(12)

Haru's gaze drifted over the scene. Whether or not the river was actually moving was impossible to say for certain from where they were, but its sound was completely gone. It wasn't just the river, though. As her senses began searching for the sounds that should have been there, none reached her ears. There were no birds in the sky, no cars on the road, nobody but the three of them anywhere in sight.

A seal. It had to be a seal. Which meant--

"Ohohoho, why so tense, my sweets?"

The voice had come from Jack's direction, and as both the girls turned toward him, they saw two costumed figures there behind him, the masked woman with her hands grasping him as if mid-caress while the man with her held him firmly from behind, a knife for every finger to his throat.

Jack, of course, looked pale as a sheet and absolutely terrified.

"Darling and Dear, right?" Riko noted in recognition. Wait, why did she-- Oh, right, these were the two that attacked her after the soda shop! "The consummate performing artists."

Darling practically swooned as she pulled one hand away from Jack to hold it against her breast. "Oh, did you hear that, dear? She remembered us! She even called us artists!"

"Quite, quite, darling," the man noted, idly tapping his daggers' flats against Jack's neck with a casualness that only added to the boy's apprehension. "She's much more polite this time."

"Is it because we aren't openly suggesting we kill her this time, dear?"

"Oh, what a terrible thought, darling!"

"Whyever for, dear?"

"Why, it would mean she cares more for her own life than this poor, defenseless boy's!"

"Oh, another thought, dear, what if it's the opposite?"

"She is polite because the boy is in our grasp?" he asked dramatically. "How mercurial!"

Nariko slowly moved herself into a combat position ready to jump into quick movement. "Hey, as far as you two know, I was going to be perfectly civil to you last time, but you jumped right into announcing you wanted to kill me!"

Haru knew Nariko enjoyed taunting her opponents, keeping them talking and distracted while she looked for an opening, but she had to admit, there were a lot less insults being thrown by this version of her. It was all much more measured, much more casual, rather than constantly looking for a rise.

Meanwhile, the woman in red threw her head back as if bemoaning her own forgetfulness. "Oh, my dear, she's right! We must be slipping!"

The man in the ivory suit snapped with the hand that wasn't holding the knives to Jack's throat as he gave a quick stomp of a foot. "By the lights and curtains, we completely forgot to threaten the boy's life, darling! Do the honors, would you?"

"It would be my pleasure, dear!"

The woman again embraced the teenager, pressing her body against his with her far hand on his waist and her nearer one over his shoulder. It looked sensual, especially as she stretched one leg across his, but the faint sight of a razor thin string could be spotted running across his chest between her two hands.

"It's very simple, sweeties," she informed them as she rested her chin in the crux of his neck. "We've got a little script we put together, and we want you two in the leading roles. Play your parts well, and I let this handsome young man go. Refuse to cooperate or attempt to call for your pretty little friends ..."

Now, her voice dropped threateningly as that string pulled just tight enough to trace a shallow red line on his chest as it effortlessly passed through his shirt and blazer. "... And we string him up like a puppet."

Jack gasped at the sudden pain from the string and desperately tried not to take any sharp, deep breaths that would push the string deeper. Haru could see the panic clouding around him like a cold fog.

Despite the elaborate antics these two demons always displayed, they had always terrified her, too, far more than any other demons the team had ever encountered. They had an aura of cruel malice about them. It wasn't a thirst for blood, nothing so banal. It wasn't even sadism. Yes, they enjoyed inflicting pain, they loved torture, but not because it generated pain or fear.

It was the detached, dehumanizing way a child might pluck the legs off of an insect to see what it did, as if suffering were some sort of soap opera they indulged in, coupled with the adult understanding that what they were doing was all very real. She did not doubt for even a heartbeat that they would do exactly what they said.

... Nariko did.

Haru could hardly believe it as she looked over to the brunette, but instead of the instructions on how to proceed she expected, the girl's gaze was flat, her storm a disinterested rumble. The blonde couldn't understand it. Couldn't she see a classmate was in danger right in front of them?

It was only a moment before Nariko registered her stare and turned to meet it. There was an exasperation there, as if she felt she was being dragged along by something that didn't matter.

