Emeth

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"As a ruby, her edges perfected, emerges from the sand and returns not hence..."

Evil Eye paused. The answer to that question—who was that friend—had been so obvious, its asking caught her off guard. But then, she laughed, in the way that Evil Eye laughed when on the hunt for miseria to fuel her stores of misfortune. "You're right. I don't care at all!" She laughed and laughed, like the irredeemable villainesses she had adored as a child, and tried to emulate when she forsook the empty promises of light for the tangible substance of darkness.

They fell generously—the tears she had been holding back to pour out against Ashbringer, as a goddess might pour out her cup of wrath once mercy had dried up. It was as if Black Gate had suddenly struck an infinite well of malice deep within Evil Eye. But whether or not that well truly existed, and whatever she might have done after tapping into it—those answers would be cut off as the girls returned, ostensibly, to the real world.

"...what fellowship does brilliance have with the vain sayings of the simple?"

A certain clarity filled Kiyo's thoughts as she arose from her sleep. She might have expected to have merely emerged from one layer of sleep into another with a false awakening, but the uncertainty of her eyes was assuaged by the guarantor of reality: a familiar pain, which brought with it a paradoxical kind of comfort. Kiyo was, at a glance, the perfect mirror of the girl who had cheerily skipped through the halls on a good pair of feet—that is to say, something like her everyday self.

"What do you care? You admitted it yourself, that we were never friends." A genuine reaction to Black Gate's question came out with no regard for caution at all. The girl who might have been the most likely to remain on the ground and pretend to still be sleeping rose first, tears still lingering on her cheeks. Kiyo herself seemed surprised to find them there, gathering them up with her fingers and inspecting them, as if considering how best to dispense with them.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Double-reverse psychology is the new meta, Willow. Do keep up."

Evil Eye proceeded through her various viewpoints, taking in the strange sights of what she assumed to be a dream world of some description. Perhaps, she thought, she was viewing nightmares that represented the various traumas of Hibusa town's citizens. Regardless, it was a glimpse beyond the veil of a perfect world Black Gate had tried to cover their school in, and that seemed to validate some of her fear. Then, there was Michi. Were the two the same? Was the moment of despair something real? Something she was meant to see? Something she should—could—stop?

Thrown to the ground, Evil Eye returned to the present, to what was real, or simply to a different space. She was not the kind of girl who knew how to act on so little tangible information. It was the sort of situation that made a person want to reach out to the first "real" thing to appear in front of her, and that was Black Gate—but a different one... one that seemed familiar. It was almost a kind of relief to see her acting "normal," even though she stood poised to destroy her if she wished.

"Ha..." Evil Eye let out something in between a hollow laugh and a sigh. "You're right. While I was still blinded by light, all I ever tried to be was 'good,' but I didn't know how... and all I did was feel hurt for my troubles." She didn't bother to get up, but her body did gradually float up into something of a sitting position. "I thought if I could learn to be selfish, I could at least be happy as a dark magical girl—but I couldn't even do that. 'Useful' is the only thing I know how to be..."

When her eyes met Black Gate's, they were distant and unfocused. Evil Eye had returned her attention to the mogall in the mirror—the one she couldn't even be sure was real. "I think... I wanted to be the person I needed, when I had no one. A person even someone like me could trust." The mogall moved sluggishly, as in a nightmare of running away. "But I couldn't do that either. So how? How can I be happy in a world that doesn't need me..?" It grabbed the knife in its tiny tendrils and floated upwards, as if it intended to keep it away from Michi's self-destructive hands—even if its master couldn't be certain if that was the 'right' thing to do, or merely the only thing she 'could' do. "How should I feel when a friend tells me my help is effectively worthless? Should I be happy to hear that..?"

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"When the passive NPCs aggro, you're going the right way."

As usual, Willow was wont to not cooperate with whatever it was Evil Eye wanted to do. "Then do it! GO!!" she barked, still chasing after her as though she intended to kick her ass if she didn't hurry up. Even if she was going about it in her non-serious way, at least she'd managed to get one other person to treat Black Gate as a proper threat. She hoped the girls left behind in the cafeteria would eventually follow suit.

