"Did you google it?" asks Mikayla. It's only the tenth time she's asked me today, and I have exactly the same answer as I did then, which is essentially 'Gee Mikayla, I crunched the numbers, and we still have 0 idea what's going on,' but this is also the worst possible thing to tell Mikayla, so I just mumble something incoherent under my breath. She surveys me as if I just told her to piss off, which I essentially did. "Look, Derrick, I'm already upset you didn't tell me there was another accident. This is why I wanted your phone number to begin with."

"You kissed me." I say. "On the face. If you had asked in any other way, I might have considered giving you my number, but now you might never get it."

"I'm missing out on sooooo many insightful late night ramblings about how sad you are." Mikayla rolls her eyes.

"So you don't want it. Good." I retaliate.

"You two are going to give me a migraine." complains Finn.

"I have migraines sometimes!" Sarah exclaims. Finn and Mikayla cringe in their seats. "They started cropping up around the time I started being contacted by my otherworld, over that summer. I thought I was going crazy at first, but it was actually attempts at communication--"

Hoshi busts down the door, looking very red in the face, and sits down at her desk.

I slide out of my desk and over there, very discreetly. "Hey, what's up?" I ask.

"Nothing." she says, thrusting her head into her hands, ashamed.

"She's got a tail!" Olive barks. "I can smell him on you."

Hoshi buries her head in her hands. "Olive. Please. No."

"Tail?" I ask, even though this just sounds like an Olive-ism.

Very slowly, Hoshi raises her eyes, her fingers untensing from their precarious position around her glasses. "There is a person who is following me around. I asked him very nicely to stop but he keeps walking behind me and I don't know why."

"What does he look like?" Alya asks, slowly encroaching on the conversation. "I know this one guy in the grade below us... I mean, technically in the grade below us... who legitimately used to stalk all my friends. More craters on his face than your average planetoid, keeps his head hidden behind his most recent anime most of the time, runs like Naruto?"

Hoshi shakes her head. "He has a crossed out eye on his backpack and he always keeps headphones in."

Mikayla leans in. At this point, the whole class is on us like a pack of wolves. "Did you say a crossed out eye, by any chance?"

"Yes. It has a little..." Hoshi draws an 'x' in the air. "That."

Mikayla folds her hands. "You know, that sounds just like a specific symbol turning up at these sites."

I insist, "Mikayla. There's a chance this has nothing to do with anything."

"Our lives are already predicated on a contrived number of coincidences." Mikayla says, jotting down notes.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask.

"It means shut up, Derrick." Mikayla looks to Hoshi. "Can you draw that symbol again? Give us anything else to go off of?"
Hoshi blushes even harder. "You're not going to hurt him, are you? I think he is a nice person, only... interesting... and I would appreciate if you tried not to scare him."

"Psh," Mikayla says. "No, of course not. What would I do to him, anyways?"

"That's a great question no one in this class wants to answer, Mikayla." I respond, resting my head on my hand, and the bell rings again for the beginning of class. "We all know what you're capable of," I say to myself, under my breath, as we all settle back into our seats and pretend we're paying attention. Maris does not pass through the door, and her seat is still empty. The void where she used to be is an uncomfortable ghost.

Yeah, there are a lot of ghosts in this classroom.

When class lets out for lunch, Mikayla scoots into the middle and takes my general edge-of-the-cool-kids position, which is very much not appreciated, but I'm also in no mood to personal confront her about it, so I put a seat between her and I and sit down with my sandwich. I pull the meat out and eat that on its own, savoring the taste of delicious, pink, probably cured twenty times over, barely-even-recognizable-as-a-former-part-of-a-living-animal ham.

Olive taps me on the shoulder. "Derrick?"

My shoulder blades curl inwards. "Yeah, problem?"

"No," she says. "Um, uh... um..."

I tilt my head slightly, and her ears sway the same way. That's a fox gesture. Bad Derrick. Stop. "What do you need?" I sigh.

