressing tug of fabric causing a new wave of anticipation to crest in my belly. She stopped once the body of the shirt was scrunched up to my chest.

“Take it off before I shred it.”

I did just that, in a hurry. I was going to just discard the garment, but Hina practically snatched it from me to take a deep, huffing sniff. She freed a hand from clutching it to wave me down into the ‘bed’.

“Get comfy,” she muffled through the bunched fabric. “Need a minute.”

She took her minute as I lay down, taking her time to satisfy whatever primal instincts demanded that she engage in this ritual of scent. I dared to ask.

“What do you smell?”

“You, ashes, blood.”

“All that from…a few hours of me wearing it?” Somebody had deposited my shopping bags in my room while I had been down in the lab with Ai, and I’d changed into one of my new, baggy shirts to help distance myself from the events of the day. Ashes and blood? Really? “It’s, um, taken my scent?”

“Sure has.”

I shuddered, and those blue eyes glowing at me in the darkness narrowed in satisfaction. Without ceremony, she reached over her head and pulled off her shirt in one motion. Suddenly, I was met with an eyeful of modest but authentic magical girl boob in the dim light. I got a precious few seconds of watching her abs and shoulders flex and ripple with enhanced, lithe musculature as she dumped the top and reached over her head again. Then the wonderful sight was covered by my shirt, hanging huge and loose from her small frame like a dark curtain, totally obscuring all the curves and sculpted angles of her figure except for a minor outward curve on her chest. Maybe it was the fact that it was my shirt, or maybe it was how the hem hung so low that her shorts vanished and I could only see bare thighs, or maybe it was her messed-up hair, but the new look was almost as titillating as the exposure had been.

“Okay, ready.”

“Uh.”

My heart had more or less stopped at this point. It shuddered back into motion as she came over and knelt at my side. I hoped the darkness hid how red the display had caused me to turn, mind stuck replaying those few moments of her exposed figure and tantalizingly soft flesh—but I suspected she could see me just fine, which was only amplifying my embarrassment. She was purring again—not the chainsaw, motorboat growl of before, just a quiet rumbly hum that nonetheless filled my ears in the quiet of the night. Her fingers traced up from my belly to my chest, leaving searing hot trails of sensitivity.

“Is—how are you doing that? What’s the chain?”

“Hm? Cutie, I’m not using any magic.”

I discovered it was possible to turn even redder. She rested her palm on the left side of my chest, just below the nipple, running her fingers through the chest hair I hated so much.

“Here’s good. Ready?”

“You’re just—zap? Like before?” Had it really only been yesterday morning?

“Mhm! Quick and easy.”

“Alright. Um—count me in?”

“I’m not Ebi.”

My skin screamed. Every pore was torn open, a hundred concentrated bee stings, a splash of molten metal igniting white-hot agony. All other sensations vanished, and the pain covered me, because ‘me’ was only that spot on my chest, consumed by pain. Something whispered.

Raze.

And then it was over. The searing pain fell away, replaced by an acute but far more tolerable sting. As my other senses returned, I realized Hina was giggling. I raised my head slightly to look at her, doubled over above me, hair grazing my belly from her hung head.

“What?”

“I heard it! That was so cool! Did you hear it?”

“Y—yeah. ‘Raze.’ Um—fuckin’ ow—” I sat up a bit, grateful it was too dark to see what exactly had happened to the cleared skin. At least it didn’t smell burned or acrid, which boded well. “Did—does that mean you used my Flame?”

“Dunno! But it worked!”

She turned, eyes glinting sapphire, and pounced.

—

Despite those midnight antics, Hina’s proposal of a threesome nonetheless sent all my thoughts to a grinding halt. She saw my reaction and grinned.

“Kidding!”

“About which part,” mused Heliotrope. “Sounds like you.”

“I mean…she’s pretty hot. And so is Ez! She’s turned me down before, but maybe with a cutie like him in the mix—”

“Quit it, you two. We’re not done with the education,” Alice groused.

She turned around her laptop screen. She’d crammed three Wikipedia articles next to one another to show three faces. I was not good with faces, and was already envisioning a version of events where I came face-to-face with one of these three and mixed up the names, a diplomatic fumble that would demolish the goodwill between Todai and Hikanome and set the bloodhounds of the PCTF upon us. My fingers twitched to draw my phone.

“Uh, should I be taking notes?”

“We’ll keep it simple, don’t worry.”