Of course, she recognized the worry in Haru's eyes, and her own sharpened in response. They might as well have been having a conversation.

Riko! We have to go along, don't we?! They'll hurt him!

Get it together, Haru. They're not going to hurt him.

They will! I can see it! Can't you?!

Nariko's gaze faltered from hers, but then glared back ahead at the three figures. They definitely seem like they intend to. But they won't. Not him. They can't.

Haru knew her eyes were settling like an uncomfortable heat on the brunette's neck. If you're wrong ... Riko, we have to ...

Nariko didn't have to look back toward the blonde to get that. She watched the rumbling storm part for her a moment before the brunette dropped her head and sighed, relenting.

Haru's guilt trip vision switched to gratitude before she turned back to the scene before them, letting her partner do the talking as she strained to see whatever it was Nariko had seen.

For her part, the brunette returned to standing normally. "Alright, what's the script? Do we get the chance to memorize our lines?"

"Oh, not to worry, ladies," the knife-wielding man in white reassured them as he stepped away from Jack, secure as he was in Darling's grip. "We wrote the entire show with the expectation of improv. You just do what comes naturally."

With a dramatic snap of his wrist, he pulled from within his coat a long, black handkerchief. When he held it between the thumb and index of either hand by the corners and gave it, too, a sharp snap, it folded into the size of a great curtain he drew away from the air next to him with a flourish.

The black cloth vanished, and where it had hung stood a human-sized marionette carved of wood. Despite its size, it was dressed like a little girl and had a cheerful expression painted on its face.

Even though it hung there as if waiting for a master to take up its strings, Haru didn't need telling the thing was another proto-demon, like the armor Eirwen had cursed at Natsumi's. Despite being only her second time encountering such a creature, it would seem Nariko didn't need telling, either.

"You see, we have a new up and coming star in our little troupe," Dear went on to explain. "Please give Marione a warm applause. She's ever so shy."

The sound of gentle clapping surprised the blonde, who turned to see Riko entertaining the request.

"Thank you," Dear bowed, and as he did so, the marionette mimed the motion with the clumsy ambulation of an actual puppet. "You're too kind."

"Our tale for this afternoon's matinee is a simple one," Darling picked up the explanation as she flirtingly traced the curve of Jack's jaw with her fingertip. "A young bird who lost her wings yet still longed to fly crafted a new pair of gold and sapphire.

"They're beautiful things, the envy of all of the little birds around her. But they are too heavy, and to take to the air, she needs the assistance of the other birds. They cannot always assist her, of course. They must fly south, after all, and it is too great a distance to carry her. So through great effort, she must prove she can fly on her own ... or fall to her death."

So that's what this was about, Haru gathered. They were still after Riko, and since she was still unable to transform, they thought they'd try their luck with the group separated.

"It's a lovely story," Nariko answered them with a calm that suggested this was all an absolutely normal conversation. "And I believe I have a grasp of the performance. You want me to prove I can fly by defeating Marione on my own."

"Oh, not on your own, sweety," she assured her. "After all, the young bird had a dear and precious friend, you see, who refused to let her attempt such a dangerous thing alone. Even if it meant they might die together."

Even though the woman had no face on her mask, Haru felt the demon's eyes lazily roll over to her toward the end and suppressed a chill. Instead, she put on her best brave face. "If all you want us to do is fight a proto-demon, you don't need a hostage to get us to do our job!"

"Ah, but we do need one to make sure you stick to the script," Dear corrected her without missing a beat. "After all, the tension would be ruined if a bunch of extras rushed on stage at the wrong time, don't you think?"

The brunette seemed to think for a moment, then glanced over to the blonde. "Haru, if we're worrying about Jack, is it really alright for us to fight in front of him?"

... Was that really what she should have been worrying about? Riko was the one always telling her what a lousy fighter she was. Did the brunette really think she could make up the whole difference by herself after her last encounter with a proto-demon?

"In front of Jack?" she assured her instead, assuming she had some sort of plan. "Oh, sure, happens all the time."

The brunette's eyebrow raised ... as did Jack's. "So he knows?"

