Chapter Text
“So,” Mélissa stabbed at the air between them with the limp fry she was holding, “we all agree there’s been something fucky going on, right?”
After pulling her away from Colette, Kohar had steered Maeve around several tables before finally arriving at the small table along the west wall, where Mélissa was already sitting, pigging out on her Sloppy Joe.
The first few moments were still a bit awkward between them. Maeve nibbling at her turkey club, Mélissa trying to clean the mess off her fingers, Kohar looking like she had a million things to say, but didn’t want to be the first one to talk for once. It was only once she’d finished wiping her face down that Mélissa spoke up, leaving Maeve off kilter in the other direction. She still wasn’t quite used to how… forward these girls could be.
“You mean t-the…, w-well, from a certain point of…, I mean, wouldn’t s-someone else have noticed and…” the stammering started coming out like a waterfall as her mind tried to pull her in 10 different directions at once. Kohar’s hand landing on her shoulder was much appreciated to bring her back down.
“I think it’s pretty obvious that she’s got at least some of the same thoughts Mél, given that she went to the trouble of hunting us down for once, though maybe it’s just my winning personality.” Rather than dodge the fry Mélissa sent flying at her shit-eating grin, Kohar snapped it out of the air, which did momentarily quiet her as she chewed.
“She’d tell us herself if you gave her a minute, motormouth. So, what do you think Maeve? We only ran into each other a short time ago, but wouldn’t you say that something… well, a bit weird has been happening?
“W-we’re… talking about those… attacks right? It’s seemed kinda strange to me, b-but I usually stick to myself over in m-my corner of the warehouse district so… d-do we really know that something not normal is happening? I mean, sometimes the m-monsters are just really tough for a while, it happens.”
“You sure about that?” The two teammates shared a quick glance with each other before turning back. “The two of us have patrolled all over the city, lots of nights we do fill in work when some other girls are out, and we’ve never seen anything like the other night before, or the other two times. Plus, if this was just because of a monster surge, why haven’t I heard any other girls talking about it, or the CDD? Usually they’re all over that kinda stuff.” Kohar nodded along, busy slurping noodles up out of her cup.
“So.. You two have never seen anything like them either? I-I mean, you said that when we went out for dinner before, b-but now, it’s not just a one off thing, is it?”
“Yeah, exactly. One weird monster is just another night on patrol. Two…”
“Three” Kohar mumbled from behind a mouthful of noodles. “Don’t forget there was that other girl, Witch… something, who got a whammy laid on her by a monster that sounds pretty similar to the ones we’ve run into.”
“Right, yeah, her. What’s tha saying, twice is a coincidence, three times is… really weird? Whatever. The point is it seriously making my head hurt every time I try to think about it!”
“Well, i-if they are something… different from the usual monsters, wouldn’t some other girls have noticed? O-or the CDD! They’re always asking us about the monsters we’ve fought, what they look like.”
“Yeah, and when has anyone ever used that stuff they’ve collected? Plus, speaking of how they looked, well… it seems strange to call just one monster weird looking but… you know what I mean right?”
“Well, it’s hard to say, I-I mean, the monsters seem to change every night. Though, if I had to say something, they almost seem like they’re… made different?”
“Yeah!” Kohar jumped in, clearly having reached her limit on quiet. “It’s like I was telling her last night. Regular monsters, they’re all solid and junk, and when you beat em down they melt, bloop bloop, down into that purple gunk before disappearing. These things though, it feels like…” The pause stretched out out long enough that Maeve and Mélissa glanced at each other. Kohar running out of words was clearly a staggeringly rare occurrence. When she finally started up again, her voice was more subdued then usual.
“Staring at them they’re like… ok, so sometimes, on really clear nights, if things are calm I use my powers. I use them to… well, fling myself up, far above the city. It’s nice, you know? Best view there is. But when I saw those things… it reminded me, of looking up into the sky on moonless nights, if you looked hard at the void between stars. An endless void, darker than black, with tiny points of light twinkling at it’s edge. It’s like looking into a walking hole.”
