Chapter Text
Janie Nunotaba was yanked from her sleep by a sudden pain on her shoulder socket, a surprise scream that she couldn't believe had come from her. “Argh! Ngh…”
Make the pain go away! Go away! Make it go away! Away! Argh…go away…
“There, good as new. Sorry to wake you up this way, kid.”
Janie panted, unsuccesfully hiding her whimpers, for a few moments, riding the pain until it receded.
She looks around, the edges of her vision getting clearer by the second but everything is still. She's somehow...she's not in pain. There's no unsettling force tugging at her inside and sucking her innards and there was a person over her—she's really pretty.
"Hey kid," the woman greeted, relief lining her shoulders.
A head full of tawny wavy hair filled her vision. She’s pretty sure that Miss Kuroko must have been beautiful—Janie actually likes the nasal quality to her voice—but she can’t really judge that much since Miss Kuroko's face is upside down.
She smelled wet though, like sweat?
Oh—and lychee.
“Wha—” she smacked her lips together, groaning, her mouth is so dry it’s like she had sand in her mouth or did the bad guys make her eat soil? “Ngh”
The witch summoned—so she's a witch!—water and made Janie drink some to help with her throat. That did soothe her splendidly.
The moment she relaxed, a sharp pain at the back of her head made itself known, however. After that, she noted the numbness on her whole body. “My—My—” Wait, her head is not important here. What if—what if her—she had read about this! “What’s happening?! Is my spine broken? Why can’t I move?!”
“Woah, there, calm down. Everything is fine. Your spine is not broken and I had just fixed your dislocated shoulder and ankle. Nothing’s broken. You’re just tired.”
That explains why she felt weak.
“Oh…good for you, huh. Interrogation will be a breeze.” her usual snark made its way out of her before her brain could warn her of the potential danger it'll pose.
Janie wanted to slap herself.
“What did you say?”
“Sorry, it’s nothing.”
“Brat”
So the woman did hear her.
Oops.
She tries to grin goofily, see if she can win the woman with cuteness (she is cute!), but she imagines her smile looks more like a grimace what with her trembling lips not managing to do what she wanted.
The woman merely stares at her. With no emotion.
Right. Leave her to die here, please.
Wait—
WAIT.
Wait a freaking minute!!!!
“—MY SISTER!!...uhh… W–who are you? Where are we? F–Feb–Febrie? Ngh..urgh…Feb? Nghh, Feb? Please. Febrie?! Where’s my sister?!” her voice has risen to almost a shrill and a scream in the same note.
She sounded weak and desperate. But who cares. Febrie is…somewhere!
“I’m Shirai Kuroko, Febrie is right here, beside you. It’s okay. You can calm down.”
The older witch conjured a mirror above them and held it aloft, allowing the kid to see her twin. The young girl stared at her reflection in the mirror, her eyes widening in recognition. Febrie is just beside her. That’s good.
Tears filled her eyes as a weak smile formed on her lips. Her twin is right beside her. Breathing. That’s more than enough.
“You’re a witch.”
“...Yes, we are.” She swept her hand to her companions even though Janie could not see them for they were a little ways away. But she did hear hushed whispers.
"You're not with them? The bad people—Extremely evil people who kidnaps kids and maybe sell their kidneys?"
The older witch grimaces. "No, we're not with them. You're safe with us."
Every word the witch uttered were full of grave seriousness and the look of her eyes sealed it. She's speaking the truth.
Embarrasingly, her eyes started to water, which it should not. She's the eldest, she had to remain strong!
"Febrie…," she whispered, her voice filled with both relief and longing. "Is she okay?" she managed to rasped, faint as it was. "How... How did you find us?"
Miss Kuroko's expression softened as she explained. "We received a tip that led us to your location. What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s the last thing you remember? Do you know any of the guys that did this to you?”
“I’m Janie Nunotaba, my twin is Febrie. We were on our way to board the train to Hogwarts.” Hogwarts huh. Did classes start already? She wanted to see what Hogwarts is like. Febrie was so excited too. and here they are, lying in a wooden floor somewhere in Earth. What gives?! “We were just waiting for Professor Shokuhou to show up and then she showed up. We went with her. But then she turned out to be not her, her. You know what I mean? Then next thing I know, we’re down here.” Janie roamed her eyes everywhere, trying to convey to Kuroko the validity of her statement with body language. "Are we... safe now? Are they gone?" she asked hesitantly.
