2024-08-13 - Best Friends and Broomsticks

Title: Best Friends and Broomsticks
Summary: Raiko is at school late working hard on the enchantments she'll need to create a new broom for the Staff of Wise Levin. Her late work unexpectedly attracts the attention of Kiyo Tagawa and Cheiko Otomo, her two former best friends that she had a falling out with three years prior. An awkward reunion ensues.
Who: Raiko Takashima, Kiyo Tagawa, Cheiko Otomo
Where: Infinity Institute Magic Labs
OOC - IC Date: 8/13/2024 - Wednesday, June 29, 2016

"And test run number fifteen is... a failure."

Raiko sighed as she started jotting down notes. She was in one of Infinity's magic labs, and one that she had booked for the entire afternoon and evening to run her experiments with. Arcane sigils and wards lined the walls, ceiling and floor, adding extra protection from magical mishaps on top of the reinforced steel construction of the room. There were any number of workstations for various types of workings, from potioncraft to artifact construction, but the one that concerned Raiko the most today was enchantment.

In the center of the room, on the floor, a magic circle had been inscribed, meant to offer extra protection (and containment) to whatever spell or enchantment one might be working with. And in the middle of that was a broom that had, until a moment ago, been hovering a foot off the ground. Now it was laying on the ground, sparking and crackling with residual magic in a blue hue.

Raiko herself was standing next to the circle, dressed in her school uniform and with her blue hair tied back in a ponytail. She had a notebook and pencil in hand. Her phone was hovering next to her, suspended in midair with several rings of concentric magic circles surrounding it. The screen was on, displaying a stream of numbers and glyphs that Raiko was dutifully copying down.

Slowly pacing around the magic circle was Shiori, a tabby calico cat—Raiko's familiar—examining the broom from multiple angles. "It rather seems like there was a crossover between two or more enchantments." The familiar's voice paused as she turned to Raiko, regarding her phone. She understood that the integration of magic and technology worked for Raiko, but still didn't quite understand the technology side of things. "What do your... readings show, dear?"

The apprentice witch reached out to tap at the phone screen, swiping through several menus until she pulled up a graph. A rather large spike towards the end stood out. She sighed. "Yeah... there's a kilothaum burst right near the end. It's... possible that the engraving failed and caused a short circuit, but... it's more likely the pathways are too close together and caused a harmonic resonance alignment."

There was a moment of silence between witch and familiar.

Raiko sighed. "Okay, it's a crossover either way, I just... like distinguishing what the root cause might be."

Shiori nodded slowly. "Of course, dear. Being precise in matters of experimentation certainly has its virtues."

With a wave of her hand, Raiko dismissed the barrier and picked up the broom. It was utterly traditional in its construction, a plain wooden handle with a bundle of straw at one end. It wasn't the broom she intended to use permanently, but she was trying to eliminate the number of variables she would have to account for with the final enchantment. Still, she looked it over for a moment before putting it with a series of other brooms awaiting further examination. She carefully applied a tag to it, and then grabbed the next broom waiting to be tested.

"Alright, Shiori. Next up is—"

A knock at the door cut her off. Raiko frowned and looked at the clock. It was late, certainly, but she still had the room reserved for another hour yet. She wasn't expecting, well, anybody. Yumi knew where she was, but... her fellow Inheritor would call or text if she needed something, right?

Raiko left the newest broom in the middle of the circle and then moved to answer the door. "Hello? Can I—" Her thought trailed off as she took in who was there.

Two of her fellow students were at the door. And more than that, her two best friends.

Or, well, her former best friends, anyway. They'd had a falling out after starting middle school together. Raiko had tried to impress on a project with a still-unproven and not ready technique for doing a new type of enchantment, and had made a fool of herself and her two friends in front of the entire class.

That had been Raiko's fault. She could admit that she had been impatient, and had let her enthusiasm get the better of her. But then she had gotten it working. A real working prototype that she had properly tested this time. She'd wanted to show it to her friends first this time, not the entire class, she'd thought they'd be excited, but Kiyo...

She shook herself from those thoughts. "Cheiko-chan, Kiyo-chan..."