Evil Eye couldn't quite create much distance from all of the minions lurking in every corner, but by following in Willow's wake of destruction she was able to buy some time to gather a mass of inky black in her hand. Without the swift intervention of the janitor, she was able to toss it in front of her. After engorging itself on her tears, it sprouted limbs and began sprinting along with her in the form of a large black panther, with long sabre teeth and glowing red eyes.

Jumping onto its back, she began to search for her mogall as it carried her. If she had any left, she would gather them above the roof of the school.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"There's no moral to this story, is there? I didn't bring a barf bag."

If there was any guidance Evil Eye sought from Rei, or any question she wanted to ask her, she wasn't able to find it. She looked around at the room, taking in the absurdity of it. Michi was still going on in her grandiose manner—a noted 180 degree turn from the shrinking violet persona—Hizuki, bless her, was still trying to negotiate. Everyone else was some degree of broken-hearted or demoralized before the battle had even truly begun, or simply not taking the situation seriously. Perhaps Michi truly didn't want to fight, but at this point, Evil Eye didn't really care what Michi wanted. She had disrupted the Club's "normal," and that was enough.

In amidst the confusion, there was one thing that stuck out to her as real, and that was the battle she saw once Rei picked up. Whatever Michi wanted to accomplish by putting on some play in front of the whole school, if it had nothing to do with summoning a giga miseria, was beyond Evil Eye's grasp. Why the whole school, including most of the Detention Club was willing to go along with it, she couldn't fathom. Defeating an obvious enemy was within her abilities to calculate. "Who cares. She's fighting the real battle while we're all wasting time here. Black was bold enough to try to overthrow our leader, so she's dangerous. Let's go," she replied to Willow.

She wouldn't be able to outpace Michi's minions while flying, so she had to take off on foot and hope that her ankle held up as well as it had on the way to school. She wasn't sure if she could really make a difference in the battle between those two, but staying here was probably what Black Gate wanted, and that was enough reason not to. Pure spite propelled her forward, and that was enough.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Nobody panic. I'm used to this."

"The verdict can wait." Evil Eye's admonition was short and not very heartfelt. She wanted to say something about the fact that she and Roche were the gatekeepers of Club membership, but decided she would rather not feed into the negative spiral Michi was creating. She seemed to feel many things, pulling her in different directions, but none of those feelings amounted to any action. She wanted to protect the Club. She wanted Michi to feel terror even if provoking her wasn't the smartest thing to do. She wanted to feel that her presence here was in any way justified, that she wasn't the reason everything was falling apart. She wanted to do something, anything useful.

When Tsubomi disappeared, all at once, Evil Eye's desires were silenced. The tears that had been unwillingly wiped away stopped coming, as if they had never represented her real feelings in the first place. The river of her turbulent emotions turned slow, like a rushing river rapid had become a creek of molasses. It clouded with a sediment of apathy—her desires became lost in the midst of it, like a crocodile's tears in a bayou full of filth. Only one thought made its way into her barren consciousness. Just do your fucking job.

She pulled out her cell phone and called Rei. The sun hadn't even set before Kiyo had added her to speed dial after Tsubomi had nearly been kidnapped. In some ways, it felt as if that day had never ended. It probably wouldn't matter, anyway. If she tried to flee, she would probably just find her way back to where Black Gate wanted her to be, to see whatever show she wanted to put on. If this wasn't a dream, and she could really call someone, would she be able to hear their voice? Still, though she felt as if nothing she could do would help, her checklist of contingencies remained, and needed to be marked off. Mechanically, she occupied the now-empty seat in front of her and held the speaker to her ear. She moved as if whatever had just happened inside her psyche wasn't unusual in the least.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"A true villainess never gloats until her plans are already in motion, after all."