“Yes, they are. We beat them up.” the older miss had assured but Janie twitched. She had a nose for these things. Adults lie a lot. Whether it’s for the good or not, they lie. What goes on in their head when they do that, escapes her really.
She couldn't shake the feeling of uncertainty, wondering if the danger was truly over. There is something Miss Kuroko is not saying.
What is she hiding?
“Oh! That’s good. I’d like to beat them up too!”
“That’s dangerous for a kid to say”
“I mean it! They hurt my little sister!”
“I didn’t say I would stop you.”
“Good! Cause I’ll beat you up too!”
“Woah, careful there, you scary daredevil. I’ll wait in 10 years, then you can try and beat me up, okay?”
“Please look me in the eye and say you’re here to save us?” the 10 year old requested. It’s a long shot by adult standards but hopefully being honest pays dividends here. “No evil eye please. If you’re here to hurt us, just say so...I would probably let a beautiful woman like you....not like I can move a dang thing anyway.”
The lychee scent filled her nose once again. Brown eyes. And they’re beautiful to boot.
“Oh that’s cute.” Nah, this is it. This is where Miss Kuroko will say she will eat them for dinner isn’t it?—and she’s the one smelling like…like a snack!! Is that unfair? Isn’t that unfair?
Rescuing them only to make her hungry?
“God–dang it! Beautiful people are villains. Just…dang it! I want water.”
("Did the kid just hit on her and called her a villain?? In the same sentence no less!")
(“Kid’s got it. Ahahaha”)
“Cool it with the sass, kid. And no. I’m not a villain. I certainly am a beauty, Thank you. We’re here to help. We’re Japanese and you’re in Japan—”
“—Dang it! I had a dream—"
Miss Kuroko gave her a long stare. It oddly felt similar to how Shinobu-nee looks at them whenever Febrie does insane stuff (because it can never be her) “—You shouldn’t be so trusting, Janie. What if I was lying? You just revealed your name and relations to me.”
“If someone can’t figure out we’re twins, they must be trolls level dumb.”
(“ooooh, she’s snarky~”)
Miss Kuroko rolled her eyes and cluck her tongue in a way only an aristocrat could, before getting out of her face but not before pinching her nose for the cheek.
Janie blinks.
aww—And she was enjoying the shade the older woman provided too.
She closed her eyes and sighed.
Janie knew something was up.
Janie had grown up reading people, especially adults.
Parents are supposed to nurture and guide and protect their children.
Janie and Febrie have none.
Instead, that job fell onto the shoulders of one of the oldest girls in the orphanage. She took care of them, told them what to do and what to not. They taught how to avoid punishments and how to grovel.
That seemed enough.
Until they got adopted into the Nunotaba family.
From what Janie had observed, they were distinguished in their field. A family of scientists, they are.
The patriarch is a cold man. He doesn’t smile, nor does he frown. Janie is constantly on high alert when they are with him. Yet Febrie likes him. The matriarch wears her feelings on her face so well. She is beautiful and doesn’t like them, that’s for sure. And there is their eldest sister, who is so like her father. Not an expression in those deep bottomless pit one would call her eyes.
Yet, Febrie likes her too.
Shinobu-nee has a lot of contact with other people. People she doesn’t like, she says. She was hailed as a genius and father and mother were proud of her. One day, during one of the parties hosted by the Nunotaba family, Shinobu-nee made a game for them.
“Guess who will betray us.” she had whispered. It was the first time the twin saw her smile. The twins were elated and eager to please, eager to witness their older sister smile again.
Their answers were all wrong.
Father and mother were found dead the next morning.
If Shinobu-nee hadn’t taken them to the basem*nt, traveled on foot to another storehouse, they would be dead as well.
She told Janie that her father planned to dissect them the next day after that party. After he and his friends witnessed Febrie get a slice of cake, without moving from her spot across the room.
Whether that is true or not, Shinobu-nee did not tell Febrie anything. She indulges Febrie occasionally but she doesn’t tell her any of the scary stuff she tells Janie.
And Janie lets her.
