"You said she turned... pink for a second?"

I swiveled on the chair, turning to face Al. "Yeah. I mean, I think it was pink. It was hard to tell in the heat of the moment."

Albert frowned, tapping his chin. "Hmm, I'm not sure. Dark Princess Eris, huh?"

He sat down on the edge of the bed, before leaning back and staring at the ceiling with his tablet on his chest.

"Yeah. I don't think she ever seriously fought against Callisto Pink and the Belles like, though," I commented. "I mean, of course they've fought a whole bunch, but Eris always fought in a way that would, well, provoke them and make things kinda comical..."

I frowned again, and thinking about our encounter.

The Jupiter Belles were a journeyman Magical Girl team, and the premier team in our home city of Pewterstone.

Callisto Pink had gone on record to state she had a level of 124 as of half a year ago, and she and the Jupiter Belles had been busy taking down bounties and fighting off whatever villains threatened their territory. They weren't the strongest team out there by far, but they weren't a joke.

"She's always taken her cat and mouse game with the Belles as a bit of a game," Al mused, stroking his chin. "And she's not the type to be interested in teaming up with a typical power-grubbing villain. At least I think. What on earth is she doing all the way down here?"

Albert had always been fascinated with superheroes and villains, and he was probably one of the, if not the biggest cape buff in the world.

If a notable Knight, Paragon, or Villain lived within the last sixty or eighty years or so, he'd probably looked into them and fantasized about how they would match up with someone else. As well as their strengths, weaknesses, and their emotional and social motivations. He even knew about obscure teams if they'd been around for more than a couple of months.

It was just one of those quirks I appreciated about him. The nerdy stuff had always been so important to him, and I kind of got into it too just following behind him when we were little kids.

Sure, I'd never be nearly as intense about it as him, but at least he was here now, sharing in it with me in my... well, new rookie role.

"It's weird. It felt like there was something deeper going on..." I muttered.

I sighed, bouncing a handball against the floor and catching it before continuing. "Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe she got bored and is just here looking for some cheap pickings. Kaleidoscope City has a fair amount of fresh talent, so maybe she's hoping for some easy marks."

Albert shook his head. "No, there's definitely something more than just that going on. Traffic is a nightmare right now, which is why my mom is staying in the suburbs until the crowds calm down. Moreover, whatever... your, er, Nightingale Eclipse did to save the world, she didn't manage to catch all the monsters in it. She just halted the zombie contagion and closed the rifts. There are still monsters running around smaller cities and rural areas. Traveling is a risk right now."

He stood up, walking over to the window to stare out at the city.

"I'm glad my mom got here in one piece, but frankly, there's a war going on in the supervillain underworld here. Lots of villains just watching and waiting for the opportunity to get their claws into whatever the hell is going on."

I wasn't entirely sure about what he was saying.

"So, what do you think, Al?"

He sighed, grabbing a glass and pouring himself some water.

"Coming down here is a big risk, and she attacked Kaleidoscope Academy of all places. This place is swarming with dozens of Magical Knights and god knows how many geniuses who ascended to Pioneers to further their education here. The fact that she had the guts to jump the hoops and kick off the fight right in the heart of the academy... well, it worries me."

I blinked. He did have a point. Eris was either stupid or crazy. Or both.

"So what do you think she's up to?"

"Well first of all, I don't think she's actually crazy or stupid, if that's what you're thinking. I didn't have the best vantage point of your fight up here, but it looked like she was deliberately starting trouble and escalating the situation. It's like she wanted a fight, but she didn't want to pick on you specifically. She picked a time when all the senior knights would be out dealing with the turf war that broke out between the supervillains. She was counting on it."

I did a double-take, smiling nervously.

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"Again, why am I not surprised you've already put this together? I mean, I knew you were a nerd, but I didn't know you were this much of a nerd."

He rolled his eyes, giving me a wry smirk. "Thanks for the ego boost, but I'm just making a couple of educated guesses. So, let's follow that train of thought for a second. We know Eris has been in Pewterstone City just playing the role of a harmless prankster for two years."

I nodded. "And she's now here in Kaleidoscope City, and attacked one of the most secure locations in the world. On paper, at least."

Al nodded in agreement. "Yeah... I still, er, have to apologize for dragging us away on the day of the Cataclysm, by the way. My bad. I didn't realize just how ridiculously fortified this place was."

I sighed, remembering when he'd grabbed me by the hand and fled into the city as zombies and monsters came pouring out of rifts in the auditorium on our first orientation day.

"Yeah, that was... not great."

But at the same time, it was the whole reason I was sitting here now as Magical Girl Harmonia Lux.

"Well, I don't see a pattern of her traveling outside her regular stomping ground, and she's been acting almost... well, childishly, for lack of a better word. Not in a playful way but more like..."

I couldn't help but grin at that statement. Eris had more than a couple of viral videos of her antics floating around.

