The Care and Feeding of a Foxgirl

It's been a few days since the skirmish with Riventon... since the revelation of Ayana's newer, darker self. A change that has upset quite a few people who care about her. A worrying change, too, and not just to those few. Mikoto had barely met the fox-girl before this, so she was unsure of the details. But the situation has its complications... and so she's decided to go straight to the root for information, clear the air and find out what's really going on.

She started out intending to rant and rave at the wolf-girl about meddling with a Mage's familiar bond, that being something of a serious taboo to the Belkan Knight she considers herself. At the time, she was still under the influence of the dark energy she'd been struck with during the battle. Still, the prompt she'd posted online was there, in one of the forums frequented by local magical-girl fans. It appeared as a simple personal ad, if perhaps a slightly unusual one.

"Single Swordswoman seeks Wolfen Protector for lessons in fox-hunting." She'd spent some time paring through the expected spam of replies, sorting out the ones who clearly weren't the person she sought, and sending a few pointed questions to the rest to narrow it down. Once she was sure she was in touch with the 'Cute Wolf', she sent one final message suggesting a time and place for a meeting, a small cafe in downtown Uminari, well known for is cakes and teas.

In the days after the skirmish, Ikiko had taken to checking local forums for any information about fox sightings, on the chance that one of them might be Ayana. What she found was mostly cute pics of red foxes, but a certain forum post caught her eye. The phrasing was oblique, but it hinted at someone trying to get in contact with Tsukiko.

Further communication effectively confirmed that the poster was trying to meet with her, and a meeting had been suggested. Ikiko definitely wanted to know why someone was trying to get in touch with her (although she had a few ideas about that), but she didn't want to walk blindly into a meeting -- what if the meeting is just a ruse for a trap?

Better to bring some backup.

"Thanks for coming along, Reiko-chan," Ikiko smiles to her younger friend. "I think this person wants to talk about Aya-chan, so you'd probably want to hear about it anyway... so I might as well have you along as my bodyguard!"

She looks at the people sitting around the cafe, trying to spot the item that indicates who she's supposed to meet. Ah, there's the item, so that's... hm, a somewhat familiar face -- someone she knows is magical, and who has a good sense of who she is, as well. This might be promising...

Reiko Touyama followed along without issue, because this seemed important. Also-- there was a magical-type personells ad forum!? Maybe she outta try that--- wait, no. Worry about this right now, Reiko! She thought to herself as she kept beside Ikiko, softly rubbing her chin a bit and tapping her nose a moment.

"So-- what's this person have to say you think?" she asks to Ikiko.

They reach the cafe and she looks around and then taps her Chroma Crystal through her shirt. Sgt. Fins appears and salutes her. She whispers something and the fish salutes again and dissapears. Sgt. Fins appears on the rooftop of a nearby building with a pair of tiny cute toy binoculars.

She peeks. She whispers to Ikiko. "I have someone watching out for us." she insists. She probably means the koi.

Fortunately, the final exchanges were not made public, or there would probably be a horde of onlookers at the cafe waiting to see the magical girls meeting. Instead, there's just a familiar-looking teen, her dark hair tied back, relaxing with a cup of tea. The advertised item marking her as the person to look for, an innocuous blue scarf adorned with a silver snowflake pattern, sits over the arm of a chair, positioned to be easily visible from the door.

The koi on watch sees no sign of anyone suspicious, or at least, no one watching the girl in blue or the new arrivals. One fellow in the corner does seem to be paying a lot of attention to the woman at the next table from him, but given her figure and dress that's not surprising.

The girl in blue looks up, watching the newcomers briefly, waiting for them to approach her table. "Happy holidays," she offers when they get close. "Do try the tiramisu. It's out of this world." And that was the phrase she told them to look for. All this spy stuff, where does she get it? Tom Clancy novels?

"Merry Christmas," Ikiko replies with a formal smile. "I think I'll have a thin slice and some tea; I've heard that it will put your tastebuds into orbit." Response-phrase, complete!

"My name is Ikiko Hisakata, although you might recognize me as a certain tan wolf," she continues, taking a seat. "This is my friend Reiko Touyama; she's also involved with the rooftops, and is similarly interested in our mutually known fox." It's only fair to let the girl in blue know that magic can freely be discussed around Reiko, although it's still Reiko's perogative if she wants to actually identify herself or not.

"So... you wished to speak about Ayana?"