That made Haru laugh despite the situation. "Of course not! He just keeps bumbling in and getting himself caught like this. Sarasa will just clean his memories up after we're done." She gave a thumbs up and a wink. "Don't worry, we've got it down to a system!"

"Such wanton use of mind magic!" Darling had pulled her head away from Jack in another dramatic swoon, laying her free hand against her forehead. "Such utter disregard for the well-being of a dear classmate! You girls are supposed to be above such things!"

"And I thought we were horrible," Dear agreed, directing his comment aside to the proto-demon, whose head drooped sadly.

Their reactions clearly made Nariko uncomfortable, but her expression was a hand shy of holding her nose. "I hate to say it, but that does sound pretty reckless."

"It's safe, it's safe!" Haru insisted to her friend. "You know Sarasa wouldn't do it otherwise! Besides, we can't just let demons attack us because he might see it, right?"

Dear showed he wasn't afraid of a bit of immaturity for a jab as he made a show of coughing into his fist with his nonexistent mouth to cover up, "Excuses!"

He cleared his throat afterward. "Pardon my terrible manners. Allergies. We don't have near the pollen count back home. Now, if you ladies don't mind, time is ticking. How about a dress rehearsal to get you in the right frame of mind?"

With a snap of his fingers, a dozen dretches appeared out of nowhere, nearly surrounding the girls in a semi-circle closed by the jesters and their proto-demon puppet.

Haru couldn't help but be worried about so many against just the two of them, but Nariko's storm still didn't seem roused. The brunette just looked around in a quick head count.

"Are you sure that's enough?"

Enough?! They outnumbered the two of them six to one! Haru took a deep breath. No, no, calm down. That was absolutely a Riko thing to say. She needed to get her own head back in the game, too.

It didn't seem to perturb the demons, though. "It is just a dress rehearsal," Dear reminded her.

"Oh, I've been looking forward to this," Darling confided to Jack as if the petrified boy were her date. "I was so busy last time that I didn't get to see how she fought them! I turned around, and they were gone! Without so much as a jolt of static electricity! Isn't that spectacular?"

"Y-yeah," the boy struggled to answer, clearly completely void of any idea of what she was talking about. "Stunning."

"Oh-ho-ho, I see what you did there, you clever boy." At least she was enjoying herself ...

"Fine, enough standing around," Riko ordered with a firm nod to Haru. "Let's go."

Haru nodded back and began her incantation by channeling her magic into the shape of a luminescent card and hurling it into the air above her. "TRANSFORM!"

The light rained down around her and wrapped around her very being. She closed her eyes as the familiar sensation of being held by it enveloped her every sense. It eddied and curled about, taking her with it like a dancing partner, and she trusted it with her every movement.

"Shimmering light of compassion!" As the light flowed first around and then into her, it faded away from its dance, leaving her in a cute, idol-like pose. "Flare Witch!"

What really surprised the audience of three was when Riko did the same, throwing a golden card above her with the same shout of, "TRANSFORM!"

Unlike with the other witches, the gold flashed above her and then crashed down in an impenetrable veil of energy, concealing anything within except for the refrain.

"Golden blade of determination!" And then said blade thrust through the veil, followed by several quick slices before the revealed girl spun it down to her side. "Sword Witch!"

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And then it was the girls' turn to be surprised. After all, the last thing they expected to hear was an ear-piercing squeal.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!" Darling, the source of the sudden sound, demanded. She practically hurled Jack into her partner's arms, who caught him with an exaggerated huff as if from the force of impact.

She, however, seemed to give it no mind as she dashed over to Riko. "What is this, what is this?!" she demanded as she picked up the girl's arm and examined the outfit. "Nobody told me of a costume change! You can't even transform, so what did you just do?!"

The sudden attention made the brunette uncomfortable in an entirely different way from their bad humor. Her storm practically raged, Too close!

"Uh, it's a place holder ... No stat boost, but the boss said I still needed the identity concealment, so the girls put it together for me." She held up a small object that resembled a pen from inside the crop jacket.

