"The techniques of humanity are rather revolutionary," the demon magic wielder on the comically box-shaped TV announced, holding a large, glowing gem-like construct in his raised palm. It glistened, refracting light off its smooth surface like it had been subjected to two marathons without even a second to catch its breath. Although speaking in a tone gushing to the brim with praise, the demon's words fell on deaf ears. For the individual those words of praise were intended for had long departed from the world as they lay motionless on the rubble-strewn ground.

  Kid Lizu frowned as the outro abruptly cut the episode to an end.

  The gentle hum, contrasting with the intense final battle being projected from the TV, buzzed through the dimly lit room that Inkaro called his bedroom, despite the stacks upon stacks upon mountains of basic grimoires, inadvertently imparting the room with the air of a magic-oriented library in the making.

  Glaring upon the fuzzy CRT line that's contents urked her ever much so, Lizu turtled up in her sleeping bag, hunkering down in the cosy embrace of her chosen sleep apparatus until only her head and a third of her chonky tail were exposed, with her little mits for hands held onto the sleeping bag's opening.

  "Urrrg, he did it again! He mastered another mojo technique after only seeing it once," Kid Lizu voiced, rather aggressively at that, as she made her disapproval for the demon mojo maestro's flippant display. Not because it was impossible in her mind in any way; Lizu had seen such prodigies in real life. It was simply the misgivings born of a child's jumbled musings: spiteful envy, if you will.

  However, unlike the sleeping bag-having dragolyte, Kid Inkaro had his sight locked on the screen for the quintessentially opposite reason with the only similarities between their interest being it revolved around the demon mojo maestro: "I think it was really cool how he can easily understand and embrase the mojo of others; do you think it's because he tries to understand his opponents that he's able to do it?"

  Lizu weakly leaned forward, not enough to be noticeable unless looking at the created gap between herself and her tail, and looked upon Inkaro with a non-judgmental but still befuddled expression, mouth left faintly agape in pure confusion.

  "I- I... don't know, half the time that ancient demon is on screen, I'm trying to follow how the abilities he's studying work before he blatantly explains them. He's so annoying, like he who won't be named in this blessed place. And, what makes you think that anyway?" Lizu blurted out, turning a little red in the cheeks at how sheepishly guilty she unintentionally sounded, only to covet the aid from the tip of her tail to obscure the lower half of her face. But despite that, Lizu felt somewhat giddy all the same. Her tail faintly rustled from within the sleeping bag, hardly able to contain the excitement building up in its owner as she could barely handle imagining what absolutely outlandish and goofily cute reasoning Inkaro was about to inundate her with.

  Thinking deeply and earnestly nodding his head in slow rhythmic motions, Inkaro considered how to word his feelings and sentiment before finding the right words to express his reasoning. Inkaro was content, doing little fingertip claps of elation as he himself fully comprehended what he was about to say. He was excited, cheerfully and earnestly kneading at the part of his blanket under his feet, via weak stomping, until the perfect answer popped into his little head.

  "Hmmm, he seems to replicate others' mojo more quickly when they're the talking ones."

  Inkaro's surprisingly simple and straightforward explanation stunted Lizu's annoyance into recession and replaced the primary emotion of her choosing with a strange sense of calm. It was the sort of euthoric calm that left the girl lacking in physical strength, almost knocking her off balance and collapsing onto her side in a slump.

  Her heart could barely handle such cuteness.

  "Oh... yeah, that does... make sense, I suppose," Lizu mumbled exhaustedly; although, it wasn't from any physical fatigue but from the mental strain of her struggling to keep her gushing endearment of Inkaro's cute Inkaroness in check. It was only then did she realised her mind was simply too clouded to properly focus on anything else whatsoever. So, she slumped her shoulders, very sadly. "And, I'm supposed to be the observant one."

  She had become so downtrodden that she failed to notice that Inkaro had not only risen to his feet but had already adorned himself with his blanket, wrapping it around himself in the imitation of the demon mojo maestro's cloak. The sight Inkaro graced her with almost had Lizu in tears from the monumental task that it was for her to force herself not to burst out into a laughing fit. But all her efforts left her resembling a chipmunk after having stored three too many acorns in its cheek pouches. Luckily, a Kid Yuuvia wasn't present, or things would've gotten rather messy; in a literal sense, purely because the school curriculum currently involved teaching students how to create/manipulate ink-like substances.

  "Say, Lizu, wouldn't it be cool if we tried making our own... urm... thing like the scene in the movie?" Kid Inkaro suggested, eyes already dazzling like captured fireflies from him, already anticipating the marvellous effects the pair could pull off to recreate the fake combat magic they'd witnessed from the movie. Just from the look on the boy's demeanour, but mainly from how obviously he was blatantly copying the hand signs for the demon's main mojo technique, Lizu didn't have to take much consideration on what scene Inkaro had in mind.

  Puffing up her chest from not wanting to appear backed into a corner, for some reason not even the best psychologist in the world could rationalise why she decided she needed to be, Lizu planted her fists on her hips and softly spoke her mind: "The word you're... nevermind you're too cute to correct, so you get a pass from me this time. Cute. Dummy. Very well then, I suppose making a movie is a more tame endeavour for us to-"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Can you two be a bit more quiet, checking the both of yours work is taxing enough when I have to keep myself from watching the TV that you two seem so insistant on watching for so long," Karuoe uttered stoicly, punctuating his request by pointing out the time on the analog clock that had been placed on top the Box TV of the duo's observation. Only once the messurer of time had been pointed out to them did the duo not only register it was on the cusp of ticking over to the next day, but that the device had been moved from it's usual spot in the room by Inkaro's father, done so by the man in hopes of ensuring a higher probability the two kids went to bed at a somewhat reasonable time. An act done entirely because of his wife and Lizu's father's concern that the duo would be too tired for school the following week.