Reiko Touyama sits down next to Reiko and peeks over to the girl, then over to Ikiko and back to the girl and a tiny koi appears just over her shoulder and she head tilts. She smiles and gives a little finger wave of sorts.

"Yup! I'm Reiko...I'm also... Prism Keeper Orange. You will see koi. No one else can see 'em. Sorry if you find em annoying~" is all she can say~

That koi over her shoulder zips down in front of Reiko and suddenly obtains a bib, a knife and a fork.

Because it heard something like 'dessert time' more or less.

"I think that sounds nice!" she says.

The girl in blue nods, and a little smile flirts across her lips. "Indeed. And to return your trust... I will tell you first that I've already placed a privacy shield around the table, no one will hear what we discuss." She waits a moment for them to absorb that, then continues. "I am Mikoto, though I go by Tessen when I'm 'working'. I have a long way to go to properly master the fans, however, so I use a sword for now."

She takes a sip of her tea, savoring the warmth and flavor. "And yes, I did feel the need to discuss Ayana, and Riventon, before someone takes action which might be considered... precipitous. And certain other parties, such as myself, are forced to choose sides." Her tone is so light and pleasant it can't really be a threat, can it?

"Feel free to order anything you like when the waitress comes by. My treat."

"Thank you," Ikiko smiles, relaxing slightly at the mention of a privacy shield. "My magical name is Cute Wolf Tsukiko, and I chat with dogs on occasion, both in and out of magical form."

She frowns slightly at some of what Mikoto mentions. "I could argue that some people have already started taking sides, but that's not immediately relevant," she muses. "While I know more than I did two weeks ago, I likewise discovered that there was still much that I don't know."

There's a pause as the waitress arrives; best not to test the limits of the privacy shield when there's someone there to talk to you. Ikiko orders a light sandwich, some tea, and a small slice of cake; a modest snack, and not one that will preclude talking.

Reiko Touyama orders a big slice of cake and a glass of milk. She wants something sweet, because her koi wants something sweet. Really, that's just a way of saying 'Reiko wants something sweet' in the end. She looks over to the waitress, then back down at Mikoto as she sighs and crosses her arms and mopes a bit.

"Are you here to beat us up over it?" she asks. "I heard someone did something like that to 'kiko already! And---if you're here to do that...."

"Well! I'm not gonna letcha!" she says throwing her fists up in front of her adamantly...

She pauses....

"Well... I mean if you were gonna hurt us maybe you wouldn't be buying us cake..." she mutters.

"..but...!" she huffs. "Ayana-chan! Somethings wrong with her!" she huffs.

Mikoto, herself, orders a slice of cake as well. The double-chocolate cake is decadently rich and delicious. And from the prices on the menu it might be a good thing that she's covering the check. After a moment's thought, she decides that Reiko has a good point, and milk would go better with the cake than her tea, so orders a glass of that as well.

"I would prefer not to beat either of you up over anything, especially as Riventon seems to take as much objection to me as he does to you." She sips her tea again, and looks at Reiko's hovering fists, arching one slim brow as if to ask 'yes, and?'.

"It's clear enough," she agrees, "That something is 'wrong' with Ayana, yes. The question is what, and what is causing it, and what is the proper course of action to remedy the wrong. In order to do this, proper information is vital, so that each involved can understand why the other finds parts of the issue ... questionable."

And she is buying you cake. Really expensive, really good cake. Even if she does sound like a teacher, or some sort of ojou-sama, talking all formal like that.

Ikiko Hisakata nods. "I'll share what I know, then," she shrugs. "In the order I learned it, so you have a sense of what I knew when."

A tap of her finger. "Ayana is a fox -- I learned that some time after she got Still Night. Sort of like a kitsune, but not a kitsune by nature."

Another tap of her finger. "She wanted to keep me safe from Riventon, so she tried to steal my locket," Ikiko recalls. "I tried to transform to get away from her reach, but that meant that both of us were touching the locket when I activated it. We wound up living through the memories of each other's emotions, and because of that we wound up with an empathic bond. I didn't know that my locket could do that!"

Another tap. "Because of the empathic bond, it made it really clear to both of us that we really, really cared for each other. With that clarity, liking and caring quickly turned into love."

Tap. "About two weeks after the bond was created, I felt a massive surge of despair from Ayana, and later that day the emotional bond felt like it was caught in an avalanche of darkness. The bond felt collapsed and dented, and I could tell that it was Ayana's heart that was caught at the center of that maelstrom."

