Repent

A gunshot, an unsettling high-pitched childish giggle, a terrified scream. Those three sounds all come from the same alley in one of the lower-priced parts of the area. Any one of those sounds alone is enough to make bystanders avoid the alley.

In a sense, not much has happened yet. A girl clad in shadows, holding a tome and resting on impossibly long and sturdy shadow-infused hair is standing next to two other figures.

The first is a grown woman, surrounded by pitch-black fires that seem to emit darkness rather than light. Terrified and cowering. The second is a young man, late teens, holding a gun. A tattoo can be seen peeking out from under his shirt, his face is covered in viscous, physical shadows. A nearby wall seems to be the only casualty of the gun.

The girl stops giggling for a second, "Poor, poor people. Don't you know this is no way for humans to live?" There's a pause, just long enough. "For your wickedness, you shall suffer misfortune. If you repent, perhaps you shall earn mercy."

Kukai Souma had to get out of the house for a bit. After he'd gotten home for being gone completely for a day or two his brothers had sat on him until he promised never to do that again. Literally, his eldest brother Kaido had pinned him down on the floor, sat on his shoulders, and Shusui, Unkai, and Rento had sat on his back until he had managed to wheeze out a promise that he wouldn't run off again without keeping in touch with them.

And then they'd taken his phone and run him with tasks and requests every minute of every hour. He'd finally gotten a chance to get out of the house and was walking around his neighborhood, exhausted but still happy, just pleased to be around, Daichi riding his shoulder.

But then, a small pop nearby. He knew what that was, and it wasn't a car backfiring. His back stiffens as he begins moving towards the noise. "Daichi, wake up. Something's going on."

It was getting late, and sometimes you just need to finish off some shopping before heading back home. Greta Legend was jogging along carrying some groceries with her, humming softly as she makes he way along the road. It's been a slow day, no monsters, no evil, not for her anyway, so she's had some time to relax and focus on cooking, and making a bento for someone. Now shopping was done, and going home time it was!

As Greta makes her way along the road, though, she hears the sound of something popping not all that far away. She blinks and turns her head to focus on it. "Fireworks? Or..." Greta blinks a little, before sighing. "Going to have to at least check." She sets her bag down, and holds out her intelligent device in stone form. "TRI SOUL!" "~STANDBY READY, LET'S GO, LITTLE LADY!~"

<INSERT TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE HERE, WE DON'T HAVE THE BUDGET>

Now clad in red white and yellow, the magical girl calls out, "Uniting the hearts of mankind, so anything is possible! THE SUNSHINE SPARK!" "~NEEDS WORK.~" "Shut up, you!" She twirls the device, now in staff form, and calls out, "Time to fly!" "~GRETA WING!~"

Her cape outfit forms a red cape, and she leaps into the sky to fly... Before dropping back down to grab her groceries... AND THEN flying back up.

Once she's in the air, Greta scans around mumbling, "Where did that sound come from---" "~UNIDENTIFIED MAGICAL SIGNITURE DETECTED, MASTER. TO THE EAST~" Greta hmms, "Okay, that way.." And she flies off towards the Alley. Rather than taking stealthy approach, she calls out, "NO MONSTERS ESCAPE TODAY!" Flying right into the alley and calling out, "STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Kukai and Daichi are still too far away for anyone present in that dark alley to respond to their actions. Sunshine Spark Greta does get the attention of the people there, however. The woman starts sobbing harder, dropping the (rather masculine looking) wallet she was holding in her hand. The blinded man with a gun aims it in the rough direction of the noise and fires blindly, it's unlikely to hit anything but air.

The shadowy girl with the giant hat giggles once again, creepy, high pitched, childish. It's not a natural laugh, not even for a girl her age. "There are no monsters here. Just a pickpocket, a gangster and a heroine." A strand of hair forms a hand at Greta, pointing, "Or maybe two now, unless you're here to help them?" It sounds quite like she thinks that's a real possibility.

A second hand like that forms on the other side of her face, and it points its way towards the gangster, thin tendrils of shadow leaking out towards him, forming a single character. 'Misfortune.' There's something off about it, that shadowy character is a potent magic, and it's about to land on the young gangster's unsuspecting hand.

Sky Jack hears the yells from above as he steps into a shady, closed storefront nearby out of the possibility of anyone's sight. "Daichi! Chara Transform!" He shifts, changing and merging with Daichi into Sky Jack, his street clothes changing for the jacket, pants, and pilot's goggles of his heroic form.

