Magical Fracas, Episode 4: School Rumble?

[Arhra]

"You're not hurt?" Mitsuko asked, hastening over to Iriumi and Rei. She took in Iriumi's limp, leg bent posture, locked into position by the restraint of her unpowered Barrier Jacket. This was something Mitsuko could do something about.

An unholy gleam lit in Mitsuko's eyes as she halted in a ready stance, the armoured portions of her Barrier Jacket settling about her. "Hold still." she said to the trapped Verda-type mage, voice calm and steady.

She took a deep breath to focus and then swept her naginata in a wide, powerful arc straight at Iriumi, trailling a near instantly fading purple edge. "Phantom Cut!" Incentivised, Ivy dissolved Iriumi's Barrier Jacket as Mitsuko's blade swept straight through it. A purple line glowed on Iriumi for a moment but then faded, the blade having done no harm to her.

Blissfully unaware of the heart attack she had probably given Iriumi, Mitsuko turned away partially to address everyone. "We have to hurry, this stasis isn't going to last much longer. Otherwise we'll be missed. Bright Day, storage mode."

["Deactivating Barrier Jacket."] Bright Day chimed in response. Mitsuko's crimson dominated attire glowed and dissolved into red motes, Bright Day collapsing down into a smaller version of the sunburst surrounded amber jewel that was just below the blade. Mitsuko tucked the amulet inside her returned school shirt.

[phil_]

Synopsis: Panko tries to get to the room in her normal shape before all of you, and I godmode that she succeeded because I didn't think you'd mind. She probably doesn't wake up Daichi.

For some reason, the phrase "Run, you fool" came into Panko's mind. It probably wasn't Picky.

"Well, everyone's ok now, right? Good ok bye." Panko hopped as fast as she could out the portal and back onto the roof. Hopefully, no one was waiting for her in the classroom. As she jumped down the stairs, she mentally congratulated herself on Plan: Get back before anyone else and pretend to be frozen.

"Panko, the barrier just got weaker. What happened? Did you manage to do something for once?"

Panko chose to ignore Picky for the time being. She could explain when Plan: GBBAEaPtbF was a success. Maybe make him worry a little.

Arriving on her class's floor, Panko hastily looked down both sides of the hall to make sure no one was there. Seeing no one, she transformed on the stairs and, back in her uniform and high-school shape, clumsily spy-rolled across the hall and sidled along the wall back to her class, sneaking back into the rear door. No one seemed to be moving. With a sigh of relief, Panko took her chair again and hoped that everyone would start moving again before anyone else reached the class.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Iriumi tried to fight down the urge to scream, but her body had half-froze when Ivy was forced to dismiss their barrier jacket in time to see the long bladed staff of Mitsuko strike ever-so-close to her body.

"What the hell!?" came Ivy's incredulous comment. Iriumi managed to collapse back onto her knees again. Ignoring Ivy's ranting about how dangerous a move Mitsuko pulled, she managed to unsteadily get to her feet again. The 'time zone' was faltering.

"Ivy, how long does it take us to get down to our classroom again?"
"And not to mention-- Maybe half a minute, if we sprint," Ivy managed to calm down to respond. Iriumi didn't say anything else, but bent her head down and pumped her arms as fast as she could as she raced back to the classroom.

[Astral Harmony]

Shimizu checked herself over, and decided to go to the infirmary. Panko's healing was sufficient, but the girl was a Verda and Shimizu wasn't sure if she trusted the effects of healing magic...at least not without a physical checkup with someone. Besides, she didn't feel like explaining the bruises and minor scrapes on her body to Kiyuri and the other students yet.
"I'm going to go make sure I'm not really hurt. Anyone coming with?"

[PhoenixFlame]

["Power is restored to shields, master."] Ceres proper informed Akari as the beam terminated, and the mass glittering of attacks and defenses began to clear and allow them to properly see the bellringer. Electric arcs of energy finished reforming around Akari, restoring integrity to her deflectors that Ceres had been forced to terminate to allocate enough power to their attack.

"Oh... Damn it!" Akari was slightly taken aback by Ceres' sudden reaction, as the machine rarely became agitated enough to resort to cursing. Of course, soon Akari understood why. "I knew hostile ECM interfered with my auto-targeters, but..."

"It's okay, Ceres." Akari whispered softly, with a guilty voice, "I should have known they hadn't moved out of the way yet." she stood there in the back as Mitsuko and the others helped Rei and Iriumi back to their feet, "They look alright. Heh... We should probably get back to class before the field terminates, huh?"

"Indeed."

