(30)

Well, that was it. Nine trips over the last four and a half days, and the last one was over.

For a week, the brunette had been escorting her best friend from her house to school and back. Honestly, that wasn't really much different from how they normally operated, at least of a morning, and they'd had the opportunity to visit each others' clubs while waiting for the other to get out.

Haru had been ecstatic at getting to spectate an airsoft skirmish, though the brunette still insisted paintball would have been better. The blonde countered by still insisting that she was being a masochist.

She couldn't help it, though. Airsoft was already so quiet. For the impact force to also be so relatively low that you could literally see the pellets arc through the air across even relatively short distances, it just took her out of the immersion.

That didn't help her case with Haru, of course, who teased her for the idea of actually wanting to get shot at in a believable warzone.

On the other hand, she was glad that it had been the off week for Haru's karaoke club. The girl was an angel on the mic, but the brunette had the impression she'd be dragged into trying it, too. Suffice it to say, she didn't carry a tune quite as well as Haru did.

Instead, they had a cooking club, which was something the brunette at least knew she wouldn't embarrass herself with. Unfortunately, it was a club Haru was in specifically to improve her homemaking skills.

... Yeah, poor Haru was that girl. She knuckled down and suffered through being the girl's taste tester and assistant, but it felt more like being an assistant emergency responder and poison control specialist.

Why in the world she thought baking soda and baking powder were interchangeable, or that she could make up more time with more yeast ...

... The important part was that they'd managed to squeeze some ... memorable experiences out of the situation, but now all of the precaution was looking to have been a waste of time.

The demons hadn't done a thing. There wasn't even so much as a whiff of sulfur all week.

... Cooking club notwithstanding, and the only demon there was blonde ...

Of course, Reina's vision wasn't actually about Haru, not actively. It was about Dakunaito's appearance, and it was entirely possible he would choose to do so independently of anything else.

But, again, it was the end of the week. He was out of time to show. Almost.

The Witches had one last meeting in the club room before leaving school for the weekend, and Natsumi had again pushed the idea that if Dakunaito didn't show, they'd broken the prophecy. She and Reina had both again insisted that wasn't going to happen, but even Ran had put forward that maybe they'd at least misinterpreted the vision.

They were being premature. That was, if anything, the biggest indication that things were about to go sideways.

... Even Haru criticized her for thinking about it too much like the plot of some movie. And, sure, that was a trope for good reason, but it was also a rule of thumb. When everyone's on high alert, everything goes great. When they start dropping their guard, that's when problems happen.

Something pulled her out of her retrospection, a sight that stopped her in her tracks. It was something she'd walked over every day that week, and even more often than that. She was near her favorite resting spot on the bank of the river, but Haru's house was on the other side of it from her's. She crossed it every time she went from her house to Haru's, or from Haru's to home.

This completely normal sight had suddenly sent a shiver all the way down her spine.

She was walking home, coming up on a bridge. She was alone and ruminating about the danger to come.

She was fulfilling all of the event's conditions and hadn't even noticed. She had been the one, not Reina, that Dakunaito had been obsessed with since her arrival. And, unlike in the vision, she wasn't dead.

The brunette yanked her phone out of her pocket and didn't bother opening up the phone book. She keyed the microphone and ordered the device directly.

"Call Reina."

The phone rang once and half again ... and then lost all signal as a familiar feeling passed over her.

There was nothing in front of her. She let her phone drop free-fall from her left hand to free it, golden light flashing into it as she spun around to point the gun behind her.

...

Dakunaito didn't even flinch at the barrel in his face. "Your instincts are getting better," his barrel voice noted with even temperament. "If you hadn't hesitated to pull the trigger, it would have been perfect."

She nearly responded that if she misjudged, she'd have blasted everything behind him, but they were in a seal. There were only echoes of what would actually have been behind him, and no one there to be injured by it.

She had to admit he was right. There was no valid reason not to go ahead and fire. To do anything less was to forget that nobody involved in this shadow war was human.

Instead, she stepped back away from him and lowered the weapon, letting it dissipate back to a bracelet around her wrist.

That made the demon raise an eyebrow. Or, well, narrow one coal red light and expand the other, which gave the impression of the gesture. "And now you dismiss your weapon entirely? Have you grown so mighty, Changeling, that you think you have such a luxury?"

"You don't have yours drawn, either," she pointed out. His hand rested on the scabbard, but it only rested. He had made no hostile movement.

"And you think us equals?"

"I think you only single me out like this when you want to talk," she countered. "That's harder to do if we're trading blows because I picked a fight that didn't need to happen."

Those burning coals narrowed again. "You knew I was coming before I arrived. How?"

So he'd noticed, she thought. "Reina had a premonition that you were going to show up." The brunette crossed her arms. "Funny thing is, the premonition said you were coming for her."

