Lonewolf685

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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The play was a personal airing of grievances, even Roche could see that in her quagmire of apathy. One that Michi was holding Tsubomi directly at fault for, though whether the club’s resident peddler of miracle water was truly at fault or the scapegoat for unresolved grievances was yet to be seen. It might have even been an entertaining little affair, all things considered, if not for the direct disruption of their lives from an act of unadulterated bitterness.

She’d seen it in Nyxia, and she’d known it herself; Blackgate was less a person and more a lingering grudge. Carried along purely by an idea of malice rather than dreams or aspirations.Quintessential Dark Magical Girl behavior seasoned with a dash of a God Complex and enough power to swing for the fences.

Her Club Mates- For however long that lasts- made an effort to overturn the production, but they instead received a taste of the nightmare she’d been chasing by her lonesome. Suki’s intervention was perplexing but Michi’s body unraveling into a nightmare of pulled skin and bared teeth was reminding her strongly of her trip to the City of Light. It would have been a sublime show, if only the target wasn’t so near and dear.

There would be a reckoning for her indiscretions, as even if they were as far from a confirmed couple as could be, the interest was evident. Roche’s weakness offered no shelter, but it not so heavy an anchor upon her neck she’d stare gaunt and witless as a snap of Michi’s fingers re-arranged the players. Ember became Sylvia, untransformed and so very, very vulnerable.

Clamoring apes were ignored as readily as the gauking, witless audience that were witnessing snuff on stage without a word of protest raised. Breaking through the malasse of madness and apathy came disgust, scorching her throat and twisting her guts into a pretzel. Earthshaker didn’t mind their eyes in the least as she transformed, cloak flung off her shoulders at the surrounded apes as she lunged across the stage.

”All this self-pity when you were the one who couldn’t find the guts to get out of the closet for your sister. The least you could have done was die alongside her.” Earthshaker hissed, passing like an arrow without a single look at Black Gate. Or the club mates standing paused to charge the stage. With a snarl of effort she crossed her arms and slammed into the tall apes brutalizing Sylvia, lashing out like a girl possessed against Michi’s creations.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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By a stroke of magic that no one in the cafeteria was questioning, there was a theater and then there were actors upon it. Even Roche was upon it, slumped in the stiff cafeteria chair as those funny apes they’d spotted around town clamored behind her, making their allegiance known. Another mystery we unravel too late to matter.

For being the Detention Club’s city there were a shockingly swelling number of foreign agents acting with impunity, weaving a tapestry of manipulation that they were powerless to evade. Ashrbringer, the GEMS, and now Michi’s own ape network proved it could reach across their homes and touch upon their lives with impunity. The lives of each club member was like a raw and open wind exposed to the wind, unable to mend as the wound weeps angrily towards the relentless world.

Like the feeling of roasting alive as she thrust herself into the engines of that first Giga Miseria, yet it wasn’t fading. It festered and writhed till the discomfort was all she knew.

So Michi was aware of whatever she wanted to know and she had legions of minions to act on it? Yet another enemy having won the Magical Jackpot, and naturally she uses it to try and tear them down. It was only natural for a Dark Girl after all.

”Thank you, Tsubomi. I appreciate the offer.” Roche accepted the cap of offered water and knocked it back with nary a second glance. It was, after all, a prop offered by the monkey and not even something she’d infused with her magic. Even if it was, well, would it even matter once the dust settled and the club had a moment to turn their knives upon her?

The water did nothing for her mood, and she remained slump, as lifeless a prop as the chair she sat upon.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

The Rulekeeper had thought she was intervening to do her duty to the club, trying to drive Michi out without escalating it to the realm of full Magical Girl action. It was flagrant bullying to the mundane eye, rubbing aggressively with the line of what could be buried for the sake of the school's prosperity. She'd not have even dared to do that much if she wasn't certain Michi wasn't even a student there.

All that went out the window the moment she spoke terrible, dreadful truths. Things no one should have known with the fullness of fact, save the Fire Dragon and her allies. It made no sense that Regina's group would be trying to provoke a conflict like this when she had already reached out to bury the hatchet, and had plenty of kindling to burn them all if she didn't desire a peaceful resolution.

Roche was pulled between fight or flight, eyes darting from the viper whose poisoned words found all the wrong ears to the club members besides her. None of whom were those directly threatened by Ashbringer, but Ember....Oh Ember, she was the one at the closet. That meant Sylvia would know in due time, regardless of Michi's actions. Tension pulsed at the forefront of her skull, throbbing with racing of her mind as she staggered against the table that failed to flip under Hotaru's outburst.