Ikiko frowns as she taps again. "A week and a half ago, a person who I thought was a friendly acquaintance beat me up for disrupting the bond between Ayana and Riventon. That was the first that I heard of familiars and their bond with their masters; that was the first that I had heard that she had been given her natural powers through the power of dark energy."

She then looks up at Mikoto. "And then, five days ago... well. You know what happened then," she states.

Reiko Touyama merely listens and nods matter of factly along with Ikiko. Her fish also nods.

When he cake arries, her fish begins eating it greedily before she can even start at it as she listens. She blinks and looks down. "Hey!" she says.

It poofs away. She harumphs and begins eating the cake daintly because that is how you eat expensive chocolate cake....

Right?

"..yeah." she says softly.

"What happened that night?" she asks.

Mikoto listens attentively as Ikiko recounts the events. She nods, briefly, at each step. A slight frown touches her lips as she hears of the empathic bond forming, but it disappears quickly. The mention of despair and darkness gets another frown, however.

"I can probably explain the attack, at least." She's finished her tea and started in on her cake while she listened. "The bond between a Mage and her Familiar is... well, it's not exactly sacred, but it's a highly respected and complex issue. It's kind of a serious taboo to tamper with it, and I'll be honest, I had a nice little rant all prepared for you for doing it."

She doesn't start in on it, though. "You say it was accidental, though, through some poorly-understood magical interactions... and I believe you. Things like that do happen."

She turns to answer Reiko's question, pausing for a sip of milk first. "Riventon decided to make a big splashy mark on the city, and Ayana was helping him. Hisakata-san and I were among those who opposed them. Ayana seemed... well, I mostly fought Riventon myself, I didn't see much of Ayana. But what I did see showed a very different personality than what Hisakata-san has described, or what seemed to be normal for her before then."

"So, consider yourselves properly lectured about messing with familiar bonds, and tell me more. I didn't know her very well before this, so I can't be sure how much she's changed, or what-all has been done to her... or by whom."

Ikiko Hisakata does look sheepish at the mention of a lecture, but she nods and recounts more of her experiences with Ayana. Of meeting her, both as an ordinary(ish) girl and as a magical girl. Of the time she first saw Ayana using Still Night, and the joy the kitsune had of being a magical girl. Of how, come November, Ayana seemed to be trying to drive her friends away in an attempt to keep them safe, even before the accidental bond.

She pauses once she's done, staring at her food, slightly lost in thought. After a few moments, she blinks, then takes another bite of her sandwich. "That's what she was like before the feelings of despair and darkness," she finally says after taking a drink of tea. "That fight the other night was the first time I had seen her since then."

Reiko Touyama huffs. "H-hey! I never messed with it! But---I'm not going to sit there and see Ikiko sad because---because her girlfriend is being messed with by some jerk!" she huffs and crosses her arms. But she can only seem huffy and angry for so long before she has to unfurl her arms to start eating cake until her koi reappear and eat the cake on her, for her. Harmph!

Sgt. Fins is still surveying the area. Nothing untoward.

"Ayana-chan doesn't deserve to be pushed around by some jerk even if there's some sort of 'claim' there!" she says crossing her arms. "You know it's wrong!" she says to Mikoto.

"Riventon is a big huge dumb jerkface!" she exclaims.

Mikoto takes another bite of her cake. She's glad that Ikiko is being so reasonable about this. It really helps that she's willing to listen, and to share her own information, as well.

Reiko, on the other hand...

"The first thing that you have to understand is that Ayana's very existence as a sapient being depends directly on him. Creating a familiar isn't a 'one shot' spell, it's an active working that goes on continuously until one or the other is dead. Every moment of her life, from the first moment she became his familiar, to today, depends on a constant stream of mana from him. Cut that off and she dies. Pretty much immediately."

Ikiko's eyes widen. No wonder Ayana was searching for energy when Riventon was in the hospital! If Riventon's not there to keep her supplied with mana, the foxgirl she loves would just... cease to exist?!

"That's kind of frightening," she admits. "That much power over her, held by a vicious jerk -- that's just..."

She shakes her head. "I think that makes him creepier than he already was." Stories of various curses come to her mind, involving symbiotic and/or parasitic forms of life. Nothing quite seems to match the nature of the relationship between a master and a familiar, but least it gives her an idea on where to start looking in her family's library.

Reiko Touyama frowns even harder. "Yeah, we'll- we're gonna find a way to free her from that and not make her vanish!" she insists confidently at Mikoto.