Darling snatched it from her hand in a moment to turn it over and examine it. "Oh, a transforming wand! How quaint! And what a wonderfully ingenious solution!" Just like that, she'd shoved it back into Riko's hand and begun turning the girl this way and that. "And so sporty!"

They'd gone with a color scheme resembling the weapons, and the gold-yellow jacket with its blue trim covered a cream shirt. The miniskirt that matched the jacket had been non-negotiable, not for lack of effort to negotiate it on Riko's part, though it paired with cream undershorts that were actually connected to the shirt as a single leotard.

Her feet were clad in slim boots that came up to below the knee and resembled armor, but like the bracers on her arms, were only decorative in that regard. Meanwhile, they'd kept the ponytail she'd improvised in her spar with Flame Witch, though it was properly and neatly done here, held in place with a barrette designed to resemble the gold and blue of evangelium and hordestat.

"I take it that it meets your approval?" Nariko was tentatively asking the far too curious demon.

Sarasa had said it was a relatively simple magical tool, but it had limits and was a far cry from a real transformation. The transforming wand could be used to change one's outfit into virtually anything, but couldn't create anything of significant value. This was why, even though her boots and bracers looked like they were reinforced, they were no more durable than any other part of the outfit.

It did, however, include a magic field very similar to what was produced by their transformations to keep people from recognizing them without first seeing them transform. If one thought about it too hard, it was blatantly intended as a spy tool in design, quickly creating a desired disguise while protecting the user's real identity even if the face was completely exposed.

The Witches had no need of spies, though, and the tool was almost too perfect for what they did need. Still, a bit of Haru's mind worried over that it was seemingly common enough for a demon to immediately recognize it. The demons, they had a need for spies.

"Darling," Dear finally called with a note of frustration, "you're delaying the show!"

Darling gave a dramatic sigh and drooped her hand toward him, even as she moved back in his direction. "Oh, you must learn to be patient about these things, Dear! You of all people know the kind of impact poor costume design can have on an opening night!"

Her string came out and, with a motion, wrapped around Jack to bind him, seemingly able to do so without cutting, as if it were part of the same motion of Dear shoving him back so his hands were free to perch on his hips.

"You said you'd never bring that up again!"

But Darling looked around innocently. "Bring what up? I brought nothing up, I just said you know it better than anyone else. Honestly, taking offense at a compliment, let that be a lesson to you girls, men can be such fragile things. If you ever find yourselves one, shank it in the belly and leave it in the gutter."

What always bothered Haru the most about the pair was how authentic their reactions appeared to her senses even when they were plainly playing a bit. Their emotions seemed to flare in perfect pitch to their portrayals.

Either they were so insane that they convinced themselves they actually felt that way or they were, without contest, truly the best actors she had ever laid direct eyes on. With a pair as shifty and slippery as they were, she could never decide which answer might have been worse.

Riko's response was elsewhere entirely. "So you two are fans of sitcoms, as well?"

Sitcoms? Was that what this performance was supposed to be? She'd never watched them, herself. Of course, though the brunette was conversational, Haru could see the storm shifting as it counted seconds.

The longer these two dawdled, the more time the other Witches had time to get suspicious. If they didn't have to call for them, the others could strike in ambush and create an opening to get Jack out of there.

Meanwhile, Darling chuckled at the question. "Oh, my sweet little doll ... If it stands on a stage, we live it."

And as if that were some starting bell, the two girls ran out of borrowed time.

Without any visible signal from its greater demon masters, Marione took the initiative, jumping high into the air above them without making a sound but the clattering of its own wooden pieces.

It was startling how fast Nariko could react to things around her when Haru reminded herself that her friend's "transformation" was only a costume change. She wasn't nearly as fast as the blonde was as Flare Witch, but she saw it in the brunette's eyes. If she hadn't jumped clear as Nariko rushed to place herself underneath the dropping puppet, she would have been shouldered out of the way.

I'd die for you ...

The brunette's words floated back to her in that moment. It was typical of the Nariko she knew to use hyperbole to make her feelings clear, as the girl often felt like she struggled to make the depths of her emotions heard and understood. It was done with a forcefulness that was almost spasmatic.