A weight in her windbreaker clinked against the table and she fished it out, looking down at a possible escape from this dilemma. The very Magic 8-Ball she'd purchased from Satan was held before her and she shook it with an edge of mania-

"Ow!" Roche yelped, the ball falling from her hand as she cradled a cut and weeping finger. The source of which was made appearent as the orb turned end over end, revealing a shattered portal bereft of fluids or answers, it's contents drained and offering no answer in her time of need.

Her horror deepened, lips quivering as she fell into an ajar chair, unable to pry her gaze from the lifeless ball. I think I get it. Tou-san, I see why you left.

"I've only done what I can to save everyone here." The Rule Keeper's voice was fragile and distant, not directing her words at any one person. Indecision had crippled her and she drowned in her emotions, cut finger dripping onto her lap.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Receiving Willow’s roundabout confirmation would normally have cost Roche a fair deal of her sanity interpreting it, and the validity of Sylvia’s identity seemed to confirm itself just by how familiar her behavior was once Tsubomi de jure started verbally tearing into her. Even if she was too far to make out exactly what she said, the wilting of her friend was painfully fresh in her recollection.

”Excuse me, Willow. I need to go get between those two….and Seriously, Suki and I aren’t an item. She had her chance.” There was no bite to her words, absent of resentment or loss. In her desperation and pain, there was no point denying Roche could have seen herself entangled with the mess that was Suki. Whether she’d sink with her or pull her out was anyone’s guess, and left firmly in the realm of a shipper’s fantasy.

So, Willow and Kiyo, mostly.

But as much as she really wanted to meet Sylvia face to face without the realization at least two other people were sharing those eyes, her crossing of the cafeteria brought her near her ex-partner’s table where she was, shockingly, not menacing their new light girl. She was in the process of being verbally battered by an outsider. One whose parting words splashed ice water down her spine and left the Rulekeeper red in the faced, exhaling through her nostrils like a bull in a certain Spaniard festival.

”Excuse me, I’ll pay you back.” The Rule Keeper tersely hissed in passing as she snatched up a box lunch and diverted from Tsubomi de jure and Sylvia. Not even bothering to introduce herself to the table she upended the contents over Black Gate, sweet sauce and rice splashing upon her gothic dress like a rain of dandruff while artfully split sausages settled upon her lap, octopi swimming amidst the folds of her dress.

”Oh no, I’ve made such a mess. Here, let me help.” Bold as brass and without a shred of guilt in her feigned kindness, Roche was dabbing at Michi’s chest with a napkin, whereupon her fingers fisted in the material and dragged her close.

Weeks of sleepless nights, valid paranoia, a trip to the city of light, and her own twisted heart had brought Roche to dangerous territory, but she was finding precious little to regret as she hissed low enough only the table could hear.

”You’ve just overstayed your welcome. You can either walk out of here, or I’ll drag you out in pieces. No one talks to any of my club mates like that and gets to feel safe in this city, understood? Get lost, right now, and drop those plans for Giga Miseria. We don’t need that heat in our home, and we don’t need a viper spitting venom either.”

Keeping a paper thin pretense of civility in such a public setting she straightened, dropping the napkin on her lap as her lips pressed in a thin line.

”The restroom is down the hall on your left. Wash yourself on your way out.”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

A frosty eyebrow arched upwards, eyes rendered bloodshot from poor sleep and a fondness for intent staring at a cork board in a dimly lit room. Willow was, as ever, a nexus of chaos and whimsy that shifted like a leaf in a monsoon. She could be a supportive comrade one moment and in the next was setting one up for a prat fall to amuse herself.

For someone like Roche who ached for a sense of control over her life and was circling the drain from failing to maintain even the barest grasp upon it, an outsider would think Willow was the bane of her existence. They would miss the simple fact that a being of pure chaos and self interest was, above all; Utterly Predictable.

She had never disappointed Roche, because Roche knew well that pinning any expectation but pursuit of personal gratification was a fool’s errand.

Turning from her club work fully she replied to Willow’s typical ramblings with a snort and scarfed down another clump of rice. ”Suki can be someone else’s little angel. I want someone who isn’t going to bring home a gaggle of drugged women off the street to spice things up.”

Though if Shuuko is now three separate people it might make dates crowded. While Hotaru had been semi-informative, Roche was scrambling to image what this meant for herself and Sylvia, especially when she had no idea what she looked like. Was she even at school or did she call out? Was she in the room already?

Her gaze snapped from Suki and Haruna being disturbingly close to the public flaring of magic, a phantom flicker of horns and gauntlets as a girl she belatedly recognized was standing over another table that already had Hotaru. ”Fantastic. Shatterscape is one third snitch. She even saw me-”

Remembering current company she crammed her mouth with food, silencing herself as she engaged fully with trying to empty a bento as though it was nothing more than a slice of buttered toast. Carb loading was all about gusto and technique, something she had in spades, leaving her free to tuck away the papers in her blazer and stand up.