She pointed at the first, a balding man with a narrow face and thin eyebrows. His mouth was pursed as though trying to decide how to address a tough line of questioning. Obviously, this was not the one Hina had meant. Despite Amane’s surprisingly light tone earlier, her expression had turned a bit stony upon seeing the countenance.

“This is Kimura. He founded Hikanome alongside Sugawara.” That explained Amane’s reaction, which Alice acknowledged by turning the laptop slightly. “Not particularly vile, but went along with most of what Sugawara was doing without much resistance.”

“Coward,” Heliotrope summarized. “Shoulda been tossed with him.”

“But he wasn’t,” Alice continued. “He’s still the administrative head,” she clarified for my benefit.

“Creeps me out,” the twin-tailed girl countered. “He knew what was going on.”

“The court found otherwise. Assume goodness, Yuuka-chan,” Ai chided.

Something in how she said that, and the fact that Heliotrope then demurred to her older teammate, signaled a hierarchy between the two. They were the two still involved in academia—as mentor and student, even, though not in the same discipline as far as I understood—so perhaps there was something there. Where did that put Ebi, exactly?

Alice took advantage of the awkward moment of silence to shovel some more ketchup-loaded egg and rice into her mouth, then cleared her throat, obviously not wanting to linger on this.

“Um, anyway, Kimura is the least dangerous of the three. Next is Hongo.”

She made to indicate the next picture, but I meekly raised my hand first. She paused, pursed her lips, and gestured to me.

“Dangerous? You said the cult’s rebranded, cut out the bad parts.”

“We’re all dangerous.”

By way of that brief explanation—equal parts revelatory and meaningless—she indicated the middle picture, a man not much older than us. His hair was cut to a fade on the sides and gelled up on top. He had wide cheekbones and an easy smile. I spared a glance at Ai, a silent request for further explanation, and she subtly swept her hand on the table. Later. Alice was talking.

“Hongo is their ambassador when interfacing with other VNT groups. Not a fighter,” she clarified, forestalling my next question. “Any of us could kick his butt, but that’s not his job; it’s all soft power. Also, he’s the brother of the blood mage responsible for the Blue Spark Incident. Ai and Ebi saved her life, so of the three, Hongo is the warmest toward us on a personal basis.”

“She’s alive?”

I didn’t really know the details of the incident, but my impression was that she’d died from her own blood magic in the opening stages, and the bulk of the damage of the incident itself had been from fighting what she’d inadvertently summoned.

“Barely. Permanently hospitalized—not our doing, just the sanguimancy. Anyway, he never liked Sugawara to start with and was pretty instrumental in separating their reputation from his clique when the schism happened. Smoothed things over with us, that sort of thing. Between all that, if we want to push back on their leverage over us, he’s the easiest to work with.”

Hina leaned all the way forward to rest her chin on the table. As I was growing accustomed, she hadn’t made any food for herself.

“You should mention the thing.”

Alice made a disgusted sound.

“Ugh. Fine. This probably won’t be relevant to you, but he keeps proposing to me.”

I blinked.

“Like, marriage?”

“Like, marriage.”

“Why?”

“He likes the tail,” Heliotrope provided.

“He likes the tail,” Alice confirmed.

“He likes the tail!” Hina giggled.

I found that I sort of understood the appeal. The extra limb was meticulously cared-for, despite Alice’s stated unhappiness with it, and it really did make the Opal Radiance cut a unique figure. Some lizard-brain part of my psychology could appreciate its bulk as an appealing element in its own right. On the other hand—

“So he wants you for your body.”

I recoiled immediately after saying that, worried it was too blunt, or would inspire a fresh wave of discomfort with my presence, but Ebi confirmed the idea with a digital snort.

“Bingo. But that’s sorta flamebearer romance, I hear.”

Amane put in a giggly comment of her own that made Ebi and Ai snicker, although the latter covered her mouth. This was the most animated I’d seen the Amethyst Radiance outside of her mantle, and she brought an infectiously bubbly energy to the table, even through the language barrier. I found myself grinning along with the others. So was Heliotrope, and it was enough to undercut some, but not all, of the bile in her comment:

“Surrounded by monsterfuckers, I swear.”

—

Hina was very physical in her gnawing affections. She kissed and licked the patch of cleared skin, purrs intensifying every time I squirmed against the stinging sensation or twitched at the hot pulses of her breath rolling across my chest. When she finally grazed the area with her teeth, it was only after climbing over me and rubbing her hands up and down my shoulders. My shirt stretched taut over her figure, each of her curves vivid against my torso. She was straddling one of my thighs, but mercifully not grinding on me; I thought I’d explode if she did that, and not in the sexual way.

