Emeth

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"I'll be the one to call balls and strikes. Batter up, bitch!"

---

So stubborn! What the hell do you want with her?!

Diamond wasn't backing down. She wasn't dropping Tsubomi and fleeing. The only cold comfort was that so far she wasn't using her like one would expect a hostage to be used, either. Her only goal seemed to be to lose the Mogall's line of sight. At least, if she had a destination in mind, Evil Eye lacked the information to take a guess at it, and as the rest of the Club got desperate, so did she.

The 13-Eye-Titan instinctively reached for Hizuki, trying to stop her runaway flight, but after missing two or three times came to the conclusion that this task was beyond the abilities its creator had given it. It diverted its attention back to Diamond, trailing behind Oros. The great eye closed, and it seemed to gradually disappear in a heat haze, cloaking itself as it had done before within the midst of the smaller Mogall. What advantage it hoped to gain from this while its position was still roughly marked by the swarm defending it remained to be seen.

Wait for me, Tsubomi. I have one more card to play.

This one is going to work. No light girl can resist.

---

As Diamond approached the next major intersection, a nefarious sight would greet her. Evil Eye had descended from the cloud of eyes high above. Some of them accompanied her, struggling together to carry the weight of a schoolgirl, holding her several stories high. She wore the uniform of Hibusa High, and had long black hair—but that described just about every high school girl in Japan. It would be hard to tell from the ground if it was someone the Club knew. Even so, just how far was she willing to go?

One of the Mogall let go of the girl's arm, and it dropped unceremoniously, pointing straight toward the pavement. The girl was not struggling, and likely unconscious. Evil Eye wore a sinister smirk. The threat was unspoken and obvious. If Evil Eye allowed the Mogall to drop this girl, Diamond would have to let go of Tsubomi to catch her.

Two can play this game.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

For Evil Eye, there was nothing to be done but to keep flying. Other things were happening elsewhere, and some of those things were unprecedented, but her one good eye was keeping watch for another hail of arrows while the other engaged Diamond, intent on rescuing Tsubomi. She could only engage with her top priority so long as she continued to be preoccupied with combat. The Club was scattered like mice, and the GEMs were obviously both more coordinated than them and more coordinated than a typical light girl team. Why did she leave Tsubomi alone? What could ever make her think that would be fine?

Being able to see everything is kinda creepy, Aisha. You need to let people have some space.

Be quiet. You're dead to me. If I was there, I could have done more. I should have.

Tsubomi... never called me a voyeur. She never told me to fuck off.

If she had just been there... If nothing else, she wouldn't have to worry about becoming the next target of Rei's ire and Suki's disappointment—because she would have died before letting the GEMs take one of them alive, and even most dark girls had enough courtesy to not speak ill of the dead. If nothing else, she could have poured all of her power into this newest creation instead of keeping half for a potential face-off against the frog girl. Just how strong did she think she was, anyway? Hadn't she got it through her thick skull yet that she was too weak to protect anyone? And because of her weakness, she had to show blind trust to a light girl who took pity on dark girls. Pathetic—like an overfunded, underperforming scientist seeking companionship from a lab rat.

I won't let this happen.

Delusional. Prideful. A part of her had surely known this could happen. Tsubomi had been targeted before. It was like they knew that she was vulnerable, and that made her the perfect bait. Her trap had been sprung perfectly, but she never expected the girl to just take her and run. She'd known that it could happen, but was too proud to think that it would. As always, there had been an unforeseen factor. Something had escaped the notice of the 'all-seeing eye' of the Detention Club.

No! It's true that I wanted the GEMs to make a reckless move, but I didn't use Tsubomi like that. I'm not so cruel.

But that was a lie. Evil Eye was a ruthless girl, and she could not help but scheme, and scheme dangerously.

I can't... think about this right now. I have to hurry.

---

The 13-Eyed Titan became swarmed with Mogall. They attached to it, replacing the eyes that had perished, and it once again began to speed up. The smaller eyes were more than simple turrets; they were propelling it along as it levitated through the air, and now that it had recovered its speed, it began to use its tendrils to lift itself up into the air, intent on overtaking the cart and planting its body in front of Diamond. If it were allowed to succeed in gaining ground over Diamond, the tendrils on its backside would be poised to reach out and seize the cart. Unlike Hizuki, it seemed that Evil Eye was no longer interested in trying to persuade the GEMs to back down peacefully.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

Evil Eye turned to regard Hizuki, opening her mouth as if to say something. She had surely watched over Hibusa Town long enough to know all of the street names and landmarks, but she wasn't sure how much Hizuki would have learned by now. "It's close to the..." she began, but bit her lip, breathing unsteadily. "...Here. Just touch this, and you'll see her." She adjusted her kimono, lowering it to reveal the Udjat eye tattoo at the base of her neck. "And don't tell a soul I showed you where it is," she emphasized vehemently.