”Willow, have you noticed a third girl who has magic that feels similar to those two?” She asked, pointing towards Ember and Hotaru.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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She was being a hypocrite and she knew it, too.

Marganite showed up outside the club room and Earthshaker had been ready to push the limits of Rei’s tolerance with the burning need to enact retribution. A desire that was no less present in her heart, even if it remained a low simmer among the many other pots bubbling madly in the recesses of her brain matter.

The GEM had made a direct threat against them, and followed it up with an assassination attempt that could have killed her had Shatterscape not intervened.

So, logically speaking, Roche should have been frothing at the mouth finding Regina was now subbing in as a teacher. After all, she had overtly told them she’d be sending them packing out of town and the pressure of her ultimatum had left Roche a nervous wreck for months. She’d have never even considered the mess at the Beach without the many sleepless nights and the ache of their stagnant growth driving her to desperation.

She stewed over this as she ate by rote, mechanically plucking her rice from a prepared box while her eyes remained glued to forms for the season’s track meets and their travel arrangements. Lunch wasn’t much of a break when you took on added responsibility, thankless though they were. Regina did at least have a good reason for all this cloak and dagger nonsense.

Never mind that the impetus for both their enemies was the menace of the Detention Club. No, she knew damn well why she was…softer on Ashbringer. Fuck a duck, I don’t even know what I have with Sylvia and now I’ve got this and everything else. Can’t things be simple again.

Who was she kidding? If the universe didn’t dump this on her then she’d have taken it up herself. So the Rule Keeper slouched at her table, a bleary eye panning around, passing over Suki and Haruna with only a faint concern for the latter’s well being. I wonder if Sylvia is here today…

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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The nightmare had come to pass, heralded with a thumping at the door and the snide tones of someone maintaining the thinnest veneer of ignorance to the two crammed inside the closet. While proximity with the Club’s greatest enemy had already had her heart racing, it felt visceral enough that she was growing concerned the shelving units would start to vibrate their contents clear off their ledges.

Her eyes were narrowed under the threat of the door, barely drawing from the near certainty of discovery to note Regina adding her contact to her phone. A full name too, though was there really any harm in baring more light upon herself when she was ready to bury the hatchet over the Misoka matter? While her paranoia was entirely validated and she would be leaving her laptop in a tinfoil lined bag when not in use going forward, it also wasn’t healthy to have anyone come across her conspiracy board, the eight ball, etc.

Fortunately Regina was just as predisposed to not wanting such an intrusion, and unlike Roche her first thought wasn’t transforming and waltzing out invisible to the strangers eyes. Though given her luck it would have started a ghost story. No, Regina was as brazen without magical attire as she was in the guise of Ashbringer, and quite literally bowled their interloper over and berated her with a blistering fusilade of verbal barbs. It was an inspired offensive, and she found herself nearly as stunned as the stranger on the ground, but her wits had not entirely abandoned her.

Just enough she didn’t register the mark left on her pink-dusted cheeks as she stepped over Ember in passing. ”If you’re going to lie about a club, don’t do it while classes are still in session. Try that again with me and we’ll be having words….whoever you are.”

The Track Captain darted out of the room, eager to escape towards the normality of classes and muster herself after being so sorely tried and found wanting, a moral failure to go alongside all the others heaped upon the Rule Keeper in recent months. But for all that she was agonizing over how poorly she was handling matters, an incessant voice kept reminding her how long it had been since anyone had taken an interest in her. Had wanted to work with her instead of asking for her help.

And done so without the unsubtle threats of a mortician looming over their every disagreement.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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All of life was a matter of timing. Being in the right place at the right time equated to good fortune, but where either of those to inverted and disaster would crash upon a misbegotten soul. Having a mature, stunning college girl pick her up as though she were a lanky kitten and carry her into an empty classroom, then further still till they were crammed all-but chest to chest in a supply closet would have been a dream come true had it occurred a month earlier.

Had this happened the day after their beach vacation she would have thrown herself at Regina's mercy, desperate to feel even the barest inkling of assurance in a world she felt only wished to see her whittled down to nothing.

She was powerful in all the ways Rei was without needing to needle her with it whenever her displeasure was earned. The age gap only made her seem a more certain pillar of stability when Roche herself found the ground beneath her feet shifting like quick sand. Even the animosity of her attack could have been selfishly forgiven with the very answers now lavished upon her in return for a favor she would have done by virtue (IE, helping someone Roche liked) alone.

If not for Sylvia.