Evil Eye tried to warn the Shuukos, but she hadn't stuck around to force them to follow. Her grip on their shoulders was light; she never meant to pull them along. She was never meant to fight in the front, either; her line was elsewhere. Instead, she flew directly to Acid Drop. "Tsubomi," she addressed Zassou, her voice hushed but urgent. There was no time to think about the new nickname. "Heartbreak. The whole room. She can use their emotions to summon a giga miseria—can you stop it? I think she's manipulating them somehow."

She had imagined such a scheme herself once before—how could she not, when her own magic allowed her to do such manipulation? The Club, especially Nyxia, had been so immediately against the idea of summoning one in Hibusa that she'd never discussed it with anyone but Shuuko—never got much further than giving it a name—but now she was seeing the opportunity right in front of her even as Black Gate openly claimed she could probably do it. If she truly was the one behind all of the strangeness of the day, it followed that she had some means of manipulating either the emotions of others or reality to exploit them. Well, two could play that game.

"I fucked up." Tears ran down her cheeks and dribbled into the mass of tar-like blackness in her hand, but there was no remorse to be found in her voice. Her tone was even and livid. "I kept her servants out of our Club room, but it never mattered. I didn't even think of her targeting the rest of the school." After all, why would she think anything of them? It wasn't like they could really know or relate to her at all. Even if they tried, they couldn't be her "fellow" anything.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"If you see something... should you always say something?"

The mirror had been snatched away from her, but Evil Eye looked like she'd chugged a quart's worth of espresso shots. Whether the hypnotism had any effect or if it was caused by what Michi said about Suki was hard to tell. For a moment, she sat still as Michi delivered her rant. It was hard to believe that this was even the same person she'd brought to the Construct-a-Cat store.

She wanted to say something clever, to show that for all Michi's superior airs, she didn't actually understand the Club at all—but for once, she was left speechless. She couldn't even refute anything Michi said. Despite outwardly expressing an interest in romance, Suki's appearance and outward-facing personality couldn't have been more effectively hand-crafted to push people away and self-sabotage her relationships. Perhaps she understood that on some level, or perhaps she didn't—but Kiyo definitely did, because although she took a more obsessive self-grooming tack, the end goal of her carefully maintained appearance was largely the same: to create a certain distance between herself and others. Evil Eye gained power from witnessing their misfortune—if she didn't quite "enjoy" others' suffering, she did see a benefit, that much was undeniable fact.

Roche was putting a stop to that rant now, but she had been sitting there from the start. It should have been her to say something, anything in her friends' defense, or even her own defense—but the fact that she needed the Club girls to have problems to keep her role in it was becoming too clear for her own comfort. She also saw herself in this terrible side of Michi: all-seeing, always judging... always plotting. Even now, Michi was suggesting something she herself once suggested in the Club room: to summon a giga miseria in Hibusa Town. The final insult was that it was her own fault for letting the viper into their midst. Even if Michi's accusations hadn't poisoned the well, what right did she have to chase after Suki now?

"There are nine members, Shuuko," Evil Eye finally replied to her question, her voice low and full of disappointment as she stood up again. It wasn't just her feeling low, either—it didn't take a Tsubomi to feel the swell of negative emotions at their table—and on further reflection, she noticed something else. She had been too stunned by Michi's words, too distracted by the strangeness of the day to notice the danger in the room.

"Too late! RUN!" With little explanation, she flew after Suki and Haruna, tugging on both Hotaru and Ember's shoulders as she took off.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"It wasn't me this time. I'd make a pretty good cult leader though."

"What could humans do against something they can't even see?" Kiyo pondered out loud as she sat back down and took Michi's mirror in hand. The question felt a bit sharp, perhaps because Kiyo felt that she was fighting an unseen enemy this very moment, and the emergence of so many blue ribbons at the same time only stoked her paranoia further. She ran a hand through her own hair, as if to confirm what Suki already said. "I wouldn't be caught dead wearing blue. You know it's not my color."

As if to drive the point home, she transformed. "This isn't real. Wake up," she commanded herself, looking into her own eyes in the mirror.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Is this the part where we tear down the utopia so something interesting can happen?"