This more mature version of her, however, was clearly more careful with her words. She wouldn't say something like that unless she was deadly serious. Did she think her Nariko wouldn't die for her? Not for a minute, and the reverse was also true. But her Nariko was almost too bashful to say something like that so bluntly without framing it as some sort of quip.

She could practically hear the girl saying it, giving a cocky grin as she waggled a finger. Now, don't you go telling anyone I proposed to you, ya got that?

It didn't matter to Nariko that, as Flare Witch, any blow from that monster would be far less dangerous to her. Even unarmed, her first instinct had been to place herself between the blonde and Dakunaito. But that was okay. She'd cover the brunette and make sure she could fight with everything she had without concern.

Sword Witch swung her blade up hard against the falling puppet, a golden light erupting to repel the creature. It seemed to land off to the side of her in a jumbled heap from the blow, but returned to its feet in an inhuman manner, as if its parts climbed over each other to pull them each to their proper height.

It attacked again as no human could, turning its torso a full one-hundred-eighty degrees even as it launched its opposite fist as a haymaker at the swordswoman, but she batted this, too, away with her follow-up swing.

"Haru, the dretches!" she shouted, barely turning toward the blonde from her own fight.

Shoot, she'd nearly forgotten about them! She whipped around and barely got a barrier up before some of them started shooting at them. Still, she looked back at Nariko in concern.

"Go! I'll keep Marione occupied!" Said puppet was trying to use its forearm like a flail, but the brunette ducked underneath the swing. "I'll be fine long enough for you to clear them out!"

Flare Witch hesitated for only a moment, but then nodded. If she hurried, it wouldn't be long at all. Maybe she should have been more bothered by the idea that despite being the one able to transform, Riko still thought her combat abilities too low to be the one holding the line, but even she could take out dretches!

... So much for a dress rehearsal ...

With that, she shoved all other thoughts from her mind and charged the middle of the semi-circle, crashing into the line of dretches like a brute force wrecking ball. One swung at her, but she ducked and punched it in the face, then turned around and kicked the one on the other side. Both went sprawling and vanished into flames with a high-pitched wail sound before they even could hit the ground again.

Back on the sidelines, Darling seemed to be growing more and more distressed. "What?! No! No, no, no! This isn't right at all! I wanted to see how Thunder Witch fought the dretches! Not that clumsy blonde airhead!" She turned toward Dear and pulled on his arm. "Make them do it right, Dear! They're all backwards!"

Dear sighed as he looked down at her, taking her chin in his hand despite them being right in front of Jack. "You're incorrigible, Darling."

"And you love that about me."

He turned and threw his hand toward those fighting. "Dretches! Focus your attacks on the brown one! Don't let her engage the proto-demon! Marione, Flare Witch is your opponent!"

"Huh?!" Haru turned back toward the shout, a dretch's throat in one hand and the other drawn back into a fist full of light energy a second from pummeling it in the face.

The great big dummy was already in the process of turning to head for her, but Sword Witch was hot on its tail.

"You're not getting away from me that easily!" She wound back to take a swing at its cords binding its legs together, but before she could, several of the sword-wielding dretches disappeared from the circle and appeared in the air above her, already plummeting down and forcing her to jump back.

What she swore under her breath was too quiet for Haru to catch, but the angry bolt of lightning from the storm made it very clear what it meant. "Change of plans, Haru! I'll make this quick! Hold out as well as you can, alright?!"

Though Haru gave her agreement, she couldn't bring herself to quite focus on the lumbering doll. Nariko moved like greased lightning. She could hardly believe she wasn't transformed as she watched her move about the dretches like they were standing still.

She knew this Nariko had only faced the creatures once, and defeated them even less equipped than she was now. Still, to think she now acted as if she knew all there was to know of them ...

In a moment, the ones who had jumped her were cut down, and their corpses hadn't even burst into fire before, unlike Haru, she made a dash for the end of the line rather than the middle. Some shot at her, but they didn't really stand a chance of actually hitting her, any coming remotely close getting deflected by evangelium and hordestat.

Following Sword Witch's dash brought Marione back into her field of vision and she gave a startled hiccup at the reminder of the doll practically in front of her. Gingerly, Haru raised a hand to wiggle her fingers in greeting. "H-Hello, Marione ..."