Cheiko was about Raiko's height, with rose-red hair even longer than her own, and green eyes. Her hairstyle today seemed to be two buns formed out of braided her. She was always so good at that, thought Raiko. Her own manual dexterity, honed through years of working with small electronics, never quite seemed up to the task, and there were times she missed having Cheiko's help for things like that.

Of the three, Cheiko was the artist, with aspirations of becoming a well-known mangaka. She would often have her head in the clouds, and Raiko would be right there with her, and it was usually Kiyo who kept them both grounded.

Kiyo, meanwhile, was taller than either of them by a couple of inches, with clear blue eyes and sporting bright green hair. She kept her hair short and unruly, but unruly in a way that took more effort to do, not less. Where Cheiko and Raiko would bond over manga and anime, discussing character motivations and story structure, Kiyo and Raiko shared a passion for video games, instead.

But that was Kiyo for you: she liked being active, even if only digitally, and outside of video games she was the natural born athlete of the three. You could even call her competitive, at times, and headstrong. But Raiko often had strong ideas about how to do things, too, and it usually took Cheiko to be the mediator of the three, to suggest compromises they could both be happy with.

Cheiko and Kiyo were also both apprentice witches, like Raiko. All three had started at Infinity together in grade school, and had grown up always teaming up for class assignments and projects, or formed study groups to help each other with homework. Or they used to, at least.

... What did she bring to their friendship, Raiko wondered, not for the first time.

Cheiko and Kiyo both seemed just as surprised to see her there as well. Cheiko's normally ever-pleasant smile was replaced by an expression of concern, while Kiyo's expression was a bit sharper, becoming a frown of annoyance as she realized who was at the door.

"Oh, Raiko-chan," started Cheiko. "I didn't expect... what are you doing here?"

"Working on a project," Raiko said simply. She glanced back into the room. "Shiori's here, too."

The familiar leapt up onto a counter and sat primly upright, nodding to the two new arrivals. "Good evening, girls. It has been a while, hasn't it?"

"That's... not quite what I—"

Kiyo cut in. "She means you're gonna miss the last bus if you don't get out of here. Or did you get so wrapped up—" She cut herself off as Cheiko put a hand on her arm. Kiyo looked to her, frowning deeper.

"Oh," said Raiko flatly. She looked down at her feet. "... I'm actually staying in the dorms, now, so..."

"What!?" shouted Kiyo.

"... Since when?" asked Cheiko, a bit more calmly, but still with plain concern on her face.

Shiori stood up again, striding forward. "Perhaps you two had better come in." She looked to Raiko. "... Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah." Raiko stepped back from the door. "What are you two doing here, anyway?"

Cheiko started to walk inside. "Oh, you know, we got paired up for that assignment in Elemental Enchantments? We were working on it in a different lab, but when we left we saw the lights on here and were curious who else was working so late."

"Oh, yeah. Which one did you decide to work on?"

"The glow one," said Cheiko cheerfully. "I'm hoping I can turn it into an art piece of some kind later."

Raiko managed a smile. "I bet you'll make something amazing with that."

Both girls realized then that Kiyo had yet to enter the room. Kiyo was still in the hallway, determinedly avoiding making eye contact with anybody else.

"You know it is pretty late," Chieko said hurriedly. "Kiyo-chan, you've got that soccer match tomorrow, right? Why don't you go rest up, and I'll fill you in later?"

Kiyo still didn't say anything for a moment more. Then, without making eye contact still, she asked, "Is it serious?"

Raiko sighed and nodded. "... Yeah."

There was a quiet grunt of assent, and then Kiyo stepped in and closed the door behind her.

This was the first time in 3 years the three of them had been in the same room together for something that wasn't school-related in some way. Raiko and Kiyo couldn't quite make eye contact, while Cheiko was looking between the two, lost for words that might help the situation.

Hospitality. That'd be a start, right? It wasn't really the right answer, but it was an answer, at least. Raiko cleared her throat. "Do either of you want a snack? I've got extra. I've got, um... let's see..." Raiko concentrated and held her hands out. In a shimmer of blue energy, two snack bags appeared, one in each. She held them up for Cheiko and Kiyo to see. "Mochi and cherry flavors."