After a few minutes of gluttonously indulging herself with different angles of chomping at the underside of my pec, she raised her head and directed those sapphire eyes at me.

“We’re not telling Alice.”

“Uh?”

“About the person you saw.”

“I thought we already agreed on this.”

“Just checking!”

“Why are you bringing it up now? Go back to—” I waved my hand around my chest. “Me. I like that.”

“Heh. Selfish! I like you too, cutie.”

I flinched just a tiny bit at being called selfish, one of those words that Ai seemed to reserve as a strong pejorative for Hina. But right now, I was happy to share the label with her, and we basked in the moment of affectionate honesty—then I shook it off.

“Um, seriously, why bring it up?”

“Her plate’s full. I do want to check it out, figure out who it was, but we’re gonna do that on our own time. I’ll show you how to hunt.”

“O…kay.” That sounded pretty nice, right at this moment, as we indulged our instincts together. Her reasoning seemed a little flimsy, but I could let it slide; she knew Alice better than me. “What does that entail, exactly?”

“Well…it’s easier if Yuuka would help us. By a lot.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“Not…the biggest fan of you, is she?”

“Nope.”

“Why’s that?”

“Lots of reasons,” she chuckled. “But when it comes to you specifically? Ask our mutual friend.”

“Huh?”

She retrieved my phone for me. It had lain abandoned for the last few minutes as Hina had done her thing—even the act of receiving her affections took all of my attention, no room for distractions. What was she getting at?

The screen almost blinded me, even at the lowest brightness and with the chatroom set to dark mode. I had become so accustomed to the hazy darkness that the faceful of light forced me to squint my eyes to narrow slits, holding the eye-burning rectangle away from my face.

ezzen: Hina’s making some insinuations about you. Something about why Heliotrope doesn’t like her.

skychicken: heh

skychicken: ok, here’s the other shoe

skychicken: a lot of hina’s biggest mutations happened while we were dating

Hina had squirmed up my side to peer at the screen with me. I turned my head to look at her incredulously.

“He’s your ex?”

“Mhm.” She gave me a big, toothy grin. “Don’t be jealous, cutie.”

The worst part was that I was. Rationally, I knew that was stupid, and yet I couldn’t help but feel some possessiveness for my partner of one night. The feeling was doubly stupid given that I hadn’t felt it when I’d seen her show how close she was with her teammates—so was it just because Sky was a guy? Was I that shallow and sexist? Also, since Sky was one of my better friends, I knew exactly how inaccurate it was to expect he’d at all try to twist the knife of this revelation. But I still needed a minute to master the sense of betrayal and jealousy.

“Hey, you’re spiraling, I can see you spiraling, quit it.”

“Sorry, I’m—I don’t know what it is. I’m feeling dumb.”

“For being jealous?”

“Uh. I guess? We don’t…I shouldn’t be jealous, because that’s just…not what we’re doing here.”

“You mean we’re not a couple?”

“Yeah. This is like—exchange. Transactional. I’ve only known you for a couple days.”

“Mm.” She shifted against me. “We want each other.”

“That’s not…love.”

“Doesn’t have to be!”

“So you…want me for my body, and you’re fine leaving it there? Was it like that with Sky?”

“I didn’t say I was fine with leaving it there, cutie. It’s just a start point.”

“Um—okay, fine, sure.” I wanted her to want me, so I went along with that. I was afraid of confronting anything that might make her recoil and back off. “Any, um, other context I should know about? Does Heliotrope really just not like me because of Sky?”

“She just…thinks I’m gross.” Hina sounded sad. “I was worried you’d wind up thinking that too.”

ezzen: So the breakup was…bad?

skychicken: actually the breakup was fine, but her team kinda soured on the whole relationship by the end

“And you still came on as strong as you did?” I immediately walked that back. “Uh…I didn’t mean it that harshly. Blind spots, yeah?”

“Only because—because I thought you’d like it! And I was right, you do, and that makes me so so happy! But—yeah, I fucked up, I know. I don’t wanna talk about this. I wanna just enjoy each other.”

And I wanted that too, desperately, so I let that line of conversation die where it lay. Irresponsible, but—it was still the first night of our relationship, whatever exactly that meant. I didn’t want to keep rushing through things, going headlong into more emotions I was afraid to name. This was surreal enough as it was, the idea that a supernatural smokeshow like her would be so attracted to me. It still almost felt like a bad prank.

“What, um—why me?”