"... Certainly, if I wanted to kill her directly, it is more than within my power," he agreed, "but it's a waste of time to target Witches individually. They just run away until their companions arrive. Like trying to swat a gnat with a polearm. What would I have to gain from such nonsense?"

She hesitated for a moment, measuring her words, and the demonic man in front of her. "Would you believe me if I told you it was because she was the only Witch left alive?"

He stared back at her, and somehow the shadows within his helmet grew darker. Finally, his eyes both narrowed and burned with brighter intensity. "... Yes."

Now it was her turn to arch an eyebrow. That reaction of his had been ... interesting. "Seems like both of our sides are having prophecy issues, then."

But he spun away, swatting his hand through the air in violent dismissal. "Religious zealots, nothing more!" He paused, though, and his eyes glowed in thought. "But if their prophesies are in agreement with those of Sacred Witch, perhaps I haven't been giving them the credit they deserve."

Dakunaito shook his head. "It does not matter. They are wrong, regardless. All of the Witches yet live, and reality does not care for the state of their scales."

"Scales?"

The demon paused, looking back at her and clearly questioning if this segue was worth continuing. Finally, he turned to fully face her again. "The scales are both a metaphor and a divining tool. As the former, it refers to the state of the conflict between the Witches and the Demons. Their faithful believe that when it tips fully in our favor, a being known as the Arbiter will come and bring us to a new world."

The brunette wrinkled her nose. "You guys have an entire religion based on our defeat? Haven't we only been around for a few years?"

His sigh sounded gutteral. "To be honest, it is difficult to pinpoint when the belief began, but it is rampant among the upper echelon. Even the Imperial House are believers, and the faith, itself, claims to be ancient beyond measure."

He focused his gaze on her. "More to the matter, however, like Sacred Witch, they insist that the conflict should be at an end, and the Arbiter's coming is nigh, even though every reading of the scales shows that they remain in balance."

"And this new world he's supposed to bring you to," she questioned, "what is that, some kind of heaven?"

"We demons are immortal beings," Dakunaito answered sternly. "We have no concept of an afterlife. When we die, our energies are drawn back together until we reform. The new world is exactly that. Our native one is miserable and barren compared to the world you know. It is why even those that don't follow the prophets, such as myself, still continue the fight to conquer yours."

"Our shadow war," she summarized, "is a territorial dispute."

The demon nodded. "But it wouldn't solve the problem. If we die in another world, no matter how long we've been there, no matter what provisions we make, we will still reappear in our native one. Even across time and space, our essence remains bound to that wretched place. The faithful believe the Arbiter won't just grant us a new, better world, but he will make it our native world, so that even upon death, we will not return to the land of our birth."

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"And now that they may actually be onto something?"

Dakunaito lowered his head as his eyes narrowed. "Then it is even worse. The reason I find the oracles and their beliefs so repulsive is because they are short-sighted and narcissistic. Demonkind is few in number and yet constantly feuds against itself. Only the emperor's might as the strongest demon to ever live holds us on a single task. Even if the Arbiter does exist, and even if he grants us Paradise, itself, we will burn it down to spite one another."

He had begun to pace, gesticulating furiously as he ranted. "What we need is reform. What we need is an entire cultural shift. What we need is an outlet for our destruction that isn't centered on ourselves! We need--"

But with visible effort, he locked his emotions down again and turned back to the Witch before him. "It does not matter," he growled. "I am not the emperor, and you are not a demon. It is none of our concern, and only derails us further."

"You want to talk about the train," she guessed, though she said it like a statement of fact.

Those lights within his helmet narrowed again, a motion which only seemed to make them burn brighter. "If all of the prophesies truly align, that protodemon was to be your death."

Yeah, she figured that was what he had issue with.

"That's actually your fault," she told him, and didn't miss how the grip on his scabbard tightened. "Without the sword, we couldn't have severed the train cars and reduced the mass behind it. That made it light enough for me to stop."

"Flame Witch did that." Now she knew he'd been watching, not that he hadn't been her top suspect for the attack in the first place. "What was supposed to kill her?"

"We're figuring it was Wren screwing with her ancestral armor," she provided. "She'd have been alone and it inherited the same fire resistance she did."

"Alone?" he repeated. "The entire lot of you were there."

"Yes," the brunette confirmed, "because we were testing the demon weapons."

Again, he growled. "And the other two? Don't tell me that idiotic puppet--" He paused, and the expression he gave made her think of a scowl. "No, it absolutely could have killed that useless brat."

"Haru really doesn't have any combat instincts at all," she agreed, choosing to ignore how he was talking about her best friend. "But Thunder Witch still would have been there, and Marione definitely couldn't have taken her."

He nodded in agreement. "Then the constructs on the train?"

"Nope, surprisingly, she handled those all on her own. Our current speculation is that she was to die to a demon attack sometime in the last week."