She lets Shinobu-nee preserve their little sister’s innocence while she slowly removes the veil from Janie’s eyes
—and she won’t ever forget the first lesson, the one etched into her very soul is—.
The very first thing Shinobu-nee taught Janie, the second conversation she had with her adopted twin little sisters…..was to watch out for false truths in people or they’d end up dead somewhere.
So yes, she knew something was up.
Miss Kuroko may hide it well but she can see the uncertainty and panic in the way her eyes dart around, the tenseness of her shoulders or the way she swallows her own saliva. The way her smile wavers a bit. The way she’s trying to breathe normally and sighs through her nose.
There are two other distant voices that would occasionally grab her attention but their voices are fading and muted, like she had just been dunk underwater. Black spots danced in her vision too, everything was getting blurry and her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier.
Her body felt like it’s melting and she’s just…was the floor cold? Oh—she is.
“Janie? Hey, you there kid?”
Something was really…wrong.
“If… if anything happens, save my little sister…please.. ” she managed to utter her wish, whether it would be her last or not, whether the adults do as she says, whether they betray them and left them for dead, it’ll be the same decision, same choice and same wish should she have the chance to reconsider.
[:::::]
“Janie fainted!” Kuroko reports. “9%!”
Just as the last of the echoes of her voice rang out, Touma cursed.
“f*ck it! Do it, Biri-biri!”
“Got it!”
There is something always scarily freeing about your friend trusting you to a degree of life and death. But it is also the most terrifying thing on Earth.
To be responsible for the life of a friend, yet the duty to protect and preserve another…
Touma can handle it.
He is scarily competent for a guy who had been blessed with an uncomfortable lack of luck (or so he says).
Her friend does not make decisions lightly.
He is a closet boob pervert, downright stingy, he doesn't even know he gets clingy because most of the time, it’s in the form of nagging. He saves people, he loves peace but not because it is the right thing to do and it’s morally right, its because—he may not be as heroic as people make him out to be but one thing is always on his mind—He wants the people he cared for, happy.
So yes, trusting Touma regarding life or death is a given.
Mikoto grins to herself.
She’s not going blind into this anyway. The both of them had discussed this as a possibility in hushed whispers while Kuroko was collecting information from Janie—
Janie and Febrie—whoever named them must be really lazy…or brilliant.
She concentrated on slowly opening the mental cap she had as long as she was aware. The mental cap that her father had painstakingly drilled into her by meditating endlessly and practicing repeatedly. The one that he tested continually if Mikoto could maintain it as easily as she breathes.
Because it would mean her world if she lost control.
Unleashing the proverbial dam, she guided the torrent of energy, like a vengeful river after a heavy rainfall, on this poor magic circle, which eagerly welcomed her, feeding its own hunger as it drew out more.
“This ritual is to extract the whole magic core by draining it steadily—and where would that magic go? Hm? There must be some sister ritual going on in some area around the planet, acting as the counterpart to this one, the receiver. We changed the donor now, and you have far too much—more than enough to overwhelm a magic circle designed for underdeveloped magic cores. So say, what if we overwhelm it? If forcefully terminating the ritual causes a backlash on the terminated side, then what happens if you overwhelm the recciever’s side?” she replayed Touma’s wonder in her head.
All this energy—
All this effort—
All this human trafficking and trespassing—
She wonders what instigated this too.
She wanted to find them and beat them up.
After a minute, she felt the magic circle draw less and less, her energy slowly being pushed back to her, like there was a clog on the pipe that causes the water to backflow, the cause of the resistance.
So there really is another sister ritual connected to this one.
They were right!
It pushes her magic back to her.
But who is Mikoto if she cannot control her own magic?
The consequences of overwhelming the receiver’s side were uncertain, but the balance of the ritual had to be disrupted. Fast. The repercussions could range from destabilizing the sister ritual to causing unforeseen magical reactions. Nevertheless, she maintained her focus, consequences be damned.
The twin’s lives were still on the other tip of the scale so they better finish this fast too tackle that next problem.
She pushed her magic backflow and all, into it, willing it to never come back to her, to push through, break whoever was in the way, to seek release on the other side, whoever the f*ck they are.
She'll f*ck them all up!