  Seeing their blunder, the duo meekly retreated into more defensive demeanours, while Inkaro tapped the button on the TV to shut it off.

  "Sorry, Teach/Mr Natsumi," Kid Inkaro/Lizu murmured siquenchally, both hanging their heads low in solemn guilt, which the scene of the sad children was only broken up by it fading away as present Lizu slowly grasped her senses back from the clutches of her own soup-like subconscious.

  Her vision, well, whatever signals were being sent to her brain, was a kaleidoscope of illogical shapes, constructs, and particles. All those colours left the dragolyte somewhat nauseous from all the simulated spinning it imparted onto her brain. Calling the experience a headache version of putting your hand in a blender would be an understatement so grave it could be considered neglect. Soon enough, all the nausea-inducing stimulation fizzled out into flat black, which only became apparent to her that it was her starting to wake up when she heard the buzzing of distant beegirls.

  With her face down on the soft padding of the sofa, the only sign of Lizu's return to reality was a meek and very muffled sigh. That, and a weak flick of her tail, flopping a whole half an inch off the sofa, for half a second, as that was all the strength she could feasibly muster.

  If Lizu had one complaint, other than being woken up, it was the searing pain in her head that went far beyond what a headache could be classified as. The pain was only rivalled by the surprise attack from a stationary coffee table against unsupecting toe. Despite feeling like she been struck who knows how many times on the head by a certain truck, the dragolyte was more focused on how it would seem her body decided she would be returned to her natural age in the middle of sleeping, much to her annoyance on both fronts: both from her wanting to remain physically a child for a whole day and that she now didn't have an excuse to not participate in the tournament instead of eating festival food.

  The tragedy of it all left her speechless to the highest order.

  So, rubbing at her cheeks to smush the lingering numbness out of them, Lizu noticed that which covered her body: Inkaro's white fur trench coat; Omens Befallen in its bracelett mode and hanging from the coat's chain not included. Seeing herself 'trapped' underneath such an object of all things, it left Lizu cheekily giggling in her head, knowing the article of clothing covering her was put there in part to keep her from falling back asleep, as she'd usually do when on a bed, by forcing her to stay awake so she could savour having it in her grasp.

  However, enjoying the experience that would've been burying her face on Inkaro's coat would have to wait, a point made more apparent by a sharp sting hitting Lizu in the brain as she fully sat upright. "Geez... it feels like my head is splitting, one moment Paruneha was... something."

  Mid gripe with the condition her head was putting her through, Lizu raised her gaze to the ceiling, only to be put face-to-face with Yuuvia's unamused glare as the noble asthetics-obsessed girl had her arms crossed, done so to make leaning against the head of the sofa more comfortable.

  "Yeah... so, you want the bad or less bad news?" Yuuvia asked bluntly, yet her tone made her bluntness come off strangely comforting, like someone trying to reassure someone else without breaking some heartbreaking news to them all at once by only giving them bits of the news at any given time. Lizu slumped her head to the side, moving with such a motion to resemble a plush toy, and deeply sighed.

  "The less bad...?" Lizu mumbled groggily, knowing that Yuuvia being frank with her, of all people, was never a good sign.

  "You tried eating some of that odd honey that Inky Stigmai offered you, and it had you succumbing to the fate of blacking out, or so I surmised from what Princess Enetha explained to me. Although I don't get what she was going on about your size changing, you don't look any different to me... other than your-" Yuuvia abruptly shook her head, having caught herself drifting away from what she'd agreed to explain. "And the bad news is that Ana ended up eating the rest of the honey you didn't eat. But instead of turning lethargic to the point of falling asleep, she ended up having the opposite reaction. It turned her into an overly hyperactive artist, if you will."

  "That. Is bad... ...is it?" Lizu tilted her eyes tightly shut in contemplation as she wondered how bad what Yuuvia had told her could possibly be. But she didn't think on it much for too long, mostly because her headache made any complex thought rather treacherous.

  "Inkaro is handling it," Enetha added, believing that the gu's involvement would ultimately be for the best, given his trackrecord so far. Such reassurance was met by begrudging acknowledgement by Yuuvia, shivering like someone in the middle of a blizzard when she recalled her time in Gelatomb Dungeon with the guy and particularly how the SSS:AW ring made her skin prickle when its mana interacted with her own.

  Lizu, on the other hand, wasn't sure whether to sigh in relief or be deeply offended that G.Galore didn't try to wake her up so she could watch Inkaro struggle to rangle in an overactive Anazenpha. It was like suddenly learning your favourite musician was performing in your town, and only learning about it a month after the case from your friend who attended the concert.

  But with all that being said, Lizu knew getting worked up over something so small wasn't worth it. After all, she wasn't a kid anymore, so she couldn't mask any complaining as a result of her physical de-ageing messing with her personality. So she sucked it up, for now, until she was alone with Inkaro and could ask him for the tea.

  "Yep, things should be fin-"

  "What made you cut your hair, anyway?" Paruneha asked out of the blue as they poked their head out from under the coffee table, still clutching onto the remaining honey jars in their inky tendril's clutches that stuck out from every side of the short table. Such a brazen question about a girl's choice in her appearance made Yuuvia avert her gaze to the nearest window, purely because that was the very question she caught and stopped herself from asking.