The other two girls stared at her.

Raiko blinked. "What? Why are you—" Then she realized that they were, in fact, looking at her hands. At the snack bags. "... Oh, right." Of course. They didn't know about that little trick of hers. Hardly anybody knew, except for Yumi and some of her magical girl friends.

"Raiko, how...?" started Cheiko.

"Did you seriously spend the last three years working on... on snack magic?" accused Kiyo hotly.

"Kiyo-chan," said Shiori sharply. "Allow Raiko a chance to explain before jumping to conclusions."

Kiyo stiffened and nodded. "... yes, Shiori-san."

Raiko mentally thanked Shiroi, knowing her familiar could pick up on the gratitude. But she'd make it a point to verbally thank her later, too. She took a deep breath. "Okay, so—"

Cheiko's attention, meanwhile, was on Raiko's phone, which was still hovering in mid-air next to her experiment, surrounded by several rings of magic sigils. "Raiko, why is your phone doing that?"

Before Raiko could respond, Kiyo latched onto something else. "Forget the phone! Is that a broom? Don't tell me you're seriously trying to enchant a broom."

How had this gotten so complicated so fast? Raiko struggled to try and organize her thoughts so she could get the conversation on track. "W-well, you see—"

The green-haired girl wheeled on her, hands on her hips. "This is just like you. Messing with stuff you don't understand. I don't know who you're trying to impress, you big idiot, but you need to get your head out of the clouds if you ever want to bring your grades back up. Nobody in our class is ready to work an enchantment like that. This is college stuff!"

Both Cheiko and Shiori tried to interrupt, but their protests were cut off by Raiko herself. "Hey!" She was glaring at Kiyo now, meeting her angry gaze with one of her own. "In case you haven't noticed, I actually have been bringing my grades up. And I did okay on my entrance exams." Not great, not everything she was capable of, but... better than she would have expected, considering. "And I'll have you know I can actually enchant a broom."

Kiyo rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah, right. I'm supposed to believe you went from barely passing your classes to enchanting a broom? What, did you make it glow, like our class assignment?"

"Nope. Real flight. Watch—" Raiko reached a hand for her phone, recalling it to her with her telekinesis. She put it down next to a notebook, and then stomped over to the line of brooms. She picked up the first one and turned back to her friends.

Wordlessly, Raiko tossed the broom forward, and instead of clattering to the ground it instead caught itself in midair, bobbing gently. Raiko slipped onto it sideways, making sure to smooth out her skirt and observe the proper form. At her mental urging the broom lifted itself up into the air and made a slow lap of the lab before lowering itself again. She left it sitting just a little higher than when she started, so her legs were dangling without touching the ground. It still felt as amazing and awe-inspiring as the first time she'd taken it for a test ride.

Raiko couldn't help but grin at seeing her friend's shocked expressions. Especially Kiyo's.

"Amazing..." was all Cheiko could say.

"No way," said Kiyo in an awed voice. "Did... you didn't really do that yourself, did you?"

"Well, Shiori helped," admitted Raiko. But familiars were supposed to help, so that wasn't really cheating.

Shiori had sat again, her tail curled up around her paws. "I provided some assistance, yes. But only at Raiko's direction. She did the hard work of understanding and applying the enchantment."

"But if you have a working broom," asked Cheiko, "why does it look like you're getting ready to enchant another one?"

Raiko couldn't admit she was making a broom to help enhance an ancient magical artifact, of course. But she could still explain some of what she was working on. "I'm experimenting with augmenting the flight enchantment. Speed, maneuverability, maybe a defensive ward..." She was determined not to leave any future Inheritors of her staff without a broom again if she could possibly help it. "But I had to make sure I understood the basic enchantment first before I could build on it."

"But if you can do that—you should be acing all of your magic classes!" protested Kiyo.

The broom touched down again, and Raiko stepped off of it, putting the broom back in the lineup. "I... overspecialized. I spent all my time researching and studying enchantments, and everything else... kind of suffered. I'm working on catching back up."

"Wait wait wait. I thought you got all obsessed with, you know, combining magic and technology? Did you give that up?"