The marionette raised its own hand to mimic the wave ... and then threw a haymaker with the other.

* * *

The brunette was quickly coming to the conclusion that she hated fighting dretches.

It wasn't like they were difficult, especially with her new weapons. This many may have given her trouble before just by sheer numbers, but she gave herself seventy to thirty odds of still coming out victorious, if not unharmed, just because they were such horrible fighters.

With the weapons Dakunaito provided her, they didn't stand a chance. If she weren't in such a hurry, she'd even call fighting them boring, but that wasn't the reason she hated it.

A long, arcing line of the mooks stretched out ahead of her, and it took all of her self control not to just rush ahead and try slicing them as she ran by them. It would leave her open to being flanked if she failed to drop anything less than every single one of them.

Still, her blade cut through two in a single swipe, and she felt the increasingly familiar protest of her arm overextending without it meeting sufficient resistance. Hitting these things without magic felt like punching a heavy sandbag, but they were actually horrifically weak, and any application of magic seemed to reduce them to halituous opposition.

There was nothing to be gained from complaining about it, however. They had to be cleared out or they would continue to interfere with the fight against the proto-demon, who, left alone, would also interfere with fighting them. As much as she loathed leaving Haru to face the muppet, it had to be done.

From what little time she had with Marione, she wouldn't say it was particularly skilled, but it was capable of moving in unorthodox ways that might overwhelm a brutish charger like the blonde. She really had to find the time to bring up her fighting style - the term used very loosely - more formally, before she got herself killed.

She was only two-thirds of her way down the line - well past where Flare Witch had made a mess of the otherwise neatly maintained semi-circle - when Haru screamed.

The brunette wheeled around in an instant to see Marione had extended its strings to use its own limbs like a bola to entrap the blonde and was in the process of reeling her in toward its main body.

"Haru!" she reflexively shouted, but when she started for her, the dretches again attempted to dogpile her. It wasn't a great combat threat, but only so long as she committed to repelling them, halting her forward momentum. At the same time, she saw flashes of light as Dear summoned more of them in, the masked couple with smug body postures safely outside of the combat zone.

"Get off of me!" she shouted as she kicked one in the stomach. Despite their invulnerable nature against such mundane attacks, they weighed no more than an actual person their size and the blow shoved it away, gaining her the breathing room to slice through the other two.

Her second bracelet turned into a pistol of similar design to the sword, but as she went to train it on the puppet, the dretches threw aside their weapons and grabbed for her limbs, attempting to restrain her.

Damn it.

The thought flashed through her mind. She should have been the one fighting that thing. Or even better, Natsumi could have turned it into a pile of cinders, but the redhead wasn't here. No use thinking about could have beens. As she wrestled with the dretches, her mind focused exclusively on Haru. She had to get to her. She had to pull the dummy off of her. She had to get it focused on her.

Me! Pay attention to ME!

* * *

Honestly, Haru thought she'd been doing pretty well. Marione made big, swooping attacks that seemed pretty easy to dodge. Sure, she took a knock or two, but nothing serious. She was certain her light-augmented blows would win the day at this rate. Maybe she'd even lay this thing out before Nariko got back! Ha! Wouldn't that show her?! Yeah, she knew how to fight!

But when the marionette began to spin at the waist, she froze in indecision. Was it going to come spinning at her like a top? Or maybe a windmill punch?! She'd tried that once, but when she clocked her own jaw, she decided it wasn't worth how cool pulling it off would have looked.

When the limbs instead came flying clean off of the proto-demon, she was caught completely off-guard. No, they didn't come completely off. The strings still connected them to the main body, and as they flew past her to either side, their momentum swung them around and lashed her lower body with the strings.

With an embarrassingly easy yank, Marione pulled her feet right out from under her and began pulling its limbs back toward itself, her with them even as she scrabbled for a hold on the ground. She screamed as she went down, drawing Nariko's attention from the dretches.

No, no, no! She watched as they began to pile on top of her. She'd fight them off, but every time she moved for Haru again, they'd just do it again. No, she thought. Don't let me be the reason Nariko dies!