"Those two clowns were heard planning another attack," Dakunaito informed her, "but they backed out, something about the triteness of repeating the same play twice. I don't pretend to understand their nonsense."

The brunette nodded back. "Then we figure Ran was supposed to lose to Mr. Sato. We don't know if Thunder Witch still would have gotten captured like I did, but if she had, it's possible she couldn't break out in time, and if she hadn't, Ran would have been alone."

"A common theme among all of what should have been successful attacks," the warrior mused. "And yet, in every time, they weren't alone specifically because you were there, the weapons I gave you uniquely beneficial."

"They weren't much good against Mr. Sato," she corrected him, "and they didn't play a part in the last week, except in making sure I lived to see it."

His eyes burned brighter. "You claim to be the key aspect, yourself? Presumptuous, changeling."

"Not because I'm me," she clarified, "but because I'm not supposed to be here. We've tested it as much as we could with the scarcity of visions, but every time I'm somewhere Nariko Kelly wouldn't be, that's when things go off the rails."

Dakunaito gripped the bottom of his helmet like a human might their chin. "I don't like this implication, changeling."

"Let me guess," she replied with a smirk, "not a fan of the idea that we're all just running loops in a predetermined program?"

He scowled back at her. "Which one?"

"Flame Witch," she provided the source of the phrase.

He was silent for a moment, no doubt shuffling past the inane statements he suspected would be repeating more of what the Witches, themselves, had already said.

"So our victory was preordained," he finally concluded, "and only your interference denied us our due."

Despite his perpetual threatening demeanor, the brunette arched an eyebrow. "I didn't figure you for the type that would accept a victory handed to him by fate."

That made his eyes flare as he swiped his hand across the space between them. "I am not! I would despise such a thing with every fiber of my being! Let me win by the sweat of my own brow or end me where I stand!"

She wisely opted not to ask if his brow was actually capable of sweating.

As he settled, he turned away and pulled something out of that non-space he seemed to store things within. "These are serious matters and will require investigation, but they are not why I came here, and our time is limited."

He looked toward her around his shoulder. "Changeling, your equipment is incomplete. I withheld the final piece from you because I did not wish to encourage you into foolishness. I wanted only to avoid your elimination before I determined what had happened to the true Thunder Witch. I see now, however, that my precaution was short-sighted."

Dakunaito turned to face her entirely, a golden choker in his hand, inlaid with a luminescent blue band. The appearance of evangelium and hordestadt was immediately recognizable.

"I now believe that you would have found a way to fight had I done nothing, as foolhardy as it would have been for you to do so. Should you have shown no promise, however, I still would have kept the final piece from you. There is a deadly difference between being willing to fight and being capable of it, and I have no intention of accelerating a fool's inevitable demise."

He lifted the metal ring up before his eyes, but then paused and tilted his head toward her as if wondering if he still had her attention. "Changeling, what have I said?"

Perhaps Thunder Witch would have given him reason to have such a worry, but she'd been listening closely. "There's still a piece meant to go with my sword and gun that you've held onto," she rephrased. "You only wanted to keep me alive because I was your only clue to finding the real Nariko and weren't going to help me get myself killed instead because I got carried away with the power."

The demonic knight gave a slow nod as he mentally checked her words against his own. "I do not feel shame that the train failed to kill you. You conducted yourself with wisdom and bravery, and without the shameless arrogance of those other children. You impressed me, Changeling, and that is no small feat."

His eyes narrowed. "Make no mistake, however, I am not your ally. If you continue to associate with the Witches, I will not take steps to avoid you. If you should do so regardless, however ..." Dakunaito dismissively flipped the metal piece toward her, leaving it to her to catch it.

"Then this belongs to Sword Witch."

The brunette did catch it, and she turned it over in her hands. It was an incomplete semicircle, big enough to fit around her neck with a gap about an inch wide between the two ends.

"Please let me give you a proper answer, then, Dakunaito," she said finally, and took several more steps back from him.

She could look like she was forming a card of magic like the other Witches because of the transformation wand, itself disguised on her person. As her nail polish, of all things. Truly, the thing was entirely too convenient. She hurled the electric rectangle above her head with a shout.

"TRANSFORM!"

Once the light faded and the fake transformation concluded, Sword Witch looked down at the necklace still within her hands.

"Dakunaito, I'm not Thunder Witch, and I'm only borrowing the name of Nariko Kelly. I don't have a transformation. These clothes I'm wearing are nothing more than a magic trick. But Sword Witch is real. She's a flame of raw willpower that can't be put out, even by erasure or forbiddance. She won't be killed, even if this body is destroyed. I won't stop doing what must be done when those around me are in danger, whoever they may be and whoever I have to fight."