“I toldya when we met.”

I picked up my phone again, tilting it away so she wouldn’t be able to see it, typing slowly with my good hand.

ezzen: How much did you tell her about me?

skychicken: like, private stuff between us?

ezzen: Yeah. The Vaetna stuff.

ezzen: and what do you MEAN im a BOTTOM

I didn’t actually send that last one; I typed it out and deleted it. That ship had already sailed, signified by the stinging ache on my chest.

skychicken: i filled her in on some of that after she picked you up

skychicken: todai are rather experts on the transhumanism thing, you may have noticed

“Cutie, I can still read it in your eyes.”

“Then stop looking!”

ezzen: That’s PRIVATE, Sky.

ezzen: You picked up that sort of boundary-crossing from her?

skychicken: this is your chance to become more

skychicken: after all the years you’ve spent being mopey and dysphoric about the vaetna, don’t tell me you’re about to back out of that because you’re offended at me pulling the string that was available to try and help you with that

skychicken: yes, i did this for you AND for her. but thats not the same as setting you up romantically

ezzen: If you’ve had these contacts for so long, and the personal connections to her, why not try to help me with it years ago?

ezzen: Instead of holding out on me.

skychicken: you weren’t a flamebearer

skychicken: if there was a way to get those kinds of changes without having a flame of your own, trust me, i would have tried to help you

skychicken: but there’s only so much i can do for my friends who aren’t like us, even you

skychicken: and only so much i can tell you

skychicken: i KNOW you understand that much, if only because you said alice has hit you over the head with it at least once

I made an effort to smother my anger. I did understand the importance of being picky about who you revealed what to, now more than ever.

ezzen: Fine, thanks, fair enough

ezzen: And uh

ezzen: Thanks for trusting me now, I guess.

ezzen: I do appreciate what you’ve done for me, between it all.

ezzen: Still friends?

skychicken: cousins, now

Uh. The Radiances had referred to Holton, that flamebearer on the rig, with the same term, but…

ezzen: ew ew nooooooo

ezzen: That makes my thing with Hina sound incestuous!

skychicken: oops

As long as I had him on the line—I had an idea.

“Uh, Hina? Could Sky help us with my, er, stalker?”

“Like, figuring out who it was?”

“Yeah.”

“Prolly not. Could ask, though.”

ezzen: Uh, can I seek some flamebearer-specific advice

skychicken: shoot

ezzen: I got sorta ambushed by somebody we think was a flamebearer

ezzen: Kinda goth-looking, Japanese (?) girl around Hina’s age

ezzen: I thought it was her at first, just disguised (did she do that with you too?) but the eyes were wrong

ezzen: Ring any bells?

skychicken: at first blush?

skychicken: sounds like yuuka to me

I frowned, angling the phone back toward Hina. I hadn’t seen a resemblance, but then—I also hadn’t actively been comparing the two. Would she do that?

“Thoughts?”

“Uh…I don’t think her eye works like that. I think. And Yuuka’s goth, but you saw for yourself, not like what you described. How big were her boobs?”

“Really?”

“I mean, you’ve seen those things. I don’t know why she’d make hers smaller. ‘Specially if she thought she wouldn’t be seen anyway. She’s proud of them, y’know.”

I would be too, if I were a girl. I elected not to speak that thought out loud.

“Okay, but—she didn’t sound Australian.”

“Ah, yeah, then there goes that theory. Then who the heck?” Hina wondered.

“Why are you looking at me? I’ve been here three days, not exactly a local expert.”

“You’re just easy to look at.”

—

Alice’s reaction to Heliotrope using the word “monsterfucker” again set her off. Her tail thrashed as she put her hands on the table.

“I don’t like that word.”

“Ah, here she goes,” Heliotrope grumbled. “Gonna lecture me on my manners?”

“If you insist on insinuating that I’m a monster, then yes.”

“Come off it, Acchan, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” She glanced at Amane. “You’re not a monster, and Amane’s not…you’re still a person! Obviously!”

“Yes, I’m fully aware you really meant to insult Hina. And Ezzen by association. Why try to alienate him like that?”

“Yuuka-chan,” Ai warned, but it was too late.

“—I’m just calling it like I see it! You agree with me too, Ai, don’t act like you don’t. Alice, if you’re not willing to let Hikanome at him so they’ll help get the Peacies off our backs, what is the plan? Because as much as I’d fucking love to give them what they deserve, if they want him as bad as that other guy, we will lose. Ma—ke—ru. And believe me when I say that, because I know. We don’t fight wars, deshou?”