“I can feel it breaking. Good job Biri-biri!” Touma cheered.
“Nice, onee-sama!”
The ending was without fanfare.
For a good solid minute, she can feel no resistance anymore. She frowns and reduces her output but when no changes occurred, she slowly trickles it to a stop.
She met Touma's widened eyes.
He wasn’t looking at her.
“Accio Mikoto!” he suddenly yelled.
The force of the spell yanked Mikoto, her body colliding against the boy in a chaotic mess of mass and limbs.
They both look back at the smoking Magic circle, once electric blue in color now fading back to teal. Mikoto immediately casted a protego maxima. An electric blue dome encasing the area materialized into place. In case that thing exploded or something.
When nothing happened, Touma lifted his arm from Mikoto’s waist and both of them stood to get a better look at everything.
The room darkened to the reds and oranges of the late afternoon clashing with the teal residue that held no signs of fading. Touma vanished the windows, allowing for fresh air to leak in, it helped banish the smoke.
They have no need to worry about the criminals as Kuroko had stacked them together in the corner of the room and placed Touma’s talismans at the back of their head, rendering them unable to use magic and trapped in a ward erected by strategically placed talismans.
The trio stared at each other. All of them drenched in nervous sweat, breathing heavily and muscles tense.
And they waited.
When Kuroko grinned, the other two mirrored her sense of accomplishment and cheered. Relishing in the fact that they are all alive.
Then the grin vanished and the clock continued its painstaking trip, the time that had seemed to stop at that moment didn’t wait for them and that spurred them to scramble towards the twins.
Their fight is not over, not yet. They haven’t saved anyone yet.
Not yet.
Drat.
“They’re both down to 8%. There is more damage to Febrie’s but Janie is dangerously close to 7%—oh drat…she’s down to 4%?! How?!”
“What?!” Mikoto and Touma gasped in horror.
“What’s happening?!”
“Don’t ask me!”
“Biri-biri! Quick! Do something”
“Okay–Okay! But I haven't tried any sh*t like this before..!”
“Just try. I don’t think you’ll fail”
“Way to add pressure…”
“Sorry not sorry”
“Guys, I think Janie is unconsciously helping Febrie!” Kuroko theorized. “Febrie’s reading read 8% for a moment before going back to 7% and it’s been way. Janie is 3% now. Damn it, Janie. I think her magic is trying to stabilize Febrie’s.”
“Kuroko, move.”
Kuroko crawled to the side of the twins, right in front of Touma while Mikoto replaced her, sitting in a lotus position at the twin’s heads, with her wand, she tapped it over Janie’s forehead before doing the same to Febrie.
Despite being twins, there is an unmistakable difference between the two.
Jannie’s magic felt purposeful and resilient, a narra tree against the storm while Febrie’s is wild as an untamed horse, bucking and shaking, refusing to be domesticated.
That’s a start.
What’s next?!
What’s next?!
…Mikoto doesn’t know how to proceed from here! “sh*t.”
They’d never been in this situation before! She’s never been put in a situation like this!
This situation had never happened in magical history. Ever!
What the f*ck do they do?!
“2%!”
“Master, we have two kids who are close to magic exhaustion. About 25 criminals in the area. Incapacitated and bound. HELP!! Like ASAP! Kids are in an emergency!”
“1%”
Magical people have known of Magic exhaustion for a long, long time. It’ll make a person faint and recover from no shorter than three days to a month later, more or less, depending on the severity of the draining and the ability of the person’s magical core to gather aether in the air and convert it as usable innate magic.
“0%, onee-sama!”
“Oh no…”
That’s just the thing though, magical people recover from magical exhaustion.
They don’t have to worry about DAMAGED magical cores. Cores that have holes in them with magic escaping faster than they can convert. The twins will likely die if something doesn’t happen. If they all can’t think of anything then…
What the hell!
This is a sh*tty situation overall.
Mikoto sat there, frozen and at a loss on what to do.
“Breathe, Biri-biri”
She felt Touma’s patronus circling around them for a second before zooming away through the window. It gave her a brief respite, filled her contentedness and safety—
Which made her remember the days of her when she's not dying because of her affliction, is dying of boredom.
It is a little weird that instead of arousing happiness and security, it recalled a memory of one period of panic and desperation.