Kiyo looked up from her brooding to meet Michi's eyes. It wasn't difficult to discern that she was in a foul mood, too, though it seemed to be for different reasons. "We have no choice but to trust each other. There's nobody else to rely on. Light girls hate us, and even if humans are mostly harmless, it's not as if they can relate."

Per usual, she didn't offer any resistance to Hotaru's embrace, but perhaps her eyes had widened slightly in surprise at the suddenness of the gesture, given their recent disagreement. It wasn't easy to tell if her reaction had been to Hotaru or Ember, though. "Oh for fuck's sake, there are two of you now?!" she hissed. "Does no one else think there are limits to convenience? First a miraculous healing and breakthrough for me, then Suki gets a secret admirer and her favorite teachers, and what now—you've split in two so nobody has to be jealous who you're spending time with? At what point do we start to ask if we're under a spell?!" she ranted in a hushed voice, eyes wide. Then, after a pause, she kicked her chair back a little to make space to stand up. "You know what, I need to look at a mirror," she declared, as if something had clicked—or snapped.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

"Something's rotten in the state of Being."

Kiyo was off the hook—for now—but it was clear that Michi still wanted to talk to her. An inconclusive result. Perhaps our clashing desires caused a diminishing effect, or... Perhaps she was simply paranoid. It was that unrelenting distrust masquerading as her own curiosity that caused her fall to darkness in the first place. A world where everything went the Club's way, even for half a day, was too good for her to believe. One or two wins in a day—even big ones, certainly—but they and the little incidents kept piling up relentlessly. She looked at the textbook in her hand, considering if she should open up the letter or not. If I open it, and it's my handwriting... But it was impossible. It was written in calligraphy, that much was established. It couldn't even possibly be a forgery. The fact that she believed a prank was the most likely possibility didn't make her any happier than Suki probably was—as if she herself considered it impossible that someone could actually fall for her—but the cold reality was that this was most likely Willow's doing.

Kiyo spent the entirety of her next class thinking about that rather than focusing on English. Certainly Suki's case was readily explainable. Kiyo's research bearing fruit today of all days could be a coincidence, but why had her search results changed so radically overnight? Add on to that the miraculous healing, the appearance of beloved substitute teachers and other strangeness—something was amiss. Or was it? Was it her heart that was amiss? She wanted them to be happy, didn't she? My parents would say that when enough unlikely coincidences converge, God is at work—but that can't be true. He would never reward us seekers of darkness with His favor. This would surely be someone else's handiwork—but who would even be capable of something like this? A pocket dimension, or mass delusion that reacts to our desires in real time... That would be a God-like power.

She simply must be paranoid, she thought as she walked to the cafeteria—yet she couldn't let it go. Her hypothesis could not be left untested. I need something concrete. Something I want, strongly, just for me. That was certainly not a lot of criteria. She only needed to reconcile the two. She could think of plenty of things that would be nice to have, but not strictly necessary, and plenty of things that would be great, but were, ultimately, in service of the Club—things like her healed ankle, the project coming to fruition, becoming strong enough to be self-sufficient... There has to be something I really want, right? Something selfish, anything. That's the basics of being a kurai majokko—to exercise your will, justice and peace be damned. Kiyo sat at the table, stirring her scrambled eggs with a fork as though she were still whisking them herself at home. Yet no matter how much she obsessed for an answer, nothing came to her.

All of a sudden, she seemed to notice how quiet the Club was in general once Haruna spoke up. It was then that she remembered that Haruna could apparently "hear" desires, and wondered what she might be hearing now: did it sound like this uncomfortable silence, or closer to something like white noise? "There might be trouble later," Kiyo mused—sounding almost hopeful, somehow, that something would go wrong, and she would get to kick someone's ass for it. Yes, she felt a kind of violent urge rising, as if she could punish someone tangibly responsible for this false peace that caused her to ask herself uncomfortable questions she had nothing to show for—questions like, why does something always have to be going wrong for her to feel like her life is real? Or why, if there is a problem, or a conspiracy, does she alone have to be the one to solve the case?