The other two could only stare at that. “That’s… a bit more than when we we’re talking last night. You, uh, you ok there Kohar?”
There was a deep breath in, out then “Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just didn’t want bring it up last night. Seemed a little… silly at the time. But when you said they didn’t look like regular monsters to you too… oh! Speaking of them being weird, weren’t you saying something about your radar or something?”
Mélissa actually blushed a little at that, “Well, I mean, that was just my powers acting up, we don’t need to focus on…”
“But that was what lead us to Team Elemental Dragon isn’t it? I mean, that night was pretty chaotic but…” Both of them were staring at Maeve, gears clearly turning behind her eyes.
“Hey yeah! You were looking at your radar thing Mél, then you said something about a weird reading and then you were the first one to take off!”
“Well yeah, cause I saw one of the dots that indicate other magical girls winking out, my readings didn’t pick up a monster.”
“N-no, but you did mention something about static? That’s what drew your attention to that group of girls right? If that’s the case then that’s proof that these things aren’t regular monsters, right? They show up on your scan but don’t look like… whatever regular monsters look like to you!”
The copper haired girl was left sputtering at that, while Maeve and Kohar continued their conversation.
“So I guess we start hunting them with Mélissa’s radar then? It’s range isn’t that big, only a small fraction of the city, but it’s the only lead we’ve got.”
“Well… n-not necessarily. Elemental Dragon, and the rest of her team fought the… things for a bit before we showed up, they might have noticed something. Though, I never got their actual names. There’s also that other girl we could talk to, you didn’t really get much information from her, right? Though… I dunno if they’d want to talk about it right now, it wasn’t exactly a good experience for them.”
“Hmm, you think they wouldn’t want to talk to me? Well, if you think so, I’ll let you do it.” Maeve had to gape and sputter at that, but as usual Kohar gave her no room as she kept talking. “And while you’re doing that, me and Mélissa can… I dunno, talk to other groups more? Shake down some CDD lady to see if they know something? I dunno, we’ll figure something out.
It seemed to be a knack of Kohar’s, the perfectly timed last word as the end of lunch bell rang out, sweeping their meeting away in a multi-coloured deluge. Somehow Maeve kept ending up with the jobs she was least suited to.
For now though, more school.
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The Future’s Promise library was one of the nicer parts of the school. Well, the whole school was nice really, the City government put a not inconsiderable amount of funding into the place, enough to cause some grumbling in the more jaded public school teachers. The library though, it was always a stop on the tour given to parents of new magical girls.
High, packed shelves serviced with solid wood rolling ladders, innumerable padded nooks to lounge in, massive windows on one side to let the natural light in, it was designed to evoke a kind of awe in visitors. Also to try and keep notoriously rowdy magical girls at least a bit quiet with it’s magnificence. Worked better than most teachers attempts.
As a (usually) asocial and nervous girl, Maeve certainly knew her way around it. A quick sweep of her usual hiding spots revealed nothing, only to spot the blindingly white haired girl sitting with a book near the entrance… like a normal person would do if they were trying to spot someone coming in.
Suppressing a small blush, Maeve made her way over.
The other girl was deep in a book that had math symbols on the cover, or at least she appeared to be, but it didn’t take long to realize that her eyes clearly weren’t scanning the page at all, fixed on some point only she could see. Daydreaming, not an uncommon reaction when faced with math.
“W-were you waiting for me?” The way the other girl jumped at that only furthered the theory, though she quickly tried to compose herself again.
“Oh, Maeve right? Yes, I was just… reviewing some statistics work while I waited.” The quick glance she gave the page betrayed her. With a quick snap, the book closed as the other girl stood up, briefly checking her uniform for wrinkles. “Well, shall we… find a table to talk, I guess, before they all get taken?”
“Yeah, we should… well it would be a good idea to make a plan before we start working.”
Other students were beginning to file in, the ones that actually cared a bit about their classes anyway, but the pair was able to grab one of the available tables pretty easily with Colette clearing a path, spreading the contents of their books bags across it in seconds.