Could she see that far forward? That wasn’t the impression I’d gotten, but the certainty in her voice was worrying. Hina leaned over the table herself, apparently not put off by the simmering dislike in the air.

“It’s none of your business who I sleep with, Yuuka.”

“It is, if you’re bringing a boy into our apartment while I’m not even there to weigh in.”

That stung, hitting on the exact fears I’d had when Alice had first pitched this arrangement. I shrank, and that’s what got Alice really mad. The air temperature began to rise, a tell-tale sign of Alice’s mood souring.

“Yuuka. He’s staying. He’s got nowhere else to go! And—I’ve made it very clear to Hina what’ll happen if she causes more problems. But I didn’t think I’d have to worry about you being hostile.”

“Really? You couldn’t see how this would have pissed me off? A second one of those things, but this one’s a boy? Acchan, that’s on you.”

The dehumanizing label for Hina and myself—as well as my rising indignance at how much of a deal she was making of my gender—finally got me mad enough to interject.

“Hey!”

At the same time, and much more effectively, Amane broke in and admonished them in Japanese, leaning over the table. Heliotrope and Alice both flinched. The heat dissipated. Ai sighed, muttering what sounded like gratitude to Amane before raising her voice back to speaking levels.

“We have the PCTF showing up in maybe the next few days, and we’re fighting with each other?”

“Yes, Amane’s right, we should be working the problem,” Alice muttered, before raising her voice again in the authoritative voice she’d used when she first met me. “Yuuka, that’s enough. Bicker with Hina all you like, but be nice to Ezzen. Are we clear?”

The goth rolled her eyes petulantly.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Ebi snickered.

“You don’t pull that off as well as me.”

That defused the tension the rest of the way. I sat back, mollified, as Alice pointed at the third face on her laptop screen.

“Back to it: this is Miyoko. The light-blessed child. Well, not a child; she’s our age, but it’s all in the title: High Priestess.” There was some annoyance in her voice. “Magically powerful, but no expertise in glyphcraft or physical mutations, so she’s a little anomalous.”

“You mean she doesn’t use her Flame?”

“Oh, she uses it, alright. But absolutely no regard for ripple.”

“She uses faith,” Ai explained. “From her…ugh. Shinja? Believers?”

“Followers,” Hina provided.

“Oh, that makes sense. Yes, from her followers. For miracles.”

“Miracles. How’s that different from…?”

“From our magic? It isn’t,” she confirmed. “It’s ridiculous, and annoying, because it makes them treat us like saints.”

“Mahou shoujo do have a bit of a divinely ordained bent,” Alice admitted, “but it’s not like that. If anything, we usually wind up killing gods, not serving them. But I won’t get into all the philosophizing here—point is, that’s the three. Hikanome has two more flamebearers, but they’re auxiliary, not part of the leadership in the same way.”

“Um, thanks. For explaining.”

Hina nudged me slightly, flicking her sapphires from me to the face on the screen and back. Was that my stalker? Can’t tell, I tried to transmit to her through the eye contact. Our encounter had been too brief. She certainly wasn’t dressed the same way in the photo, all robes, but—it was plausible, maybe. That would really only raise more questions, though. To confirm one way or the other, I’d need to meet her face to face…or enlist Heliotrope, as Hina had said. The former almost sounded preferable.

Alice looked at me hopefully.

“So…now that you have a better idea of what you’d be walking into, would you go next week? For goodwill?”

“I…” The PCTF were indeed looming. “I don’t…”

Hina nudged me again. What did that mean? Seeing that I wasn’t picking up whatever the subtle message was supposed to be, she spoke up.

“Don’t be pushy, Alice. You said it yourself, he’s had a crazy few days.”

Alice suppressed a sigh.

“I know, I know, but with Hikanome actively reaching out to us, it feels like it’d be a waste to squander that chance.”

“I…okay, I have an answer,” I decided. “Being that I…don’t have an answer. I need a few days. You can swing that, right? I don’t actually have to decide right now, do I?”

“Yeah, fine by me,” Hina agreed. Ai nodded as well.

“I suppose you don’t,” Alice seemed a bit antsy, tail swishing twitchily on the carpet. “But like I said, we are on a bit of a timer, and earlier is better, so—”

“Ii kagen ni shite yo,” Amane cut in, holding up a hand to stop Ebi from interpreting for her. She surprised me by switching to English, a bit halting but determined to make sure I got the message as well. “Don’t push. Let him choose.”