The instant Hikari voiced her agreement, Tokiko's eyes lit up with joy.

Not that she herself was aware of this; since she was too busy thinking things like [i]ugh, why did I ask her that, she's obviously just going to be a pain in the ass later on,[/i] and trying her best to keep her expression serious and ignore how elated she actually felt. 

Maybe that same feeling was why she didn't try to mock or tease as Hikari stumbled her way through another basic essential for magical girls. Turning back was easy, about as simple and painless as could be. Tokiko, though, hated it every time, that feeling of stepping out of her manic magical girl persona and turning back into that weird, awkward teenager who wasn't worth the air she breathed. [i]But if she's turning back, and we're doing the phone thing, it might be weird if I stayed like this... fine, I'll get it over with.[/i]

She stretched out a hand to one side, and her Archetype dutifully handed back the twisted taser device she'd used in the fight before. As it dropped into Tokiko's palm, the strange machine came apart once again, reconstructing itself in its original, mundane form. 

Hikari's bag had vanished as part of her magical girl transformation, but the same rule didn't apply to Tokiko— a quirk of her Concept, probably, since her power worked by enhancing non-magical devices. As it turned out, her backpack barely held anything for school, just a couple of notebooks, a calculator, and some pencils and pens. The rest was filled by a mismatched arsenal of junk: broken circuitboards, tangled charging cables, two battery packs, a handheld radio transmitter, a small flashlight, a cigarette lighter, a hot glue gun... All could be glimpsed for just a moment as she stashed the taser away.

"Aaaaah?" The monstergirl, who'd been standing patiently to one side throughout most of the conversation, seemed to sense what was coming next.

"Yeah." Tokiko sighed. "You did all right out there, Eve."

"Aaaaah!" The Archetype grinned. As green light began to crackle around her, she turned towards Hikari and cheerfully waved. Then, with a sudden flash, the light swallowed her up, and Eve was gone.

Tokiko transformed back in the same moment, her thin rectangular glasses shifting to wide, round frames, her flared white coat replaced by a rumpled school uniform. Her hair was still black, still messy, but where it had be a wild, electric kind of messy, now it just looked... tangled. Unbrushed. Uncared for.

"Yep." Fishing her phone out of a pocket, she tapped in Hikari's number with the frenetic speed of someone who clearly spent too much time online. Almost as soon as the number was in, Hikari's phone buzzed with a new text, a bright blue link popping up on her screen.

"It's a chatroom for magical girls," Tokiko explained, her voice quieter and more subdued now that she was in her civilian form. "You might need an app or something to open it... ahhh, you'll figure it out." She scratched her hair with one hand. "Lots of magical girls in Tokyo use this, so it could be useful to look, even if you don't post much. Though with Hex Night going on you might get some people posting misinformation to throw off their enemies, so be careful what you believe..."

Just two ordinary girls, standing opposite one another in ordinary clothes, talking, exchanging phone numbers. Tokiko's heart started to beat a little faster as she considered the situation. [i]It's like we're friends, right? This is the kind of thing friends do.[/i] Almost as soon as the thought popped up, it was quashed. [i]No. Honami Tokiko doesn't have friends. And even if she did, they'd only disappoint her in the end.[/i] She turned away, not sure where to look, not sure what to say.

"Ummm..." Hesitant, she pointed in the direction they'd been walking before the magical girl attack. "I'm going that way. Were you going that way?"

[@VitaVitaAR]