“Feel the magic woven in the air, the subtle whispers that get you, what makes you electrified and what burns, recognize what is yours and what's not. Feel it? No? We have time…have patience you brat! This is not easy for me either! I’m your dad, I know exactly how you feel! Who’s parent do you think you get that from? Pah! Certainly not from your ma!...Good! Good! Now get a hold of that! Feel the resonance? Now, remember, what is yours will obey only you. Have it stay put instead of floating away uselessly. Make it recognize you, your will and determination and it’ll be yours to wield. Dominate it. Make it obey.”
“Recognize. Make it obey…” Mikoto narrowed her eyes on Janie and Febrie’s forehead. “Make it obey—Dominate…” She had already done the first part, recognizing the twin’s magic signatures. “...but how do I dominate what was never mine?”
“...Just do it?” came Kuroko’s tentative suggestion.
“Huh?”
“She’s right Biri-biri. Your magic’s very nature is very dominant. Whatever plan you have in that big brain, just do it. You have the finest control out of the three of us.” Touma asserts.
Not that she’s bragging but she wholeheartedly agreed.
Nothing like honing your control of magic or risk dying, eh? That’s been her whole driving force up until 20, when she and her father thought she’d lived without blowing herself or someone up.
She tightened the grip on her wand, she positioned it vertically with the tip nearly at parallel with the space between her eyes.
Two magical signatures. One fading fast and another hanging in there.
Two people.
Two kids.
—Purposeful and willful.
—An untamed horse.
How that f*ck would she subdue the two? Two? At once? Fu—
Purposeful—OH. Janie’s magic is purposeful! And right now, its purpose is to preserve her twin’s life and magic. Until that can be done, Janie’s magical essence will remain in the air, doomed to try and guide Febrie’s until it fizzes to nothing. Yet, strip that purpose off and that will—that volition to do what it must—and it will fold to her whims.
Aha!
Janie, Janie~ You are one amazing sister and mage. Hang in there.
Now she just has to start with Febrie.
Febrie whose magic was unfettered and unbothered, one could say naive, with how her magic chooses to be free despite the risk of it ceasing to exist. It sings of life and the wonder of exploration.
They haven’t met Febrie yet but she knows…“This one is a troublemaker.” she murmured, her eyes briefly landing on the girl with two ahoges to her, letting her friends know who she was talking about.
With a prolonged exhale, Mikoto released her magic enough for it to materialize physically. Blue lights danced on the surface of her skin. It swirled and converged into electric blue ribbons that fluctuated around her for a moment, at Mikoto’s behest, before elongating and encasing little gold dusts in the air—Febrie’s. And some of Janie’s.
She waved her wand around with careful precision and gentle flow.
Some ribbons prodded and blocked, some pushed and guided, directing the magic back closer to Febrie’s body. Mikoto began to smile a bit. Febrie’s magic may be untamed but it is also gullible. She didn’t have to try too hard coaxing it.
Her magic made a path and Febrie’s automatically flowed into it, reminiscent of water following the path of least resistance. If Febrie’s magic core developed into an elemental one, she’d be water, Mikoto has no doubt about it now.
With what Mikoto can scrap of Febrie’s magic in the room, she guided it back into Febrie, whose magic core is located in her chest. With every breath that occurred, she parted with a considerable amount of her own magic, the ribbons completely detached from her and disappeared into Febrie’s chest, methodically enveloping the core in careful layers.
Mikoto urges her magic to constantly revolve around Febrie’s core; it'll serve as a temporary yet unyielding barricade, a stopgap patch for the overall damage to her magic core. It kept what remained of the kid’s magic inside. As intended. Hopefully.
“How long did it take?”
“About 6 minutes,” Touma answered, looking at the tempus charm right above Kuroko’s head.
That felt like a lifetime.
The physical evidence of Mikoto’s work is the odd spherical orb of dynamic and turbulent pattern of blue with a violet outline, narrow strips of pure magic with a mesmerizing vortex composed of several golden little dusts in the center, submerged halfway on the kid’s chest.
Mikoto nodded at him before focusing on Kuroko. “How much did I gather, Kuroko?”
“About 9%. Good job Onee-sama!!” Kuroko cheered.