Sheepishly unwilling to confront Iriumi after her mistake, Akari and Ceres silently slip away down the rooftop access stairwell.

[Arhra]

Dashing into the still mostly unmoving classroom, Mitsuko rushed for her seat and it suddenly dawned on her where she'd seen Iriumi before. The Verda-type mage was that popular girl sitting right in front of her! At least two Verda-type mages were in this very class with her!

The classroom unfroze.

The teacher at the front of the class looked from side to side for a moment, confused. There were students scattered all over the place, some still coming in the door. "Please be seated." the angular featured man said. "No sleeping during homeroom!" he barked at Daichi in the back corner.

He waited a few seconds for the scraping of seats to end and then continued.

"Hello everybody, I am Mr Yamada and I will be your home room teacher for this semester." he turned to write it on the board and frowned slightly; he'd already written it down.

He frowned again at the fact one of the windows near the front had been forced wide open, a strong breeze coming through. He stepped over to it and pulled it back to a more respectable angle.

"Sakiko, are you OK? I felt terrible leaving you like that." Mitsuko whispered urgently to her friend sitting next to her.

"What are you talking about?" Sakiko asked, looking blank. Her eyes were unfocused and she seemed half asleep.

"No whispering!" Mr Yamada snapped. There was something wrong and he couldn't put his finger on it, making him crosser than normal.

"Since we have a great many new students, we should get everyone to know each other." he said, his smile returning. "Could all the transfer students come to the front..."

* * *

The day seemed to drag on longer than it had any right to but then, finally, it was lunch.

Mitsuko untensed a little. Iriumi was a potential enemy, there was that strange child mage, her friend had lost her memory and there were a lot of unanswered questions.

But now she could attend to at least a little of it.

She sought out Shimizu immediately. "Are you alright?" she asked, coming up on Shimizu and her friend Kiyuri. She'd seen the fiery redhead come back from the nurse, but wanted to be sure Shimizu was okay, feeling she was partially responsible for getting her caught up in this.

Then perhaps together with Akari they could make a delegation and confront Demi or Iriumi. It was a pity she had no idea who Masked Man was.

[Astral Harmony]

Shimizu laughed nervously and scratched at the back of her head. "Ha ha ha, yeah. The nurse told me to stop getting into fights, as if I was one of those girls who gets rebelious and winds up in a gang or something."

Kiyuri blinked. Shimizu had been a little wild for a couple of years after her father died, but Kiyuri decided to keep that under wraps. "Hey, wanna eat with us, you 'n' your sister, Mitsuko? Man, I'm starving!"
"Starving, huh?" Kiyuri asked. "You didn't used to be like that."
Shimizu leaned in kind of close and lowered her voice so that Mitsuko and Kiyuri alone would hear. "It's the Star Brand. Using it takes up a lot of energy and I get so hungry afterwards."

Shimizu's homemade lunch was, as it always was, chinese. This time she made sweet and sour pork with veggies. "Chinese again?" Kiyuri groaned.
"It's all I know how to cook," Shimizu shrugged. "But I am starting to learn some western recipes. Some weekend, I wanna do some grilling. Cook up some serious meat."
Then, Shimizu opened her right palm towards her face. "Maybe I can cook using the Star Brand?"
Kiyuri chuckled. "But I thought you wanted to grill, not obliterate."

[Teal Mage]

Summary: Alex and Mia skip classes, Mia puts the pieces together about Alex being a mage, they theorize a bit.

After a long and surprisingly difficult walk, Alex and Mia arrived at their destination; Mia's house. The witch's parents weren't home in the daylight hours, so they didn't need to worry about explaining why Mia was having a hard time standing, without Alex's magical help.

"You're sure you don't mind skipping the first day?" Mia asked, as the pair ascended the stairs to her attic bedroom, "The Principle might not be happy about that start."

"It's the first day of school." Alex replied with a small smile, "What would we do there anyway? The first day never means anything." He paused in mid step, "Why are we going to your room? It’s so dark in there."

"To talk." Mia said without stopping, "Just trust me, kay?" She reached the stair's peak, and pulled open the black painted wood dark waiting there. She threw a look that all but said, 'well, hurry up!' Over her shoulder before plunging into the dimly lit room beyond.

Alex frowned, his connection to her had snapped when she'd stepped through the doorway.

She uses these strange Earth Magics, Miranda observed coolly, I'm afraid even I'm at a loss to predict what she can do.

"You've been very helpful lately." Alex murmured dryly, before following after Mia. He bit back a gasp when he crossed the door's threshold-it felt like he'd just walked through a bucket of ice water. Miranda's mental presence had fallen into a fit of spitting coughs.