Hibusa Town almost didn't look real through the eye of the titan. Such was its size, it was as if someone had built a miniature set of the town so it could be destroyed with practical effects for a budget disaster movie. Though it looked like a fake town, the one thing reminding both girls that what they were seeing was real was Diamond, carrying Acid Drop on her back—and the field of view given to Hizuki offered more meaningful information at a glance than Evil Eye could've rattled off with the proverbial 'thousand words.' "I'm not trying to hit her, just cut off the alleys—but pretty soon she's going to—

figure that out." Evil Eye never finished her sentence.

"Aargh!" she cried as the rain of arrows fell upon the titan, as if she had felt it. No, not 'as if,' she had definitely reacted in pain. "There!" Evil Eye pushed Hizuki's hand away, pointing her in the general direction of the intersection. "She turned left! GO!!" she urged, shoving her forward. "Bring her back," Evil Eye demanded through grit teeth as more abyssal tears flowed down her cheeks and fell to the street below, spawning more creatures. "please," she muttered, unheard by anyone.

---

The arrows made contact with the side of the titan, bursting a few of the lesser eyes hanging from its underside, bringing their laser fire to an abrupt end. The rest made contact with the main body, creating a crackling cacophony like that of hailstones crashing into a windshield. Some stuck into the eyelid, but did not remain there for long as the creature blinked irritably. Enraged and full of bloody tears, it continued to pursue Diamond. Tendrils reached out for anything they could grasp, pulling and propelling the great eye forward. It was no longer steadily keeping pace with the magical girl. The mysterious unseen force propelling it forward had been slowed, somehow, but every so often it compromised with a sudden burst of forward momentum using its tendrils, staying hot on Diamond's heels but never quite within reach. The sky full of Mogall were also steadily closing in on its position, an unknown purpose in mind.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

While Willow pretended to panic, Evil Eye gazed down at Boleite, tapping the foot of her cane impatiently against her shoe as she pretended not to recognize her—deciding that Boleite, a fellow scientist, would probably do the same, for much the same reasons, should she be confronted. The meeting between them had been an aberration, something Evil Eye was, in all her self-proclaimed wisdom, ill-equipped to explain to her fellows, and the light girl would probably be no more able to explain her own intentions if she were asked. Perhaps she had lied, and an old partner of hers had, in fact, fallen to darkness, or worse—and allowing Evil Eye to escape the City of Light had been her way of letting go of the past. It had been the only theory she was able to conjure up that made any sense of it. Aside from you and Shuuko, I'm the only one taking this seriously, Hizuki... her mind objected, though her lips would not speak the words.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sensation of a head on her shoulders—usually, a welcome sensation, but this was Willow. Her uncovered eye snapped to Willow's face, briefly ceasing its coordinated wandering along with the movements of the Mogall. While she could lecture the girl for hours on sunk cost fallacy and how it wasn't accidental that gacha game corporations sold their in-game currency in multiples of prime numbers, something else happened that caused her to breathe in sharply. The hand covering her eye dipped into her pocket and retrieved her cell phone. "Acid's been taken hostage, I'm tracking her. The GEMs are regrouping; we should too." There was no time to waste, so Evil Eye spoke the message and let voice recognition do the work of putting it in the Detention Club's group chat while she flew toward the distant sound of exploding tires.

Only after the urgency of the moment would she realize that this meant Black Gate would also get the message. More importantly, if she were to switch priority and change course, she needed to get Willow off her back. "Cafe Red. That's where your phone thief is hiding," Evil Eye added as if it were an afterthought.

---

Like an old adage about boiling a frog, the heat continued to rise at a rate that was gradual but still threatening. Thankfully, unlike the proverbial frog, the locals did eventually flee the scene before they would suffer much more than a painful sunburn. Diamond's distraction would succeed for only a short time before the popcorn machine and its generously packed product would be incinerated in the ensuing laser beam. The 13(but now 12)-Eyed-Titan did not give up the pursuit. If it wasn't quite the fastest thing Hibusa's roads had ever seen, it was accelerating to highway speeds faster than its size would suggest it were capable, and it rounded corners effortlessly. The "drone" eyes were also capable of firing mini-lasers, which they rained upon Diamond without mercy. Fortunately, they seemed to be about as accurate as cover fire, and did a better job of making the prospect of turning into a side alley a risky proposition than they did actually hitting her.