For a few seconds the two just sat there, pink eyes boring into Maeve’s golden ones. As seemed to be the norm lately, people weren’t gonna just make it easy on her.
“S-so, uhhh” rifling around in her binder, Maeve pulled out the form that she’d only had a few minutes to glance at so far. “W-we’re supposed t-to pick a non-aquatic animal n-native to the city, and examine how t-they’ve adapted to living in a exclusively urban environment?”
“Oh! Is that what it mea- I mean,” the white haired girl picked up and quickly skimmed the form before putting it down again, “Yes, yes thats right. Makes perfect sense for biology, doesn’t it?”
“Y-yes? I, um, I… well, it doesn’t say what kind of animal to examine, other than n-non-aquatic I guess cause they can go through the barrier s-so, I guess we just choose one?”
“Seems right to me” Colette said, in a much more commanding tone than before, as she scanned the assignment page again. “Anything that runs, flies, digs and so on, just no swimming. I see a lot of birds when I’m patrolling, what about you?”
“Ah, uh, yeah, I guess I see some, I usually p-patrol the industrial district though, birds don’t seem to like it there much.”
“Well just because it’s a bit unseemly, sooty, …dirty, that’s no reason to be ashamed. You’re still doing the Founder’s work, does your entire team patrol just the warehouses?”
“… W-what? I thought we were… I-I don’t have a team I… birds?”
“You don’t? When we ran into each other the other morning you said you had been fighting along side some other girls. You’re not… solo are you?” The other girls eyes flashed as they fixed on her. What was this, an interrogation?
“I-I mean, yeah, I’m a solo, my, uh, my powers… don’t really work that well with other girls, so I usually patrol along, usually… b-but what’s wrong with being a solo? A-and weren’t we supposed to be talking about birds?” While she herself didn’t have a great reputation, most girls didn’t usually care if you were a solo, duo, or part of a team, though some saw them as flashy attention hogs. Maeve could only hope that wasn’t where her partner was going with this.
“Oh! No, no, nothing wrong, I just susp… I thought, that the other girls you mentioned, they were your team, and when you said you were solo, it made me think that…”
“Oh, because of your team and the fight and…”
“Yeah! Uh, yeah, so, birds right? Should we… I don’t know, try to find a nest or something.”
“Umm, I don’t know about.” Yes please, back to the homework, away from… whatever that was. “Would birds really be a good choice? I mean, they don’t like to get close to you, we’d have climb trees to get to the nests, wouldn’t something on the ground be easier?”
Colette sat back in her chair at that, clearly thinking about the issue. The momentary breather was appreciated, seriously, there was no call for that kind of intensity earlier. Maybe she just really didn’t like homework. Maeve had heard that some really traditional families didn’t like the government imposing any kind of requirements on their daughters, but she really couldn’t say. Maybe she was just… weird, even if it felt bad to think that, her own team had broken up with her after all.
“Well… there is this park near my house, over near the government building, you know general area? There’s this groundhog that must live there, I’ve seen it so many times when walking to school. Maybe that would be easier?”
“Government buildings? Like City Hall? Huh, I wouldn’t have thought you live in that direction.”
“Why?” Colette eyed her with restrained interest.
“W-well…” Oh great, now she was focusing on her again, Maeve was kicking herself for bringing up something so insignificant. “I-it’s just, w-when I ran into you the other morning, at the battle site, it’s in the o-other… well, never mind. A g-gopher you said? T-that would probably work better. T-they usually s-stick to their holes right?”
“Yeah, if we can find it I guess we could come back several days in a row to check it? I don’t really know much about groundhogs, but I guess that’s the point of the assignment.”
There were still a few more things to sort out. Colette invited Maeve over to her house for dinner so they could make the initial observations together. After a bit more discussion, it was decided that Colette would do most of the observations, since Maeve didn’t live very close to the park, and then she’d pass the observations along for Maeve to write up. It seemed a pretty sensible system.
But, unlike with Kohar and Mélissa, the awkwardness from the start never really went away.