The closer she got to Marione, the more the proto-demon's strings bound her. By the time she reached the main body, they were covering most of her form, and as it lifted her up off of the ground and inside its own space, its arms covered her face, her last sight of Nariko struggling to break free of three dretches attempting to grapple her.

But it did nothing to stop her view of the storm, which only raged ever more fiercely. And then she witnessed something she thought she would never see. The storm parted. The skies cleared. The sun broke through the thundering clouds that had never ceased before, and its light washed over her.

"Shining Lance!"

What was that? No, she knew what it was. It was her spell! It wasn't her signature, but it was the strongest offensive spell she had. But she knew she didn't cast it. She couldn't. It had to be directed from her hands, and hers were bound in demonic strings.

Yet as its warmth washed over her, those strings broke up and the wooden limbs tore away from her. She only realized she'd been hoisted off the ground when the absence of her captor's bonds left her to drop the foot or so to solid ground, and she stumbled to a knee before she caught herself.

Her eyes snapped to Sword Witch, whose hand was still upraised toward her - toward where Marione had been. The dretches that had been piling on top of her were gone. Did she ... but that was impossible ...

It took her a moment to realize the entire battlefield was dead silent. There were no more dretches, and even Darling and Dear were standing in a bewildered daze, the latter's hand still raised halfway into a snap that had been forgotten.

The quiet made the rumbling of Marione pulling itself together seem all the louder, but before she could even turn to look, Nariko was running right at her, sword in two hands and drawn back.

"Pardon me!"

"H-Hey!"

As the brunette reached her, the apology had occurred just before she used her best friend for a spring board, kicking off of the back of her blonde head and earning the reflexive objection. In her increased airtime, she drew the sword back above her head, her whole body arcing with the motion as if she were turning her entire frame into a human bow.

"Melon Splitter!"

Okay, that was not a spell. In fact, she was fairly sure it was a jab at Flame Witch.

Sword Witch snapped her body forward as if someone had released the bowstring, and added as much force as she possibly could to her already existing downward momentum that was going into the downward cleave.

The blade flashed brilliant gold as it impacted the still blinded and disoriented proto-demon. Wood erupted in splinters and string split in twain as if the entire construct had been struck by a great thunderbolt. Fragments and chunks of Marione went in every direction as Nariko finally landed right in front of where it had previously been standing.

Yeah, the storm was definitely back as if that sun had never been there. Haru halfway doubted she'd even seen it except for the fact the untransformed witch had used her own spell.

Nariko gave a deep exhale before standing back up straight, and turned toward her with that stupid tug of her thumb across her mouth she always did when she was feeling cocky, though it didn't fully conceal how her clouds had a bit of a sluggish chug to them. She must have been getting tired.

"You're up, Flare Witch!"

Tired or not, Haru gave her a flat look as she stood, too ... and chopped her on the forehead.

"Ow!" The brunette clamped her hands protectively over the impact site as she staggered from the blow. "Transformed! Transformed!"

But her hands were on her hips. "I am not a spring board, Riko!"

"I'm sorry! I said excuse me!"

"Ask for a boost next time!" She sighed and relaxed her shoulders as she turned her attention to the proto-demon's dark energy and concentrated on purifying it by saturating it with her light.

Meanwhile, Nariko turned her attention to the performing duo. "Seems like the little bird managed to fly after all, and with the help of her friend, too," she told them.

Behind her, though Flare Witch didn't stop her magic work, she also didn't quite fully suppress a scoff at the idea of said help.

But the duo were uncharacteristically subdued, staring at the brunette like she were the demon.

"... It would seem she did," Darling finally answered after what felt like a long moment. Then after another one, she gave an almost frustrated jerk of her arm that sent poor Jack spinning from her string like a top to crash to the ground in front of the girls.

Still they stared at her, and it was Dear who spoke next. "What are you, little bird?"

Perhaps Nariko didn't understand just how rules-breaking what she had done was. She simply turned sideways a bit as she propped her sword against her shoulder with a grin.

"I told you when I transformed, didn't I? I'm Sword Witch."