Mogall were filling the skies like birds fleeing the ground in anticipation of an earthquake. This included the bulk of them that had been hounding Black Gate, leaving only a few that remained. They gazed at each other as if questioning something, reflecting what remained of their master's indecision. Then, they turned in one direction, as if anticipating the arrival of someone, or something. The number of eyes in the sky was a rare but unsettling sight. Anyone who'd lived in Hibusa a long time knew that this meant Evil Eye was sounding the alarm, even if they didn't know what it was for. For the Club, it was a cue to check their phones. For the odd light girl who'd decided not to leave the dark girls' territory, it was usually a sign to stay away—but with the GEMs in town? Kaeru would have a decision to make. Evil Eye had made hers; Mogall flocked about her in formation, shielding her with their bodies.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"I'm here to catch monkeys" was Evil Eye's plain reply to Willow's insistence. It was the closest thing to a stern tone she would take with the other club girls outside of a one-on-one conversation, and there would be no self-reflection on her part for the accuracy of her accusation. Evil Eye would target whom she would target, and the true reasons for her obsessions had no need to be understood by anyone, Willow least of all—or least of all herself, perhaps.

As if she had no sense of irony, she continued to observe Hizuki as she attempted to navigate this impossible situation, while her minions did the allegedly more important work of searching for the monkeys. She was too far up to hear Oros' question, but it was evident in her body language. Evil Eye offered a highly visible shrug and a shake of her head that meant many things. She did not know why Kaeru was retreating, and she wasn't particularly interested in the reasons why, or in following her. Her disdain for arbitrary things like amphibians while she treated floating eyes as something natural was one of her many mysteries.

Hizuki returned, and drew her attention to Boleite. So, as she thought, she was one of the GEMs. "She does look like the type who could kill if she wanted to," Evil Eye replied truthfully, saying nothing about their meeting in the subway. Whether or not she would was hard to gauge at a glance, even for her. "I'm already in a fight, so you'll get no complaints from me," the girl added as a cryptic smile began to form on her lips.

---

The eye (which Tsubomi had decided belonged to a wyrm after all) observed the bat-wielding magical girl's approach with nothing resembling alarm. It did, however, water quite a bit as it braced for the impact. When her swing cracked it like an egg, it splattered just about everywhere. Some of it lingered in the air, however, clinging to something that wasn't quite visible yet.

It opened like a great Cheshire cat grin the size of a car bumper. A giant eye appeared, hovering off the tarmac and dragging its tendrils lightly across the ground like a balloon that had just enough helium left to float in place, but not quite fly away and up into the sky. It hovered with unsettling evenness, like an alien saucer, a dozen smaller eyes attached to the underside of its lid like barnacles on a whale. If Evil Eye had promised to keep 'an eye' on Tsubomi, she had overdelivered in more ways than one. The eye the delinquent-looking light girl splattered—indeed, it was no illusion—had been hanging by a tether that now dragged loosely on the ground. Instead of quickly flitting away like an angler fish's lure, however, it had been sacrificed like a pawn.

The great eye rolled back into a head that wasn't there. What happened next began like the feeling of being under a stage light, the whole area becoming enveloped in an uncomfortable heat, along with the dreadful feeling of being watched by many. Explosions rang down the street as the car tires closest to her popped, and a few alarms started to go off. The girl's shoes began to stick to the street as she moved—they were starting to melt. Worst of all, perhaps, was the fact that attention was being drawn to the area. While innocent onlookers could see little of what was happening, they still tended to gather and gawk.

It was a dirty trick, and there could be no doubt that it was planned.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

Quick. Evil Eye clapped her hands over her ears as Hizuki rushed by, as if expecting some kind of jet engine noise as she soared off. She watched with wide eyes as the rest of the club followed her out the window—all except for Oros. When the request came, she blinked and looked around. Even Tsubomi seemed to have excused herself and wandered off somewhere. "Mm. Of course." She nodded, floating out the window after the others. They could not really afford to wait for Tsubomi, even if they were worried about her. Evil Eye wasn't exactly known for her speed and punctuality, either—already, the new team arrangements were showing problems, but what could she do if Rei was just going to ask for her concerns only to then disregard them immediately?