"Do you live near a forest?" she asks.

"I do," I peer over her. Mikayla and Hoshi are watching someone who's watching them, and across the cafeteria. "In fact, I practically live in the forest."

"Oh!" Said observer gets up and begins walking away at a brisk pace before breaking out into a run. A flier falls out of his backpack and Mikayla dashes after him at incredible speed (hardly even human... Mikayla, don't use your powers in school, jeez, you're going to scare the shit out of this random kid) while Hoshi picks up the flier. Olive swings back in my line of vision. "What's it like?"
"I..." My feet twitch. Take this. Get involved. "It's. It's nice, but usually it's a little lonely. I go in there by myself and walk around for hours, stare at the trees..."
Olive's eyes are wide. "Do you feel closer there?"
"Closer to what?" We are imagining two different kinds of 'closer', here, and frankly I'm not interested in hers. "It's not a fox thing. I did it beforehand." I had narratives beforehand. Now I just meander. I don't tell her this because she's giving me the worst puppy eyes and my neck is itching. "I need to go."
"Okay! Thanks for talking to me." Olive beams. "I mean, uh, wait, no... do you thank people?"
"Hell if I know," I say dryly. "Thanks regardless, Olive. I'm leaving now." I dash past her and up to Mikayla and Hoshi, the former of whom has just returned sans a kid. The two of them are arguing over a flier which Hoshi has clenched in her hands.

"You have no right to his personal material." Hoshi says.

"It's a lead," Mikayla holds her hand out. "Fork it over."
Hoshi's eyes narrow. Her face is still flushed, like she did all the running. "You can not make me and you know that."

Mikayla sighs, putting a hand to her face, and grabs for it. Hoshi draws it back, and Mikayla's hand darts out again, faster. The two of them engage in something that is substantially less cool than a battle and less sexy than a catfight, which ends with them basically crawling over each other on the ground, with Hoshi holding the paper to her face.

"Hey. School lunch administrator at three o'clock," I warn. "Cut it out." When said fighting continues, I drag Mikayla off, which, despite a struggle, is easy, because Mikayla weighs about as much as a medium-sized container of toothpicks.

Her hair hits me in the face as she turns and attempts to shove me off. "Derrick!"

"What do you think you're doing?" I ask, almost laughing. "Geez."

The school lunch lady approaches, her face pinched into a red mask of anger and confusion, and she almost grabs Mikayla's hand before Mikayla jerks it back. I can feel her heartbeat against my chest, the thrumming commingling with each angry breath. "Is there a problem?"

"Not anymore." I say, watching as Hoshi gets up, adjusts her glasses on her face, and sprints off in the same direction.

"This will be reported." she assures us, pressing a finger against my shoulder. "Mark my words." She scuttles off in the other direction, towards the lunch line.

"Derrick," Mikayla says under her breath. "Get off of me."

"Alright." I let her go. She looks towards the exit, eyes sharpened to slits, and then back to me with a dark pout. From my place against the wall, I say, "You know, it's probably not a real lead."

"I'll take anything," Mikayla explains. "It's not just my life I'm saving here. Think of all of the people who've gotten hurt in liminal space accidents. Think of the kid in the abduction--" She looks to me. "It's about all of them."

"Is that what you told Maris?" I ask.

"Maris reached out to me."

I brandish my hands from their comfortable positions lodged in my arms. "Okay. Doesn't change the fact that you're alienating people, you're accomplishing nothing, and we're going to get placed on some kind of list."

"The list? Derrick, we're on the list. It's right here." Mikayla says, a little too loudly. Several tables of people have taken notice at one point or another. I'm so dizzy that I want to vomit.

"Plus," I say, more quietly, "the whole cafeteria is watching us. I am incredibly uncomfortable right now. Can we please work this out any other way?"
"I... damnit." Mikayla's eyes fall. "You know what? Sure. Maybe Hoshi's just... maybe she's working things out. I can handle this."