Summoning his skateboard to him, he zips out of the store and up into the air, curving around to see what's going on. That voice had been familiar, and as he arrives he can hear the laughter that he knows. ".... Hey! I know you two! Witch, what are you doing?" Jack's familiar with Shiniko - she's never directly hurt anyone yet, so he's unwilling to attack her. "Hey, you, in the red and yellow! Stay calm - there's more going on here than it looks like!"

The Sunshine Spark, as Greta is going to have to start calling herself, zips right to the side as a shot from the gun is made to her by the guy with the gun, and she blinks a little when she sees that the enemy isn't a monster at after all, but a girl, about her age. Still, the black flames and the witchy witch getup looking on the evil side, she hmphs a little and points to Shiniko, "Two heroines? I only see myself and a witchy person that's trying to hurt people! It's not your place to place judgments, so if you're attacking innocent people, that makes you my---!"

And then suddenly a Sky Jack, "Wha--?" She looks up and sees the guy, "You again! Well, I don't know what else it's supposed to look like! She's using magic against innocent muggles! ... Normal people... Mundanes? What's the official term---"

In the corner of her eye, Greta notices the motions and the character being painted in the air with magic, and without thinking she bolts into it's path to block it's path. She doesn't even think about raising a shield, instead just straight up tanking it. "NGH!" She looks to the bystanders and yells at them, "Don't just Gawk, ru-!" And then she notices the flames surrounding the lot of them, "Oh yeah, that..."

"See that wallet she's holding? That's his. I saw her pull it out of his pocket" Shiniko points out, and then one of the shadowy hands that points at the guy, "He noticed, too, and decided to respond with his gun. If I had been a moment later, she'd have been dead."

She's not lying, she's speaking one hundred percent the truth, and it's almost as though the universe conspires to help show it, as the woman drops the wallet, and as it falls open it shows a picture of that guy kissing some girl, who is nowhere in sight, and definitely looks nothing like the woman present.

"As Sky Jack said, sometimes you need to stay calm and act once you know what's going on. All I'm doing is make sure both of these get penance, and then that they leave separately so they can't hurt eachother." Around that time, the curse hits Greta. It takes trivial magical resistance to prevent it from doing anything, all the power is in the effect, not the ability to let it stick. It's likely her barrier jacket alone is enough to stop it.

Sky Jack holds up his hands, moving in between Greta and Shiniko. ".... I swear, you don't know how to do this at like 20. You're 100% all the time and if I didn't know better I'd agree with ... with the other girl - sorry, I gotta get your name after this - that you were doing something wicked. And I kinda think you are, just to wicked people with guns and stealing. Come on."

He picks up the wallet and tosses it over the flames to the man, who catches it, then looks between the two of them. "Let's get the gun, escort the thief out of here, and..." He sighs. "As long as you're not draining them, leave the curses on them. A little bad luck might be a good idea for a bit. You are so hard to deal with sometimes, though." He's looking at Shiniko.

The barrier jacket keeps Greta from taking any damage, and the curse falls off pretty quickly, but she's more miffed at the situation than anything else, "You're still using magical powers to hurt people, criminal or not! That kind of puts you on the evil side of the good vs evil debate! You're not Batman, you know!"

She can't help but narrow her eyes at Sky Jack, though, "It's Greta---er, Sunshine Spark!" Not quite commited to her own choice of codenames, it seems, "I'm pretty sure these people are scared enough out of their heads to just go their own ways, as is!"

"Fine, you hear that, Sky Jack and whoever did you a favor and you get off scott free. Don't let me catch you at this again." Shiniko tells them, first dropping the fire so the woman can run, and once she's around the corner, dropping the shadow obscuring the gangster's face so he can flee, which he does promptly.

Shiniko turns towards the other two. "I am the Shadow Witch Shinoko. I have nothing to do with bats, no." She has no apparent awareness of Batman to grasp the comparison, apparently. "I punish the wicked to protect the innocent." She flips through her book a few times, shooting Greta an angry look, and the shadowy tendrils that keep her aloft start walking off.

Sky Jack looks back and forth between the two girls, then moves over towards Shiniko. "Hey. Stop a second." He moves around into her path and leans in, examining Shiniko's face before she can get away. "...Kid, you don't look so good. Have you ever thought about not using quite so much dark magic? I mean I recently di- nearly died to a youma that didn't look as crappy as you."

He sounds genuinely concerned about her, even if he's being a little pushy and overbearing about it.

"Batman.. I... The movie character? Dark Knight... Never mind..." Greta might have only seen the movie versions anyway! "My point is that you're not a hero if you're actually hurting people like that! Punishing the wicked is a vengeance thing! If you want to be a hero, you kind of have to protect innocent people by keeping them safe and stuff."

