Kaleidoscopic

Chapter 10: Picking the Pace

Madoka wondered what it was like, seeing someone who was once your friend lose it like that. With the added trauma of Doji attacking Koma Village and Ryo's "death" — whether Kotone admitted to being bothered by it or not was a different sto—

The door opened, and the bell jingled. Madoka jumped and turned around as fast as she could, and sighed in relief when Hikaru walked in. The blue haired girl raised an eyebrow at Madoka and then turned to Kotone. Hikaru sighed and grabbed the notebook, holding it out of Kotone's reach.

"What the hell, Hikaru?" Kotone said, trying to reach for her diary which Hikaru just held away even further.

"Kotone, I swear, if you don't take a break, I will throw this in the river," was Hikaru's response.

Kotone glared at her and then crossed her arms and looked away, huffing. "Fine."

o-o-o-o

The next day, Kotone paced in front of the four Bladers in the B-Pit, no unlike Tsubasa's instructor in the training academy. The other three looked bemused as the Kotone talked — all unnecessary stuff, but Kotone really liked to talk — her ponytail swishing behind her.

"At first, I was going to add new tactics, but then I figured that we should get the hang of what we can do."

Yuu arched an eyebrow. "We?"

Kotone sighed. "Yeah, I'm training too. I mean, I'm not on the team or anything, but why waste an opportunity? Anyways, I figured that since we worked on basically everything in the boot camp—"

Masamune snorted. "It was just us who did the work."

Kotone rolled her eyes. "Whatever. The point is, we'll just work on our strengths for now."

Tsubasa crossed his arms. He could see where Kotone was going, but wouldn't it make more sense to work on their weaknesses? "Or we could sharpen our weak points so our enemies can't take advantage of that."

Kotone shot him a glare, one he'd long since become used to. It was the same one she gave him whenever they didn't agree on something during their only team mission — which happened more than Tsubasa would like to admit. It wasn't exactly practical to hate your partner's guts or for the feeling to be mutual.

"Or," Kotone said through gritted teeth, as she halted, "we could make sure they don't get that chance in the first place."

"That's reckless, Kotone," he said before he even realized he had said it. It had just become a habit by now — as it was becoming with Masamune too, apparently.

Her glare just deepened. Tsubasa mentally scoffed. Kotone wasn't nearly as scary as she seemed to be to the others. Sure, her temper was short, and she did stupid and violent things when she was ticked off, but her glare didn't hold a candle to some of the ones he'd seen, both in the training acadey and in field.

Before she could say something though, Gingka stepped between the two. "Guys, let's just get back to the training schedule."

Tsubasa sighed. "Fine." While it was impractical to ignore their weaknesses, he supposed working on their strengths would do for now.

"I though we were here to take a break," he heard Yuu mutter to himself.

"Perhaps, but Kotone has a point," Tsubasa replied. It was the one thing he could agree with his junior on right now. "You saw Team Excalibur. We can't get complacent. We've come too far to lose now."

Masamune pushed himself up from the chair and stretched. "So, what are we waiting for? Let's get started!"

o-o-o-o