***

A week later, ten minutes before class, Mikayla slams her hand on the desk. "I can't handle this."

I look up at her with the snarkiest fox gaze I can physically manage. The sheer sarcasm contained in this expression is threatening to melt my face off.

"He was outside our class for ten straight minutes," she snipes.

"You were outside his class for five minutes." I argue. "They locked the door on you, too, and I'm really not convinced it was entirely unwarranted."

Mikayla makes a rueful expression and my fox-smirk only increases. Hoshi walks over, her hands folded, and very carefully bends down to desk level. "I needed to talk to you."

Mikayla looks up, lips pursed. "Oh. Is this about... I'm not exactly stalking him, per se..."
"No. I just know that you know things."

"Depends," Mikayla replies. "What do you need?"

Hoshi hesitates. Looking towards the camera, she leans in and whispers, "Is there any way to avoid going to the counsellor?"

"I don't think so. Why?"
"I'm not going." Hoshi says. "Something happened and I don't want to talk about it."
Mikayla rises.

"What are you doing?" asks Hoshi.
"I'm going to go cut a deal with the devil." Mikayla says, and she steps into the dark, uninhabited corner of the room full of spiders, lesbians, and Finch. Since Ms. Shinke has a bit of a lazy eye and has never seemed to mind Lilith and Endina talking to each other relentlessly in the back, it remains the most unregulated corner. Finch looks up, their face twisting into a smile as Mikayla holds up the wallet, and they open their backpack.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"Mikayla can make anything happen." Hoshi says.

"Huh." I watch her haggle down the price of some ambiguous item with Finch. "You're not wrong."

Mikayla returns, holding out a small stone with red veins. "I could go for you."

Hoshi eyes the artifact. Glancing back up to Mikayla, she asks, "Why?"

Mikayla shrugs.

You trying to pull something? Uh, it's Mikayla. There's no way she's not trying to pull something.

"I'm sorry for beating you up, stalking that guy, whatever the reason... We're all on the same team here, for one. Really, the question is if you're okay with this. They say some pretty personal things in there."

"They will give you a pink sheet." says Hoshi, intently. "I need you to answer no to everything. When they ask you to sing, say you are not ready. Say it means nothing. Please."

"You get the sheet too," Mikayla says, and she raises a hand to her head. "I'm so stupid."

Hoshi's eyes water up. "You have the sheet."

"Yeah." Mikayla says, tossing her the stone.

"I've never gotten a sheet," I interject.

"Shut up, Derrick," Mikayla says. "Look. I can handle the sheet, and I'm definite I can handle her. I'm just trying to unburn a bridge here. If I try anything you have my full permission to never speak to me again. Alright?"

Hoshi nods stiffly, grabbing the stone, the veins of which glow so brightly she has to clasp her hands to ensure no one's seen it. We both watch Ms. Shinke's desk--she's out of the room, fortunately, on some errant, but that doesn't make any of us less uneasy about this-- and then back to each other.

"It'll transform me for about an hour when it first touches bare flesh," Mikayla explains, grabbing it with the hem of her shirt.

A faint scent of sulfur fills the air, which, if you've ever smelled sulfur, smells like raw eggs. It's great. I'm great. "I love the scent of black magic in the morning," I say beneath my breath.

Ms. Shinke returns and we are safely out of the shifty corner, and the stone is safely in Mikayla's bag, far from the embrace of human flesh its dark heart so desires. Finch is counting dollars and I, too, wonder just what I could get out of them if I asked the right way (if I asked at all). Given that resurrection stones are a no-go, according to research, I essentially have no other underlying desires that would lead me to purchase Dangerous Magical Artifacts.

Regardless, I think for a while about my allowance, a nice sword... why would I want a sword? What weapon would I want? Actually, why limit it to weapons? There has to be some pencil that can take school notes for me. If my blank page has anything to say to that, besides telling the world I know nothing about trigonometry (not that the rest of the class is much better, and Olive is still over there doing basics), it's that my work ethic is poor enough that I might benefit from a shifty magical pencil.