---

One peculiar-looking Mogall found its way onto Tsubomi's trail. Usually, the Mogall ranged in size from that of a softball to a basketball, and this one was on the bigger side of that range. It also had vertical pupils—very cat-like. Or perhaps it was more reptilian. It could have been a dragon's eye. It was hard to say. It was, however, obviously different from the other ones, but not in any other way that was obvious. So then, it was more like a subtle kind of different. Subtle like a cat, or a chameleon perhaps. It was hard to say. A dragon wasn't very subtle, though, so maybe it was more like a snake's eye? A very 'Kiyo-like' animal, in any case.

It floated along next to Tsubomi as she kept up her unusual pace, giving her a curious side-eye—as much as a disembodied eye could give, anyway. It was a curious thing for it to do, since it could neither ask questions nor hear any answers Tsubomi might give it. In the right circumstances, if one were to look on the bright side, perhaps that made it the perfect listener. Was this one of those times? Probably not, but if Tsubomi needed help, at least she could give Kiyo some kind of signal.

---

Evil Eye was high in the sky, as she often was, though perhaps not entirely out of range of an ambitious triple jump attack from Kaeru and her two big summoned frogs. "There she i~s. My least favorite plague of Egypt," Evil Eye remarked as Willow rose up to meet her. She had one eye covered with a hand as she kept it on Tsubomi, the other closely watching the confrontation between Kaeru and Hizuki below. "Like I said, you're mistaken. She's a—project. A particularly hands-off project at that—but it's not a bad deal."

In just a moment, a single black tear formed in the corner of her eye, and with a finger, she took it and flicked it away into the air, and it expanded and formed into a Mogall. The Mogall wept, too, and very quickly, there were a half-dozen of them, with more on the way, and they flew in all directions, searching for the monkey she'd seen earlier. It was inefficient, but if doing it the slow and fun way meant that Willow would owe her, then it was a good way to spend an afternoon.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

At Ember's expression of concern towards Tsubomi, Kiyo looked in the lethargic girl's direction, but didn't comment further. If Tsubomi herself couldn't articulate the problem, it was unlikely that she could offer much help. Well, I could try hypnotizing her, she thought idly, allowing a sigh to escape upwards out of the corner of her mouth, removing a bang from in front of her eye. "Well, yeah. If they can hide from me, it goes without saying that they're pretty good. All the more reason I wanna talk to them." Memories of chasing Oros through the school crossed her mind, and an ephemeral smile may have existed for just a fraction of a second before Nyxia and Roche proceeded to make it exceedingly awkward for Kiyo to insist she tag along with the new girl to talk to the GEMs. After she'd stuck up for Roche by going through the motions of the announcement despite Suki trying to cut her off, too! Though neither of them seemed to have noticed—perhaps given the atmosphere between them, that was for the better. Rather than comment on it, she transformed alongside Oros. "If you think they will believe you without one of us there, then sure. I'll warn you, they're not gonna like Willow. She'd fuck the whole thing up."

Evil Eye's assessment was merciless as always. She looked up toward the ceiling, so the others wouldn't have to watch her eyes eerily unfocus into a thousand-yard stare and dart around the room looking at nothing while she searched through what her Mogall could see. "It'd be bold of her to claim self-defense when all they can do is look around and make more of themselves... though I suppose in an enclosed space they could multiply enough to smother someone," she mused, hand on her chin as if she were actually considering the merits of such a macabre strategy. Coming from her, it was equally likely to be a joke or a serious consideration.

Suddenly, she blinked. "Ugh. The frog girl is back... gross... Oh. Pfffhuahahaheh!" She laughed giddily. "A monkey stole Willow's phone. That's great. Well, looks like we're all going to the same place." She shrugged and began floating out the window Nyxia had entered from.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

Kiyo nodded along with Tsubomi's explanation, if it could be called that. "I see what you're saying. I worry about that too." She reached up the bridge of her nose again nervously and flicked a lock of hair away from her tired eyes. "This person Haruna knows may or may not be the one behind the monkeys, and they may or may not agree to join us, so the numbers are uncertain—but if we don't deal with the GEMs, the numbers are against us either way. If they learn about Ashbringer's plans and decide to use her to take on Rei, we're all screwed. Rei's the bigger threat to the light girls, but Ashbringer's the bigger threat to Hibusa Town. We need the GEMs to realize that the right thing to do is to either help us beat Ashbringer or stay out of our turf war altogether. Otherwise, we'll have to take proactive measures to drive the GEMs out of town before Ashbringer decides we've had enough prep time. We can't just wait around to get mobbed by all of them, or, like Tsubomi said, the odds are close to unwinnable for us."