"You mean the costumes, pranks, and the anime-inspired gimmicks and everything?"

He chuckled. "That, and the whole Eris persona. Like a middle-schooler acting out just because she's not getting enough attention or something. She'd be right around our age, right? The age would line up with her starting the Eris thing."

"Seems to track," I muttered.

"Now, take a look at this," Albert handed me his tablet, showing a forum thread he'd been reading. "It's easy to lose in the noise with all the other batshit insanity going on, but you'll find this interesting. Apparently Eris took over the old fort on Fordham Hill and sheltered a couple hundred civilians there during the Cataclysm with a couple of Pioneers. She was up there defending it with her longtime foes in the Belles."

He showed me images and footage of the fort from various social media sites linked to the thread.

My eyes widened as I started putting things together.

"Her MO has always been to stick to the shadows and do, well, silly stuff. Until the Cataclysm hit, and she saved all those lives. If you ask me, she's not really a villain or magical knight who's gone rogue. She's something else."

I took the tablet and began scrolling through the comments and posts. People were clearly in awe of her actions and confused by her. There were pictures of her without her trademark grandstanding and manic grin. She had her hands outstretched, holding back a horde of zombies outside with a massive red barrier.

It was hard to see, but her expression in those pictures was a mixture of concentration and genuine concern.

The next picture showed her feeding an elderly civilian some soup and smiling at him.

"Of course, everyone's chalking it up to extreme circumstances forcing her to work with the magical girls she hates," Al mused. "But I'm not so sure. I think there's more to this."

I nodded. "If I had to throw another piece of the puzzle in, I think she's intentionally taken up this Eris persona so nobody can recognize her real Dream Shift form. She was pretty mad when I disrupted her disguise for a second."

"If you ask me, I would guess that she's always intended to discard the Eris persona. She's just... waiting for something. Unfortunately, she's caused a lot of trouble along the way. When you disrupted her disguise, I think you made her realize she may not be able to cleanly drop her Eris persona without backlash. So she went from mischievous fun to seriously hostile."

"Maybe," I frowned. "She didn't seem that mad, though. Just kinda annoyed at me specifically, almost. And then she immediately pulled out a variation of Arcadia fucking Vox's Heartfelt Bloom move on me."

His eyes widened. "What makes you call what she did a Heartfelt Bloom? It didn't look like it from up here and I think I'd recognize it anywhere."

I sighed, palming my face. "She literally whispered it when casting it, like she wanted me to know what she was doing. I used Hopeful Heart Alchemy to counter it with the move Nightingale Eclipse always used in the cartoons. Then she... cried, saying that 'it's really you' or something."

"Huh. That's weird." He sat down on the bed, staring at the tablet and running his hands through his hair. "Yeah, I think I'm getting a picture here actually."

"Of what, Al?"

He leaned forward. "Well, let's take her at face value then. My theory is that all of this was to draw someone out. But I don't think she actually expected to find what she was looking for. Or rather, who. And she found you."

I took a moment to process that statement.

"You mean she was looking for me specifically? Why? How?"

He shrugged. "Well, I hate to jump to conclusions, but what if she was someone Nightingale Eclipse knew personally?"

I blinked. "Well, that's..."

Then a cold chill crawled down my spine.

"The timing of her arriving in Kaleidoscope City seems coincidental. But she did it in spite of the risk. Her behavior strikes me as someone wanting to find someone they knew they'd find here."

"So you're saying that Eris has been causing all sorts of trouble just to..."

He shrugged. "I'm saying it's worth considering."

I paused, thinking hard about the second day of the Cataclysm. I'd tried really hard not to think of it, but Al triggered a train thought that I just couldn't let go of.

"Al? I never quite erm, explained. But remember that final clash on top of Refuge Zeta?"

He nodded. "Yeah?"

"And how similar my finishing move was to... Arcadia Vox's Heartfelt Echo Aria?"

He blinked. "Yes, I have a pretty good memory. What about it?"

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck.

"It sounds insane, but you know how I told you my mother loaned me a ludicrous amount of mana using her Signature Talent?"

He nodded. "Yes, of course."

"Well, the part I left out is... okay, hear me out for a second. I mean it when I say this is going to sound insane."

"Sienna, we literally had horrifying monsters pouring out of rifts from god-knows-where that caused a zombie apocalypse, and some shadowy demonic bullshit yank us into some kind of pocket dimension. At this point, I don't think there's all too much that would sound insane compared to that."

"Well," I started, rubbing my arm awkwardly.

The logical side of my brain was telling me to just admit that I'd had a convenient mental breakdown and delusions driven by exhaustion to explain what had actually happened.

But...

"I pretty much had what I think was Arcadia Vox's ghost helping me out the whole time after Red Masque went down," I quietly explained.

He froze for a second, staring at me as his tablet slipped out of his hand.

"Wait... wait."

...

"...What?"