Mikayla watches the clock like a hawk--and trust me, I've seen enough hawks to make this judgement. When class lets out at the end of the day, she says something to Hoshi and then breaks for the bathroom. I hurtle a row of chairs, which is probably the most incriminating thing I've done all day, and rush after her, even if she's putting on the magical speed again. "Mikayla!"

She turns.

"You going to the counsellor's?" I ask, panting.

"Yes. Honestly." she says. "Why, what did you think I was doing?"
"No, I trust you," I say. "For better or worse."
Mikayla's expression shifts from a 'fuck you Derrick' to 'whatever' to something akin to gratitude in the same seemingly instantaneous way the sun dips the last few inches behind the horizon. "I want to be a good person, Derrick."

"I know." I say.

She turns. "But more importantly, I want allies in all this. It's us against the world."
"You can't possibly be against Ms. Reema. She legitimately just wants to help us."

"Weird hearing that from you."
"I'm totally serious." I insist.

"Sure," laughs Mikayla. "Later."
"Later."

I hit a wave of cold air when I exit the building, as if the air outside is trying to push me back in. I can see the hairs on my arm standing up and the limousine exhales smoke in its corner, headlights leering. The world seems to stand still, only resuming when a hand touches my back, and I turn around with leering fox eyes, expecting Olive again.

Hoshi flinches when I swing around to face her. "Can we talk?"

"Yeah, I'll tell Frederick and Ms. Haven to wait." I walk over to the car. Both of them have their eyebrows raised in unison, like 'oh no, what is he going to pull this time'. "Just five minutes. Maybe ten." I say. "Won't go off campus." I raise my wrist, where my prisoner's badge still lies securely on my arm. Under my breath, I whisper, "Come on, I've been a good boy, and you've got the tracker collar on me."

"Any more than ten and we come into the woods with the moose tranquilizer." says Ms. Haven.

I flash her a thumbs up.

Hoshi says, "Those are yours, too?"
"What do you mean?" I ask as we walk away from the limousine down the trail that heads behind the school into the 'woods', that is to say, a nearby park that almost immediately emerges back into suburban wilderness.

"They pick me up sometimes." Hoshi says. "Way later."

"Oh. Do you know what Frederick's last name is?"
"Which one is Frederick? Him? He's Mr. Harring."

"Oh. Man. I think I'm still going to have to go with Frederick," I say. "Harring."

"Is there something wrong with 'Harring'?" she asks.

"Not really. It's just... some names, you know? Like red herring. Think he was part of a murder mystery? That's so not Frederick."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."

We keep walking. "So, what did you want?"

"Air." she looks up. "And back-up."

"What?"

"Don't worry about it."

Yeah, I'm worried about it now. Thanks, Hoshi. Still, if I can't get in one way, I'm coming in the other. "Hey. What are the pink slips?"
"I did something stupid." Hoshi says.

I sigh. "I know that feeling."

"No, no, you misunderstand. I didn't fail a mission. I did something stupid... to myself. They decided I was too stressed and moved me over here instead of considering other options." she responds.

"But you were part of Team Starfight." says a weedy voice from behind us.

Hoshi turns around. She looks to me as if to say See? Back up. "Yes."

The kid from earlier, backpack and all, runs over. He swings his backpack around, pointing to the eye. "I know who you are. I just... can you do it?"

Hoshi looks around. We're not entirely surrounded by woods, but we're close enough that the main road and the school have long since faded into the tree cover. We're obviously not totally out of the way, because Alya and Sarah come thundering down the path. "We found him!" calls Alya. "This is the guy, right?"

"Oh. Yep." Hoshi says. "That's him. I think he just wants to see me transform."

He nods.

"I don't know if I can," Hoshi says, nervously. "I haven't transformed since I left Japan. I could... still sing. I guess."

"You sing?" asks Sarah.

"A- a little!" Hoshi says.

