Platinum Storm

by N X Hunter

  It was also kind of unsettling how brilliant Soren was at explaining something he'd just come up with off the top of his head, when he was actually fairly bad at explaining things that were true.

  Though I can't be too hard on him for that, who could possibly explain all the stuff he had to about mahou shoujo to someone who knew nothing of it? Well, James probably could, but he's a professor so I guess... Actually, is he even a real professor, or is that just a cover story thing while we're pretending Calibre is a normal college? I should probably ask about that...

  The next two hours were spent with Rayna and Soren doodling and talking about ideas for the 'fictional' sword, which Lee competently turned into a few choices of tattoo design - the favorites being a bold, black and red modern style interpretation of the sword, and a more classical, realistic picture with color and shading used to show the gleam of the metal and the ethereal, magical glow around the rubies.

  It was fascinating to watch them work on it, to watch her best friend draw pictures of something that meant so much to Rayna, without even knowing that it wasn't just an imaginary, symbolic thing the twins had made up. Lee was drawing something that Soren would never see for real, as mahou shoujo weapons only appeared in the storm domain, and something that Lee himself would probably never even know about. It was a strange thing, and she felt a little bit sad for Lee that he was the only person in the room that didn't know what the tattoo was really about. But questions about the philosophy behind artists drawing subjects they didn't understand were of no real value here, so she decided not to dwell on it, and to instead help as best she could by keeping everyone stocked up on snacks and drinks. She didn't join in with the design session, though, because she hadn't seen Rayna's sword yet either, and also couldn't draw for shit.

  "Thanks, hey, I'm sorry, Kit, I came here to hang out with you and I've spent the whole time so far doing tattoo artist things with your friends - I didn't mean to ignore you," Lee said, as she brought through a pitcher of iced tea and set it down on the coffee table in front of where he was busily working on perfecting the more abstract version of the sword design.

  "Oh, I don't mind at all, it's cool. I really can't wait to see the result! I'm just sorry I haven't been more help, but you know me and drawing... Plus I don't know what their sword should look like, I guess I wouldn't have seen it until I saw Rayna's game character if it weren't for this."

  "You can help with the last decision, though, Kitsuna," Soren said, looking up from his own pile of sword doodles.

  "Oh yeah? What's that?"

  "Where on my body do you think it would look good?"

  She looked away and hoped nobody noticed her blushing. It was impossible not to picture him naked, the sword on different parts of his body in turn. To be fair, they all looked pretty damn good in her mind. And was he asking her because he cared about looking good for her? It was pretty much a given as far as everyone knew that at some point, things were going to happen between them, but was he being suggestive here, or just trying to include her?

  The question was soon answered.

  "Actually, you can't decide that yet, can you? Because you don't know where I already have tattoos - except for this one on my arm. It's probably easier if I just show you..." he stood up, and, while Kitsuna's blush intensified and Rayna snorted in laughter at her obvious embarrassment, he pulled off his shirt over his head.

  Oh god, that is a really hard sight to look away from... But I can't lech at him while Lee's here, that seems a bit wrong. I'll just look at the tattoos and the... bare bits where new tattoos could go... and just be professional about the whole thing...

  "Are you OK, Kit? You haven't said anything for a while."

  Chapter 16

  When Kitsuna had finally settled on the left calf for Soren's tattoo (thinking she couldn't possibly find the calf particularly distracting, although, she hadn't counted on him taking off his jeans and letting Lee work on him while he was just in his boxer shorts), Lee fired up the strange, buzzing, needly tool he used to draw tattoos. Something about the noise it made gave her a nasty little flashback to the sounds from the monsters who had swarmed her. It was only quiet, but the monotony of the drone and the way it sounded when it touched Soren's skin made her catch her breath.

  Still though, she was able to avoid thinking about it too much by just allowing herself to be entertained by Soren's attempts at looking manly and pretending that the tattoo wasn't hurting him at all, despite the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead in the cool, air conditioned room, and the tight grimace on his face when he thought nobody was watching.

  "Is this position still comfortable? You can stretch and move around for a bit if it isn't, we'll still be here for another hour..." Lee said, after at least forty minutes had already passed.

  "An hour? Fuck me... I mean, no, no, I'm fine. It's nothing, really."

  "It's good that you're not really bothered by the pain, because a lot of people say the coloring hurts the most, and I'll have to start adding the red parts to the rubies soon."

  Kitsuna couldn't tell if Lee knew that Soren really was actually in pain and just wanted to tease him, or if he had actually fallen for his lame act.

  ***

  It was the cat that first made them notice it. Rayna was engrossed in a VR game and Kitsuna was just chatting away to Lee and Soren as the tattooing continued, and neither of them had taken a look at their bracelets in a good while. But as Ivy jumped up onto Kitsuna's lap, demanding to be petted, her eye was suddenly drawn to the beginnings of the indigo glow on the bead worn on the cat's collar.

  Fuck! How the fuck are we supposed to go and fight without Lee noticing anything is up?

  She remembered though, that time would pass differently for Lee and Soren, and so all she really needed to do was concoct an excuse for her and Rayna to go somewhere for a short while, and Lee should really be none the wiser.