“Way to go!” Touma followed. “You’ve made history here, Biri-biri! That’s awesome!”
The both of them made a fist bump then simultaneously uttered. “What about Janie?”
“Working on it,” Mikoto grunted back at them.
By now she is bathing in her own sweat, her clothes sticking uncomfortably to her skin.
Controlling this much magic after a fight and especially after uncapping her mental lock and releasing a ton all at once, took a toll on her. Her hands trembled.
Yes she’s physically tired with all the circuits they did at gym and fighting thereafter but she’s mentally exhausted with all the revelations; the magic core extraction ritual, the fact that its happening in the middle of f*cking Tokyo of all things, kidnapped foreigner students—kids!— and their damaged magical cores couple with the fact that the strain on saving said kids by inventing and performing an untested method and then controlling her own magic so it doesn't blow them all off the planet on top of that.
If this is what a day off is, she’ll never have a day off ever again.
And If she isn’t allowed to sleep after all this, she’d blow them all up. Swear.
“Good job hanging in there Janie…”
Despite Janie’s magic being more pliable now that it’s purpose is gone, it still took her twice as long with Janie since there is so little to work with and by the time she was finished, only amounting to 3% of collected magic essence, Mikoto was panting and trembling all over.
From all the magic Mikoto has to expel from her body, the room got uncomfortably hot as evidenced with both of her friends sweating as well.
As soon as the task was done, Mikoto collapsed on the floor, eyes glazed and lips dry. Breathing like she had just ran a 10 kilometer marathon in under an hour.
“Wa..ter”
“Alright. Open up!” Kuroko replied. She summoned water and carefully guided it into Mikoto’s mouth. She timed it with intervals, not letting Mikoto gobbled up in one go.
Kuroko started on one of their customary after mission briefings.
“All criminals are accounted for. The magic circle is in a perpetual state of a dim glow. Windows are open but I don’t think we’re in danger any longer. Still be alert for any of their comrades, they might hurry here to see what’s going on. Currently 6:58 pm.” Kuroko reports while conjuring a little ball of light and raising it above their heads. “Any updates on master?”
She conjured a bed and Touma lifted the twins onto it. Next she conjured a sofa and the both of them dropped on it bonelessly, leaning on each other.
But then they both moved away from each other, leaning on the arm rest on their respective sides instead.
“I’ve called for master Tabi already, he’ll know what to do. The twins are unconscious. I’ve already secured the windows, my talismans will block up to the third powerful spell and that’ll still alert us for any intruders. I had also placed anti-apparition wards Biri-biri, update?”
“Lemme…hah…get me back to …hah…normal…”
“Of course.”
When Mikoto finally controlled her breathing, she began to report.
“The twins are quite stable for now and as of the moment, I can only maintain it for about maybe an hour? and while I can do it all again, I’d rather not. I’ll just lay here and rest for a bit. You guys deal with any intruders, alright?”
Mikoto closed her eyes. Her muscles slowly relaxed. She didn’t want to think of anything…
She was on the verge of sleep when one of Touma’s talisman’s pinged. It must be her dad—
“Who—how did you—Who are you!” Touma inquired while Kuroko shuffled about. “Actually I’m going to ask because of my pride. How did you get past the Talismans and the wards I put up?”
Mikoto abruptly opened an eye, noted the woman’s blonde hair and relative position, then closed her eyes again. She forced herself to relax and pretended back to sleep.
In case they needed a surprise.
“Who are you?! Why do you have my students?! What’s the meaning of this?!” A question answered with a question. That’s just rude. Well, she has a diabolically smooth, authoritative voice that employs a certain articulation of someone who spoke perfect Japanese. The foreigner intruder sounds positively local if anything. Mikoto will give her that.
“Students?” Kuroko repeated, a certain name coming to mind based on Janie’s information. “Miss, state your name and purpose and then maybe we can talk.” Kuroko urges, ever the professional.
Touma’s wand was singing with energy, ready to fire a spell at any given moment. He’s not about to let anything they did go to waste because of carelessness, Mikoto knows because she has the same sentiment.
For a good moment, silence prevailed in the room.
“Shokuhou Misaki, Professor at Hogwarts and those are my students. Now someone tell me, are you the kidnappers or not?”