I'm a real piece of shit. Her expression curdled with self loathing, finding any feeling of regret she felt unbidden only made her despise the weakness of her heart. Hating herself for even feeling her cheeks heat under Regina's tame compliments towards her smell and weight.

Not even the relief in hearing her paranoia was validated and there was a team dedicated to surveiling their every message couldn't less the bitter loathing that bit into her with all the keenness of Topaz's arrows. Swallowing around a parched mouth she tried to back away, only for her back to rattle the bins behind her.

"As...As convoluted as that plan sounds in hindsight, I can't say it was wrong. If you came out and told us to leave her alone, we wouldn't have." And in Roche's ignorance she had no inkling of Suki's own harassment of Misoka preceding that dreadful flower shop fire. "Look, you've established you're powerful. Everyone else believes that. If you can set aside your ultimatum against the club, We- I can make sure no one goes after Misoka. Several would happily her friend, myself included."

Why was she, the Rule Keeper of the club, so weak to nothing more intense then a wandering eye and being carried? Her heart was racing under Regina's wondering eye and it sickened her to feel a budding appreciation for it, even as she grasped with the fervor of a sailor adrift upon a floating plank to her new, tentative relationship with a threefold girl.

"We can end this mess without a fight, and help Misoka get some normalcy again. Everyone wins."

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Regina had a point that it would be simpler not to even involve her directly with the club. Too easy was it to be caught out as feigning ignorance of magic if one of them transformed and acted wildly like Satan and her friend had. Better to just have a concerned friend ask on Misoka’s behalf and push for it herself.

”Fine, we’ll play it-”

Soft. Warm. Hot. Hot!

Those were just a few of the deranged musings that sprang forth with the cohesion of the eight-ball’s answers rattling in her pocket as she was swung by her buried face amidst a land of sapphic wonder. Certainly she’d entertained some thoughts of such, and a part of her had hoped- Earnestly. Desperately. Painfully.- That coming out would have led to such amidst the arms of someone trusted and close.

Purple and teal skin. Thinking of Nyxia in that context felt as shameful as the heat that bloomed from an ostensible enemy. Someone who was terrorizing the club for months and whose threats served as the blade to all their necks.

Roche’s skin crawled even as she tried to swallow the rush that came from another’s touch, and she turned away from Regina’s amused look. I’m pathetic. Acting like some puppy just because someone wanted to touch me.

”You just took me by surprise, Regina.” The Rulekeeper poorly deflected, still adamantly keeping her gaze askew, feigning an interest in the wall beside Regina. ”I’ll help with Misoka, so tell me why you are bothering with this sham of a one year revenge deadline? You planned that encounter. There’s no way it was random, so it accomplished something for you, something related to Misoka.”

A thought occurred to her, one drawn forth from the admittedly exceptionally terrible history of the club’s members. ”Was all this about Misoka’s family? Are they hurting her and you burned down the flower shop to distract them?”

”And how are you monitoring all our texts and electronic communications? Does Sink Queen have some power over technology or do you have some hacker hikikomori somewhere?” Roche’s paranoia was finally finding an outfit, proving a welcome distraction from how much she enjoyed that hug.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Tall and mysterious lost some of its luster when Regina herself was trying to skip past the pleasantries, dropping even the thinnest semblance of her holding any sort of grudge against them in the face of Misoka’s crisis. Had Roche not known the blonde she would have scoffed at such weakness, but Dark Magical Girls were selfish, not heartless. A bitch Roche was, but she’d be damned before she let someone she liked get shafted.

Especially when the Club was as equally responsible as Regina herself was.

She might have pointed it out verbally to test the college girl, but she was suddenly captivated by doing her best impression of a fish drowning on dry land. Roche’s fist beat against her chest as she doubled over, choking on air at the cavalier Magical Girl that had been terrorizing her waking and sleeping mind for months on end.

It was a credit to her steadfast- Read, stubborn as a mule- nature that she didn’t blush like a sunburnt gaijin. More a light dusting of color against sun-kissed skin before she dispelled it with a snort. ”As flattering it is to think they’d by me dating a senior, Suki would be smelling the lie and digging like a truffle pig in France.”

”Till recently none of them paid attention to my club. We’ll just say your a Sempai who graduated and came back because of issues with Misoka. I’ll tell them I confided in you about the Magical Stuff back when I was….not in the club.” Roche hissed the final part, turning away as the last of her blush faded with displeasure. All directed inward as she knew she was digging her hole deeper, but could they afford blowing up the situation if Misoka was in danger? Nyxia was the only one who might care enough to help if Roche asked, and Haruna was a given, but without Regina’s knowledge they’d be flying blind.

”I’ll get you into the club. We can make our case and hope the others are feeling reasonable, but I need some answers, Regina.”