  I guess this sort of thing comes up all the time when you mix with people you're hiding the mahou shoujo world from. I guess if Rayna mixed with normies more she'd have considered getting a dog instead of a cat, then we could have had the excuse of walking it. Actually, no, that'd be no good, people could just offer to go with you for a nice walk, or you could freak out your dog by disappearing and reappearing again, because you'd have to actually take it out with you... Ugh, I must be nervous, why am I thinking about dogs? Think, what could we need to go out and do that wouldn't sound suspicious...

  She stood up from the couch, encouraging the cat to jump down from her lap, and went over to the corner of the room where Rayna was standing with her VR gear on. She really wasn't used to approaching someone wearing that stuff in order to pull them out of a game, but she didn't want to speak and draw attention to herself from the boys, so she reached out and grabbed Rayna's wrist - the one with her DEVICE on it.

  Luckily, Rayna seemed to understand. She lifted off her VR headset, her big eyes blinking at the change of light, and swiftly checked her bead. She gave a kind of 'well it's not ideal but what can you do?' shrug to Kitsuna.

  "Hey! Since Soren's being so very brave and getting his first real tattoo, why don't we go and pick up some drinks to have after to celebrate! Or reward him for being so tough, or... I don't know, give Lee something nice to look forward to when he's finished working, or --" Kitsuna was aware that she was beginning to ramble, so was glad when Rayna interjected.

  "Woohoo! Yes! Let's go to the store and get some stuff for margaritas!"

  "Well, technically I'm not old enough to drink and neither is Kit, but --"

  "But you're at college so who cares, right? Anyway, it's totally legal since I'm old enough to buy tequila but I need Kitsuna to carry the ice and the limes and shit. Yes! Let's go, let's go now and by the time we get back we'll probably get to see Soren's finished tattoo... Or, you know, bleeding scab... I don't really know how these old style tattoos look at first."

  Anybody else might have come across as a bit shifty and nervous but even Lee was al
ready used to Rayna's general energy level, so as Kitsuna followed her out of the door and into the building's hallway she was fairly satisfied that Lee and Soren hadn't noticed anything was going on. There was really no point in Soren having to be in on the awkward lie too, and they could probably be home before he even noticed there was a storm. If he did happen to look at Ivy's device or his own, which was unlikely given he was being forced to keep completely still, he'd probably figure out what they were up to and be able to maintain the lie anyway.

  "You realize we are actually going to have to go to the store after we fight now or it's going to look really shady," Kitsuna mentioned once they were out in the hallway.

  For some reason, she'd found that worrying about making things look normal to Lee was actually helping her avoid worrying about the actual storm. She was certain it would be better this time. She had Rayna with her from the beginning, and she'd finally, finally meet Courtney, the world's busiest stripper, too. Plus, she was sure her transformation this time would be stronger, and she wouldn't have the same strange effect on the monsters. She had done everything she could to strengthen her bonds with everybody around her, and she was even beginning to feel like she was on friendly, actually-giving-a-shit terms with Rayna. If anything, this was a good time for a storm to come, even if it did complicate life a bit in the real world - she was feeling more of a sense of belonging with a group of friends than she had since high school today, and there was also the pleasant undercurrent of the desire she was seeing from Soren and Lee, and the more open affection she'd been getting freely from James. She was in a much better place emotionally than she had been for the first battle, she told herself, so this would all be fine.

  "Ha! You're right, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe we have time to go before the storm starts - I wonder if we can take tequila with us into the storm domain? Could just challenge the bastard monsters to a drinking contest for a change or something!"

  "What actually happens if you're drunk when a storm starts anyway?"

  "It's happened to me and I think the healing factor kicked in because I didn't get a hangover the next day, thinking about it. Though, everything is so surreal in the storm domains that it's not like being sober really makes much difference! But if you really want to know you should ask Courts, she gets loads of guys buying her drinks when she's working and so she's probably off her face half the time when storms come."

  "She sure works a lot. I can't believe I haven't even gotten to meet her yet. I just haven't really felt up to going for a night out the last couple of days."

  They got in the elevator, and Rayna pushed the button for the roof. Kitsuna looked at her quizzically, but she just shrugged as if to say 'it's as good a place as any'.

  "Yeah, she has been working a lot lately, you're right. I guess she's just taking as many shifts as she can before the college semester starts since she doesn't have anything else much to do - lets her stock up on money and win herself more admirers."

  Kitsuna nodded, it made sense. It seemed kind of strange to her that the more experienced girls still had to attend the Academy, but then, it probably helped them keep up the image of being a real university while also allowing for all the mahou shoujo and their attendants a place to go and share information where they weren't always worrying about maintaining the secrecy.

  "Anyway, if she's at work now she'll have to do one of her specialty moves. I call her just in case she hasn't noticed the storm warning, and then she sneaks off to somewhere where nobody else is lurking, like the staff bathrooms or the dressing room. She finds me in the storm domain, we kick some ass, and then she just goes right on back to dancing for credits like nothing has even happened. It's pretty funny!"

  "It sounds exhausting! But how does she answer her phone if she's working?"