Just how strong was Rei, anyway? Terrifyingly so, but surely she was not invincible. Something she'd said stuck with her: a good leader knows when to ask for help. How could someone as strong as Rei asserted she was ever need help, that she'd impart that lesson to her? Did Rei really think so highly of Evil Eye that she would need lessons in leadership, or was that her way of saying that she might really need it this time? Either way, it seemed inadvisable to Kiyo to assume that Rei could both take on Ashbringer and protect the club from the rest of those numbers. The odds needed to work, and if the odds didn't work, she would find a way to cheat, as she always did whenever the club girls were concerned.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"I don't do hidden cameras, Nyxia! Too Korean for my tastes."

---

Usually, this softball level of heckling from Nyxia would warrant, at worst, a caustic quip from the self-appointed Supervisor, but today she seemed especially moody. Fortunately, Kiyo's idea of escalation in this situation seemed to be a derisive snort, a sneer at nobody in particular, and giving Nyxia the silent treatment. It wasn't enough to disturb the flow of their meeting, but anyone who looked into Kiyo's eyes at that moment could have convinced themselves that the room had dropped a couple of degrees in temperature. Roche's comment and Suki's rebuttal seemed to snap her out of whatever thoughts had her in their grip. Another buzzing fly of an involuntary desire was swatted away.

The only person at the club meeting who might not already know about the new groups was Nyxia, but Kiyo wouldn't imagine Roche had hidden it from her, so she proceeded with the announcement knowing it would be redundant—ignoring the inevitable, intentionally obnoxious yawn from Nyxia. "I did, but it's fine. It wasn't the official announcement or anything. So, I guess this is that. For anyone who missed it, we'll be in groups of three for the time being, for additional safety. I'll be joining Suki and Tsubomi, and Shuuko will be joining Roche and Nyxia. Haruna, you'll be with Willow and the girlboss herself, Rei. Yup, do your best~" she added in that monotone voice again, doing a lazy, singular fist-pump. "Come talk to your senpai if Willow's teasing is too much, okay~?" She yawned again, like she had no interest in actually fulfilling that role, but Haruna would be able to tell that she actually wished she would. Suki and Ember probably knew it, too, but she had bought their silence with food. Hopefully.

That just left the matter of the monkeys. "The monkeys show up anywhere my minions do. It's like I said, as if they're being hunted. I'd say they show up anywhere you'd expect a magical girl to be, buuuuut they kept their distance from the big boss during our last outing. So, they're intelligent enough to know their limits, and they targeted the eyes I had on Shuuko, as if they didn't want me to know she was about to be attacked." Her eyes flicked down to look at Haruna. "In light of that, I wouldn't be so quick to trust a strange magical girl in town," she stated, hypocritical in the extreme given who she was talking to—but if she had the humility to notice, she probably wouldn't have said that. "I mean, it's pretty common for newbie dark girls to come to Hibusa Town for some space away from the light girls, but still be too scared of Rei to actually approach us. I always try to reach out—it'd be nice if us dark girls could have one big Sisterhood—but if they don't wanna, they don't wanna, y'know?" Her eyes widened and flicked about, as if she were thinking. "Think you could find her again? Tell her I just wanna talk. I'm not exactly the most dangerous member of the club, y'know?" She batted her eyelashes as if she were innocent. "As long as you aren't an interesting light girl" could probably be inferred without being said.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

Kiyo listened to Suki theorycraft with what was, by her standards, some semblance of interest, nodding along—sideways, into her hand, elbow on the table, trying not to look bored. Or perhaps she was trying to look bored. It was hard to say. Her head tilted, locks of her hair trickled between her fingers and onto the table like an oil slick. "Mm-hm. Little monkey minions. Probably a dark girl interloper, but who knows..." They did have a frog-themed light girl once upon a time, after all. Kiyo usually got excited whenever she learned about a new light girl in town, but she never did like that one, for whatever reason. "Well... Usually me and Shatterscape scout, since she has all those bodies around town. We're like, the rapid response crew," she replied to Haruna. "But given the circumstances..."

Whether the timing of Ember's arrival was good or bad could be debated, but the timing could not be denied. "Ah, yeah. This is her," Kiyo replied, holding her free arm up toward their newest member in a gesture that was somehow both grandiose and nonchalant. "Welcome again, Haruna. Let's all get along, okaaaay~?" Kiyo remarked with a yawn, monotone. Saying it as if it weren't meant to be taken seriously, even though it was—well, it seemed like she'd been told to say something, even though she didn't want to.