"Do you know of any way to help!?" she asks. Sgt. Fins reports back, saluting Reiko. Reiko salutes back. Sgt. Fins shakes his head in a negative manner and poofs away. Reiko seems to take this as 'nothing untoward has happened' as she doesn't act on anything it seems.

She begins to get close to finishing her cake... then stops, gulping her milk. Koi get to work on the last of the cake, two appearing and trying to finish it off. This seems intentional this time as Reiko doesn't stop it.

"It's just the way the Familiar spell works," Mikoto explains to Ikiko. "It isn't that he's creepy - which he bloody well is. Anyone creating a Familiar would be in the same situation. And the personality given the Familiar is usually a reflection of the Mage's own. So, legally, they're often seen as an extension of the Mage herself, much like a Device."

That's how it worked in the Belkan Empire, at least. "He didn't just up and choose to make her that way. There is no other way."

"To deliberately break a Familiar bond? Without the Familiar in question reverting immediately?" She puts down her fork, looking down at the half-eaten slice of cake in front of her. From the looks of her scowl it's almost as if the delicious sweet chocolate has suddenly turned to lemon in her mouth.

"Aside from the fact that it just isn't done, it's well-nigh impossible. You'd need someone else to take over supplying mana to her... perfect timing in making the switchover... Almost certainly you'd need his active cooperation, or at least nonresistance."

Ikiko Hisakata nibbles at her slice of cake, thinking about Mikoto's explanations. This meeting has been very helpful for the sometimes-wolfgirl, and even if she still doesn't have all of the answers, she at least has a better idea of the problems that need to be solved.

"Thank you for the information and the meal, Nakajima-san," Ikiko smiles. "I think I have a better idea of what's going on, and at least a vague sense of where to go from here."

Reiko Touyama frowns and crosses her arms and just looks put off, huff! They're still going to find a way! All this impossibly hard stuff..... they'll always win the day! Maybe even if she has to beat some sense into the jerk to do it!

...not that'd she do that alone.

...Right?

"Right--um, thanks for the cake!" she smiles finally!

Mikoto nods, and lets out a soft sigh, almost deflating in her seat. "Look... I'll look into the Familiar spell. See what I can find. But it's incredibly complex. Outright creating and maintaining a sentient mind, projecting the mass shadow, all the rest of it..."

"From what you're saying it sounds pretty certain that he's abusing her. Or doing something pretty damn creepy to her, at the very least. So I'll try and find out what I can. But I don't exactly have access to all the most recent research. It's... no guarantees I'll be able to find anything, alright?"

She stabs her fork into the cake, cutting off another piece, but doesn't eat it yet. "Please try not to do anything too ... preciptate... before we have at least an idea of what to do next?"

"For now, I won't do anything about her being a Familiar," Ikiko promises. Complex magic like that needs finesse in handling it, much like disarming a bomb -- and just as potentially devastating if done wrong. However...

"I'm still going to do what I can about her being evil, though," she declares. "I'm pretty sure my howl did something to her the other day, and I know it was effective when she rampaging due to an infestation." That part, at least, is probably much simpler than the Familiar spell.

Reiko Touyama merely frowns and crosses her arms and nods matter of factly! It's all she can really add at this point- look pouty, upset- but alllll so determined to help! Cuz no one screws with Ikiko-chan's important person and gets away with it! --- even if... she's like. Some sort of glorified pet.

...is there a Familiar PETA?

By Imperial Belkan law, that's pretty much exactly what she is. There are some protections against abuse, but it's almost as bad as being a House Elf in a Harry Potter story. And - not that Mikoto knows this - modern Midchildan law, as enforced by the TSAB, isn't all that different.

"I can't stop you from doing that, Hisakata-san, and I doubt I would want to even if I did have that ability. If what you've said about what he's done to her is accurate, then that could well be a serious breach of code." Not law, though.

"I just want to be certain that you're going forward understanding what it is you're meddling with, and the dangers of doing so."

Ikiko Hisakata nodnods! "I'll want to get a better understanding before I actually do anything, but at least now I have a better idea on what kinds of lore might be useful in its similarity," she agrees.

Pulling out a piece of paper, she jots down her number and slides it over to Mikoto. "We should probably keep in touch, instead of having to flail around on the forums," she notes. "I need to get going, but just send me a text when you get the chance so I can add you to my address book."

And with that, she stands up, bows slightly, and heads towards home. There's research to do, even if it takes a while to find something useful!