  The elevator reached the roof, and as expected, given that the semester still hadn't started, it was vacant. Though anybody up there would have been an Academy student anyway, either off to fight in their own storm domain, or well aware of why girls were vanishing. James had explained when Kitsuna had considered making the trip back to Astolat City that wherever a girl was in the world, once she'd transformed once inside a storm domain, she'd always end up in the storm domain of a storm attacking her region, even if she was hundreds of miles from the storm, as was the case for many of the girls when they were at the Academy. Some storms were big enough to cover multiple regions, and there was almost always a storm going on somewhere in the world. It was scary to think about that though – even when her own location was peaceful, those creatures were attacking humanity somewhere. Humanity never got to rest.

  "I send her a message if she doesn't pick up, and she has this super loud notification tone that plays through her Talizman ankle bracelet so she never misses it. Her dances are never that long, whether she's on the pole or on some guy. She always has time to get somewhere private in between finding out one way or another that the storm is coming, and actually entering the domain."

  As she finished talking Rayna demonstrated what she was saying by pulling out her phone, and asking it to call Courtney. She had it on loudspeaker, but instead of ringing, Kitsuna just heard it play a recorded message.

  "The device you are calling is switched off."

  Rayna frowned.

  "Well that can't be right - she never forgets to charge it for this very reason," she looked intently at the screen and tried again, "call Courtney."

  "The device you are calling is switched off."

  "Ugh, stupid fucking technology. Maybe her network is down, or, I don't know, some technical shit only Soren would understand. I'll send her a message just in case but it's looking like we may just have to find her inside, and hope she managed to notice the storm coming without any help."

  Kitsuna didn't really mind - she felt safe enough just having Rayna with her, after being through her first experience of the storm domain both hugely underpowered and alone. She was sure Courtney was a great ally from what she'd heard about her experience, but since she'd never met the girl she couldn't say she missed her.

  "It won't be long now..." Kitsuna said, looking at her wrist, after a couple of moments passed silently up on the roof of the skyscraper. A Volocopter, probably with nobody inside it, was approaching, and both women watched it, knowing that its programming would probably make it stay on the roof until the storm was over.

  "No. It won't. How are you feeling about this one? It seemed like you got some of what you needed from the prof and Soren and that Lee guy."

  "You make it sound like I'm some kind of man magnet!"

  "You totally are! They're all really hot too, if it's not weird to say that about my brother... I mean, objectively he's good looking, cos he's my twin."

  "It's not like that!" she blushed.

  Though thinking about it, maybe it was like that. And maybe that was OK. Nobody seemed to care that Courtney was powered by random men drooling over her for cash, so maybe it was just normal and completely cool that she had... what, kind of a harem?

  "It's alright, I mean, I'm a bit envious if anything - I don't have a lot of luck with men. It's not a big deal for my power, cos I've got Soren and the rest of our family, but I would sometimes like to... bang a really, really hot guy after a hard day's monster slaying."

  Kitsuna had almost expected her to say something vulnerable then, like that she'd like to meet the right man, or to have the love of someone she wasn't related to, or to have a reason to retire and start a family... But, no.

  "You must attract loads of guys too though, I mean, James said that all the people with our bloodlines have some kinda weird chemical sex appeal or something, but also you are really... fun."

  "It's not that so much as, well, there aren't many guys who fit my general criteria of knowing about mahou shoujo who haven't known me since I was an annoying, bratty 13 year old. They can't really see me as an adult, and I can't forget that they know all the embarrassing phases I went through. If there's one benefit to be
ing a late bloomer like you, it's for sure that one! The men will always know you as a woman."

  Kitsuna was surprised that Rayna was talking to her like this, but it was nice.

  "Maybe you'll meet someone from another region. Some people move, don't they, like James did."

  "Yeah, I'm 100% banking on that - I will definitely be getting ready to mingle at the new semester ball at the end of the month - they invite people from other schools and colleges affiliated with Calibre Academy from all over the world. Not that many international people show, but there are usually a few guys from other parts of the country who aren't... aware of me yet!"

  This was the first Kitsuna had heard about the ball, and she found herself really hoping it wasn't like a high school dance where she'd have to take a date. She'd always gone to those things with Lee before to avoid the drama of it all, but she couldn't very well show up with both Soren and James escorting her. Or could she? She really didn't understand what the social norms were where mahou shoujo were concerned. Whenever she'd asked Rayna about that kind of thing she'd always said that everyone at the Academy basically let the mahou shoujo do as they liked when it came to anything that didn't affect the protection of the Earth, or the guarding of their secrets. It sounded like the girls got pretty much pampered. But what would the other mahou shoujo be like? Did they resent the local team for the extra help they got, or were they popular with the other girls? Would they be bitchy to her for having more than one guy in her life, and say she was leading them on or being greedy, or did loads of them have similar set ups? It was going to be a lot to get to know once the semester started, and she wanted to be at least somewhat familiar with the actual transforming and fighting stuff before she entered that other new world.

  But as the two young women stood looking out over the city and contemplated parties, school politics and their love lives, rain began to fall, and the world around them shrank away to reveal something else entirely.