She raised the choker to her neck and pressed it against her. It slid into place, but sat there, cold and heavy, for a moment. Then she closed her eyes and focused on it like she did for the fencing foil, like she did for her gun.

"Because I am Sword Witch." The power surged through her like a mixture of adrenaline and caffeine. Her body felt lighter than it ever had, every movement begging to unleash force untold. Her brain felt illuminated by bolts of power, and as she opened her eyes again, that power flashed across her eyes. "And that's who I am."

The black knight nodded in stern approval.

Before another word could be said, a great pressure slammed down upon both of them, pushing both demon and witch to their knees as they cried out in protest of the force. Dark energies flashed around Dakunaito as he attempted to keep from being flattened against the pavement completely, and Sword Witch felt the same way, struggling with the unfamiliarity of her newest component to pull enough energy out of it.

"What a travesty."

Those words came from neither of them, but from a third, a man with long, cream-colored hair kept behind him with a single band and ring tied just above his shoulders. He wore a pure white robe-like garment that sat on him in a manner that gave the impression of a suit.

His chest was bare down the middle where the top and whatever he wore underneath was opened down to the waist. The cloth underneath the robe was bright crimson, and it matched a wrap he wore around his waist like an extremely wide belt. The pants of the robe came too far down to see his shoes, but they clicked loudly against the sidewalk.

"You had a chance, you know," he was saying as he continued his approach, unbothered by whatever field held them down and no doubt the source. "You had a completely fresh start. All you had to do was what any sane person would do."

The man stopped next to the brunette and knelt down to look her in the eyes. "I was even going to leave whatever went wrong with your transfer alone. Maybe it would lead to a different result. A one in a trillion trillion opportunity."

The stranger took her chin in his hand, lifting it up to make her look right at him. "And I'll admit, you had me going. For a while, you really seemed to be making it work."

And then he backhanded her with his other hand, nearly making her stumble to the ground under the still-constant pressure. His voice grew angry. "But a blip kept growing! You couldn't just use the weapons of your enemy against them, no! You had to understand them! You had to chat with them at every opportunity!"

The man grabbed her face again, then harder when she tried to pull it away. "And then, when you finally overcame your own death, when you finally succeeded in pulling all of you, kicking and screaming, further than you've ever reached before, the first thing you do is start dealing with the very demons that you're here for in the first place!"

He raised his hand to strike her again, but stopped short, released her chin and stood. As he walked away from them about a dozen yards, he continued. "There are no words in any language in all of existence to express my disappointment, my anger! You never learn! None of you! You are determined to sin over and over, no matter how many opportunities you're given!"

Sword Witch fought to raise her head to meet Dakunaito's eyes. "Wow," she spoke with difficulty once she'd done so, "somebody likes to talk. How long do you think he's been holding that in for?"

Rather than answering the witch, Dakunaito forced his head around to eye the figure. "You are no demon. Who are you?"

The man didn't smile at the question so much as his mouth twisted up in a disgusted snarl. "Oh, does the mightiest demon not recognize me? Were you not told of my imminent arrival? I am the one you know as the Arbiter, and I am very disappointed with your performance, Lord Dakunaito. Not a single Witch dead, and all because you put your own desires ahead of my commandments."

Against the strain of whatever field they were under, Dakunaito snarled back. "I don't answer to you ... Arbiter or no, I am no man's dog!"

The man laughed at his defiance. "Ah, but you are, Dakunaito. You all are, Demon and Witch alike. I am the Arbiter because it is my role to oversee and judge your eternal struggle, in the vain hope that one day, such failures could change their ways."

"Eternal?" the brunette asked, catching a thread among his bloviating. "How long have we been playing this game of yours?"

Arbiter chuckled and held his hands out to either side in a shrug. "Would you consider me weaseling out if I said it's impossible to say? Time is too flexible a thing, you shouldn't be so quick to use it as a metric. A heartbeat and forever. That's poetic, and true enough."

He held a palm out toward them both. "But that's enough talking for now. Good news, Dakunaito! I'm giving you a chance to correct your mistakes!"

In front of Sword Witch's eyes, the swordsman began to twitch and spasm as his body stood up against the field, almost as if strings were drawing him upward. His growls grew into screams as his dark energy began to flare in earnest.

"And for you, Savannah," Arbiter continued, "one final lesson. I'll show you the true colors of the monsters you seek to bargain with. A pity it's not one you'll remember in your next life, but you have only yourself to blame. You've broken everything, and now I've got to come in and clean it all up."

The moment the field lifted, Sword Witch launched herself backwards. That same instant, Dakunaito's black sword crashed down where she had been, burning like a bonfire of pure darkness. The impact erupted into a crater as concrete and asphalt flew in every direction with the force of a hurricane.

Behind his puppeted demon, the Arbiter snarled at her in much the same way he had to Dakunaito.

"Better luck next time."