She eyes the bystanders, watching as they leave, and keeps an eye out to make sure they've left in opposing directions, before mumbling, "Whatever, I guess that's over..." She sighs and grumbles, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a phone with a peach fruit casing and stares at it... "I don't know what kind of magic that was, but it gives me heebies, even if it wasn't strictly evil magic..."

"It's not dark magic. It's just shadow manipulation. Dark magic is evil, my magic is not." Shiniko objects, and then she turns away faster, "But sure, be ungrateful, attack me for helping instead of actually making sure people are safe."

Shadows collect around her, and the whole place, and soon enough she is little more than a silhouette. Sky Jack has seen her do this before, but this time she doesn't stop talking, not yet, and the silhouette can be seen moving. "You think I punish the wicked for vengeance?" She giggles, and stops moving, but the sound fades into the distance, further away, a followup question is asked, the tone rhetorical, "Are you an idiot?" When the shadows fade, the silhouette proves to have been little more than an illusion.

Sky Jack crosses his arms, seeing Shiniko vanishing. He has in fact seen this before, and isn't as afraid of it this time as he was before. "Hey, don't forget that I actually kept you from being attacked today. I know how you use your abilities and why, but it's hard to tell shadows from darkness." He sighs as she calls him an idiot - again - and vanishes. "Probably."

Jack looks over at Greta, turning to walk over to her. "Yeah, it makes the hair on my neck stand~" He stops before he gets the last word out, peering at the back of her phone. "... Why does your phone have the word 'Anshi' on the back of it?"

Greta narrows her eyes, shooting a glare at Shiniko and swinging her staff in her direction, "I can guess at a hundred other reasons you could be doing it!" She growls as the girl just disappears off into the shadows, literally. "Geez, she's just evil waiting to happen..." With that, she hmphs and mumbles, "Whatever..."

She then blinks as Sky Jack notes her phone and she takes a moment to glance it over again, "Oh, this... It used to belong to my friend, before she..." She grits her teeth, turning herself away from Sky Jack.

Sky Jack looks at Greta's back, then reaches over, very gently, and lays a hand on her shoulder. "I..." He looks away. "I was at Walpurgisnacht. I saw her go beneath the waves and die. Her, and Laisa, and the others."

He lets out a breath as he continues. "I had nightmares about it for a month. I swore I wouldn't let any more girls die like that. Then we all went north, a few days ago, and..." He stops, not sure how much further he wants to go with this story, or if she's even listening.

Despite the sincerity of the gesture, it's after Sky Jack's explanation that sees her tensing up, rather than relaxing. "If only it was as simple as Walpugisnacht..." Greta mutters coldly, "If only it was as simple as a monster, or a villain... If it was as simple as giving your life to save someone else's... It wouldn't hurt as bad... That's not what killed her..."

    Greta turns her head to look Sky Jack in the eyes, and though tears are streaking down her face, that is a look of fury. "The real monster that killed her... That was Kyubey."

Sky Jack takes in a breath and then shakes his head. "When we went north, I died. I don't remember the process of dying a lot - my heart was destroyed, and I used the last of my power to make the rest of my group think I was ok until the fight ended."

He looks down. "But afterwards, I remember being somewhere warm, and..." He trails off again. "I don't know how to describe it. I think I met Laisa and Anshi. I talked to a couple people about it since then. Some say that it was a mental construct designed to help me accept what was happening. Some said it was some peaceful light spell designed to hide the fact of what was going on. I think it was what it felt like. The girls I'd had nightmares about in this world met me in the afterlife to help me defeat my fears."

He continues. "So... I don't know who Kyubey is, or how he killed her, but I do know your friend is ok." He grins. "I kinda think she's one of my guiding spirits now."

Evidently Greta is still having trouble coping, as she almost seems to choke at that last idea, "Guiding---" Her expression tearing between multiple different reactions, including rage if the half-swing of her staff at Jack is to be taken into consideration. However, she seems to settle on depression, as she mumbles, "Guiding spirit, huh... That would be great, wouldn't it..." She relaxes a bit, "At least that would mean she's still out there somewhere..." Not really believing in that herself.

Sky Jack doesn't flinch from the staff swing, closing his eyes, pretty sure she won't hit him. And she doesn't. "Yeah. It's ok. Hey, look. Do you wanna go somewhere and talk about things? I mean we've fought together a couple times but never actually said anything to one another. I'm Sky Jack. Ah..." He nods. "Kukai. My name's Kukai."

He grins. "C'mon. I'd say we could get something to eat but somebody still has my wallet, and my brothers have my phone. So we can go sit and talk, if you like."