"Uh, it was literally her whole quest." interjects Alya. "She was a ground-class pop star."

"I wasn't even that good." Hoshi responds, practically hiding herself in her hair. "It was a lot of coincidences, piled on coincidences."

"Our lives are predicated on a contrived number of coincidences." I say.

Hoshi stares at me and I realize she might not know half the words, even if she is fluent. I flash her finger guns instead, hoping those are a universal gesture (they are not. Derrick, stop). Slowly, Hoshi clears her throat. "I... have been working on something since I got here. I don't have an instrument."

Everyone there gives her a look like yeah, that's fine, go on with it, and Hoshi's face flushes. Very slowly, she begins:

"The rosy peaks and maples

swaying in the storm

with sparrows huddled underneath

flocking to stay warm--"

Her voice starts out hesitant, but as she goes, a kind of confidence rises within her as she ascends stanzas, all of them in the barest of rhyme schemes but made into something that almost transcends that just by the warm quality of her voice, until we're all listening to just the sound of her. Light plays at her fingertips and her face, something more than sunlight filling her, and she concludes:

"across the cruellest oceans

between the thousand seas

i hope no tempest hard and strong

will part my heart and me"

She frowns at the end, looking out at the trees, who have all moved into raucous applause with the wind. "I don't think it translated well," she says, dizzily. Something brighter looks out from across her, its pupils like beams of golden light, and I realize that is her. Her outfit has shifted somewhat, her complexion cleaner and her glasses framed by what looks like dazzling, incandescent material, even if the transformation isn't full. "Is this what you wanted to see?" she asks, several languages layered atop each other in the riche timbre of her voice.

The boy flushes even more violently than Hoshi had. "I mean-- I-- I'm sorry for following you-- that was really, really good-- I-- need to-- leave. Thankyousomuch." he says, and then he dashes for it.

"Wow. He is absolutely smitten." Sarah says. "I think you're out of his league, though..."

"That was really good, Hoshi!" cheers Alya. She gives Hoshi a bear hug, and Hoshi smiles.

"I had not sung for a while," she admits. "I forgot how it feels."

"That's really metal." I say.

"... what?" Hoshi asks.
"It means cool."

"I will never understand American slang." Hoshi says. Whatever transformation she was going through is ending, all the light on her body folding back in on itself, but she is still beaming.

"Thanks, guys. This made me happy."

"Oh, uh, no prob." I say. "I should probably get going too, though, or we're going to have to fight two federal agents with bear tranquilizer."

Alya flashes me a thumbs up. I check my watch and--yep, cutting it close-- dash out of the woods, stopping to catch my breath at the edge. Mikayla catches me on the way down, eyes dark and slightly teary.

"What the... are you okay?" I ask.

"Everything worked out?" she asks me.

"Good. Same on my front. Your parents are looking for you, Renard, and they're not happy."

"Eh, I wouldn't be happy if I had to cart me around either." I say with a smug grin, and Mikayla rolls her eyes so hard that they might fall out of her skull. She escorts me back to the car, where Ms. Haven and Frederick are waiting, discussing something in their limo with the window up.

I say to Mikayla: "I think we've learned a valuable lesson today."

Mikayla looks towards the barren trees, and towards Hoshi, who is singing now without any need for transformation, just for the fun of it.

"It must be nice to have powers you actually want." whispers Mikayla.

"You don't like yours?" I ask. "Superspeed is pretty sweet."

"It would be." Mikayla says. "If I deserved it."

"Care to finish the ominous sentiment?" I ask.

Mikayla shakes her head.

"You're the worst, Mikayla," I say, opening the door to the limousine all while still staring her dead in the face. "You're the worst." I whisper to the window as I pull away.

I flip several deer off on the way home and mess with my phone, which is stocked with Mikayla's number, even if I never plan to use it. There are so many things I could say to her and all of them would land me a slap on the face or a dramatic hang-up. I honestly don't know why I care about either, given... Mikayla... but more than anything I think I still want an ally in all of this.