Raiko shook her head. She picked up her phone and then let it float between her hands. "Nope. I managed to figure out a bunch of stuff. Like my phone. I can use it as a focus for scrying spells. That was the spell you saw earlier. And it has a subdimensional pocket enchantment with a few modifications I added onto it for convenience. That was where the cookies came from."

"You.... put a storage enchantment on your phone and you use it to store cookies?" asked Cheiko, with some concern.

"Yeah." The apprentice witch shrugged a little. "It's more convenient than interrupting a flow state to get a snack. Plus I store other stuff in here too. Pencils, tools, all my magic textbooks..."

Cheiko stepped closer. She didn't need to look to Shiori for confirmation; she hadn't heard of anybody else doing this type of enchantment. "That's amazing, Raiko."

A nervous laugh. "Nah..." Raiko shrugged a little. "It's... mostly sympathetic magic. Just... from a different viewpoint, that's all..." There was a lot more to it, of course, but they would understand the basic idea that way, at least.

"Hey!" snapped Kiyo. The other two girls turned to look at her, but Raiko was already cringing a little in anticipation of what she might say. Instead, Kiyo just folded her arms. "Don't sell yourself short, dummy. This is incredible and you're incredible for figuring it out and you should take the damn compliment."

"K-Ki-chan..." Raiko glanced away, at a loss for words momentarily. In a quiet voice, she eventually said, "... thanks."

The other girl huffed and looked aside. "Welcome," she mumbled. "... just... pisses me off, when people do that."

A momentary silence settled between the three girls, the lull in the conversation quickly giving way to awkwardness.

"... How long?" Kiyo finally asked.

Raiko shrugged a little. "A while."

Kiyo finally looked at Raiko again. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Another shrug. "I didn't want you to break my phone." There was something accusatory in her tone.

It was harsher than she'd meant, and Kiyo flinched back before quickly looking away. This time, her expression was more guilty. Raiko couldn't blame her friend; it kind of surprised her, too, hearing that tone coming out of her mouth.

Cheiko's expression grew tight with worry as she looked between the two girls. Shiori watched quietly, but said nothing, her expression inscrutable.

Kiyo huffed. "Yeah... that's... that's a fair hit." She couldn't bring herself to look at Raiko directly, but she did look at the corner of her eye towards the other girl. "... I'm sorry for breaking your prototype."

Raiko nodded, looking downcast at the floor. "Thanks. I'm... sorry for ruining the presentation."

There was a small sigh of relief from Cheiko. Shiori simply blinked slowly.

"So..." started Cheiko. "... does any of this have anything to do with you staying in the dorms?"

Raiko was instantly tense again as she shook her head. "No. That's... something else." She took a moment to steel herself, and then looked up. "My grandfather is missing. He was on a trip taking care of Magic Association business, but... he hasn't come back yet."

Cheiko gasped. "Rai-chan—" She stepped forward to wrap Raiko in a tight hug. "I'm so sorry. If I'd known—"

"It's okay, Chitomo-chan," mumbled Raiko as she accepted the hug. Things were complicated enough between the three of them without adding fresh guilt onto the pile. She felt a hand on her shoulder, blinking in surprise to see Kiyo standing there.

"Hey, um..." Kiyo glanced away for a moment, but then managed to look at Raiko again. "Your grandpa's really cool, so... I hope they find him."

Cheiko let Raiko go. "Okay. If you're up for it, you're filling us in on everything that's happened."

"Yeah, but let's move this to one of our dorms, my battery's gonna die any minute now."

Raiko perked up. "Oh! I have just the thing for that." In her hand suddenly appeared a phone case. Raiko flashed it to Cheiko and Kiyo to show them the intricate enchantment engraved within. "Kiyo-chan, can I see your phone?"

Kiyo shrugged and handed it over, "I guess, but I dunno how that's going to help."

"You'll see~" Raiko fit the phone to the case, and then held it up for her friends to see. The battery icon changed to include a plug, and a message on the lock screen indicated that wireless charging was active.

"Whoa!"

"No way!"

"Way!" said Raiko with a grin. She put the phone on the counter and started to explain.