"Sorry, did I forget to mention the wards?" Mia asked, sitting on the foot of her dark quilted bed. "Nothing magical gets into my room without my saying so, or," she smiled coldly, "it gets a bad case of freezer burn."

"N-not bad." Alex stammered with a shakily laugh; he could see patches of frost on his sleeves.

"After what you said in the hall," Mia gestured to the dark wood desk and chair across from her bed, "I thought we should wait to talk about what happened in the school until we got here-if there is someone behind that Time Slip, they won't be able to get in here, or listen in on us, without setting off my wards." She smiled, "If you thought a Bone Snake was bad, wait until you try scrying on a Witch's Room."

"I'd rather not." Alex replied, dusting the frost from his sleeves as he walked toward the chair. "What did I say in the hall?" He asked, pulling the chair out and turning to toward Mia's bed, before settling gracefully onto its black leather upholstery.

"You said we weren't safe." Mia replied, "The Time Slip wasn't random-It was orchestrated by whoever set up that orange field."

"I don't know about that." Alex sighed, "It's possible, but I'm not sure."

"Why wouldn't you be-" Mia frowned, cutting herself off. "You're not telling me something." The Witch paused again, gray eyes studying Alex carefully, "You're fully awakened, aren't you? Just like the others." She sounded like she was musing aloud, "That explains why I don't sense anything of the Craft around you, and why you know about phenomena I don't recognize."

Silence held in the room for a time, as Alex stared out toward one of Mia's heavily curtained windows. For Mia's part, she sat patiently, she knew how to wait.

Just tell her. Miranda intoned after the silence had stretched. She's involved now, whether either of you like it or not.

After another moment's thought Alex nodded, "I'm one of the Verda, yeah." He paused, "But, I'm not the best person to explain this all to you." The blond smiled crookedly, "Let me call an expert." He paused, remembering her words, "Kay?"

Gray eyes glinting excitement, Mia nodded, "Go ahead."

Making me do all the hard work? Miranda asked dryly.

Making you earn your keep. Alex replied with equal wryness.

"This is my Familiar," Alex stated firmly, as a summoning circle written in white light appeared in front of him, "Miranda." White light blossomed up from the circle, like a pair of wings unfurling...

((OoC: Thought it would be long enough as it is, stopping there!))

[Arhra]

Mitsuko felt a little tension unknot. Shimizu was fine. She gladly accepted Shimizu's offer to have lunch together, sitting down next to Shimizu and Kiyura and shuffling over to make room for Akari. She tucked into her meal of rice and leftover chicken curry. Still not entirely over the mana depletion and sore from tired from her and Akari's little training session, she hadn't thought to prepare a lunch yesterday evening.

With the subject of lunches in vogue, Shimizu considered something new. "Maybe I can cook using the Star Brand?"

Kiyuri chuckled. "But I thought you wanted to grill, not obliterate."

Mitsuko chuckled too. "I never thought about it that way." she saind introspectively. "I wonder what we could do with this..." she trailed off, trying to think of an unobstrusive word "...stuff." she finished lamely.

She put down her chopsticks to snap her fingers dramatically. "That's the other thing I was thinking." she said. "Perhaps we should make an after school club to give us some time to organise ourselves? I don't know..." Mitsuko knew she wanted at least a little time to herself. "It's something to think about at least."

[Astral Harmony]

Shimizu followed Mitsuko's dramatic finger snapping with one of her own. "That's an awesome idea, Mitsuko! I can already see it, too. We could have a kickass name, like 'Masters of Mana' or something like 'Spellsabers!'"

Kiyuri was trying hard not to laugh. "Spellsabers? Yeah, I think you're just about done watching anime for the next several years."
Then she looked around. "Hey, Shimizu? Where's Kazuki? You 'n' him're an item now so I figured he'd come to eat lunch with us."
Shimizu looked almost appraisingly at a piece of pork held in her chopsticks. "It's not like I keep tabs on him or something, but I think he's always so busy with the student council and can't come out."
"Oh, that's right. I imagine when the current president graduates, they'll elect my brother to take control."

Shimizu stuffed a couple of carrots into her mouth. "But enough about Kazuki. This club sounds great. Hey, we can do a website 'n' stuff! Find good people out there who have the gift of mana but aren't involved in the fight to save the world, yet. Oh, and we can advertise like in that one anime. I have no problem wearing a bunny girl costume to pass out fliers."
Kiyuri had a hand on her forehead. "Yep, definitely too much anime, Shimizu."