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There's a blackout at the Ando Greengrocer's.
This in itself is nothing too out of the ordinary. Truthfully, their systems are rather outdated; brought on by weeks turned months of "we should update those..." and inaction upon the sentiment. There's been many a time that the power's gone out, and they have fail-safes and backups and the like whenever it does.
However, what is out of the ordinary is that Ringo Ando is in the epicenter of it all.
She can feel the static electricity in her hair as it stands on end, which seems wrong but she's a little too frazzled to really know if the blackout is the cause of all the static.
Ringo's dad comes around the corner, brow furrowed. "Whoa, that sounded nasty. You alright, kiddo?"
Ringo stares at the breaker box and doesn't respond for long enough that her dad puts a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. She jolts, and he does too, his hand recoiling as a tiny arc of lightning splits the air between her sweater and his fingers.
"What- oh, um, yeah... I'm fine, I think..." and it's true. Other than the static that still won't dissipate, she's entirely healthy and not fried to a crisp, or whatever a breaker box exploding into thousands of tiny sparks might do to a person.
Oh, yeah, and another thing out of the ordinary was that the breaker box had gone out with a bang. Quite literally.
"Well, there's that, at least." Her dad sighs and looks at the breaker. "Jeez, what happened? Ringo, can you get the electrical gloves from the storage?" She nods and stumbles off as he turns back to the box.
The static crackles in the air after her.
"I heard your power went out?" Maguro says as he fiddles with the cloth cover on his lunch. "What happened? It's not like it's been old reliable, not really, but out of nowhere and only affecting your place is a bit... well. ★"
"Weird?" Ringo supplies with a sigh. "Yeah. It's an old system, but it was so weird... Dad says he thinks it was, like, a fuse blowing, or... a localized power surge that was too much for only our breaker, but I don't... hey, listen, Mags. Um, you remember when... those... exchange students came over?"
He nods, fully understanding her coded question. "Yeah, what about?"
"Um, ever since then, I've been, ah, getting shocked a bit more often than usual? Like... literally. Electric shocks. I can't help but think that's a bit related." A "bit" was an understatement, really- Ringo had been doing almost nothing but thinking it was related ever since she passed off the electrical gloves to her dad. During the global threat crisis it hadn't really registered to her that she was tossing high voltage currents from her fingers, or anything. Mostly she'd just been preoccupied with trying to save the world from being buried in those squishy rainbow jellies their visitors called "Puyo". She made friends with a sorcery student from another world, fought tea-loving skeletons far too many times, and she was shooting lightning, so what? There really were far more pressing matters to tend to. But now that their extradimensional friends were gone, that pitch-black void vanished, and she was left with nothing but her memories and an unusually high amount of electrical mishaps; her mind was starting to wrap itself around what had happened.
Genuinely, what.
Well, even if nobody else in the town seemed to remember that whirlwind of... stuff, she at least held solace in the fact that Maguro and Risukuma held at least some memories of the incident. Their memories were a bit spottier than her recollection of events- they couldn't remember that black shadow that had called himself Ecolo, at least, which seemed like a rather big thing to forget. How does one forget the entity that warped you to another world and forced you to fight your clubmate and-or-clubmate-and-childhood-friend, depending on the person? And maybe-possibly gave you the ability to use magic, as well, since they sure hadn't been up on the roof when that bright light had flashed, and according to Arle that had been what allowed Ringo to use lightning like she had. Facing off with Maguro and Risukuma, she had been kind of gung-ho about it in the moment, since, well, it might as well happen. What was one more thing to add to the pile. But she'd thought about it more, just like everything else, and it really was just surreal. Watching Risukuma throw flasks and declare love as things exploded, or Maguro perform kendama tricks alongside shooting stars and bright lights and...
"Maguro," she says suddenly. Maguro looks up at her from where he's still fiddling with the knot in his lap, which, she's not sure how long she'd been stuck in thought, but still seems an inordinate amount of time to be trying to untie a knot, but regardless. "Where... where's your kendama?"
He shrugs. "Can't carry it around right now. ★"
"...why?"
"If I have it, I do tricks on it. If I do tricks on it, we blow up. ★" His fingers move around in a blur, and Ringo realizes he hasn't been trying to untie that knot. He's been untying and retying it in progressively and excessively complicated patterns to busy his hands with. Because apparently they'll explode if he does things with his kendama.
"Did you-"
"I wrecked my shelf," he admits with a defeated tone. "My copy of Ultimate Wizard IV is toast. ★"
"Ultimate Wizard IV... what about I through III?"
"They were on my desk. I was running through the series again... I guess I'll have to find a new copy of IV, though. ★"
Ringo pats him on the back reassuringly, or tries to. Twin flinches occur as a shock runs through them both. "Ow. Um, good luck."
Ringo opens the clubroom door to smoke pouring out.
Now, again. This isn't really out of the ordinary. This tends to happen. The problem with the smoke today is that it's bright pink and glittery and that's really not the kind of smoke that exploding flasks tend to billow, which is what usually causes the smoke.
She waves the smoke out of her path- it's soft and pillowy and moves all in one big lumpy mass, which further cements her theory that this isn't the normal smoke, and enters the clubroom hesitantly. "...Ris?"
She finds her upperclassman sprawled head-over-heels on the floor next to some cabinets, where he seems perfectly fine. In fact, he's not moving from what couldn't possibly be a comfortable position to stay in, which probably means it's more comfortable than it looks.
"Ah, Ringo," Risukuma says. "My apologies for the dishevelment." (He looks perfectly put together, if you ignored the fact his feet are currently above his head.)
"Um, Ris. Are you... okay?" There's a few more of those weirdly solid clouds of pink glitter hanging around, except some of them are different colors too. She can't help but peek at the door and finds the first pink cloud is still there, just a few inches away from fully escaping out the door into the freedom of the hallway.
"Yes, yes, perfectly fine," Risukuma says. He still hasn't moved.
"...if you say so. Do you need some help getting up?"
"No, I am fine. Thank you for the offer, though. It is much appreciated." He really does seem fine, and so Ringo elects to simply lean her back against the counter to talk. Maybe it's for the best he seems comfortable like that. She wouldn't want to shock him, too, with the voltage she's seemingly carrying around at all times.
"Ah, Ris, uh... can I ask what happened?"
"It was the strangest thing, really," comes the reply. "I was only doing experiments as I usually did, when suddenly I was simply overcome with love. I verbalized this fact, of course, as one is wont to do," ("Of course," Ringo parrots quietly.) "And then KABOOM, and the love exploded."
"Literally?"
"Quite literally."
She's not too sure how to respond more, so she mumbles an "alright", and they sit in silence for a minute longer before the cloud at the entrance ripples and then floats back into the clubroom.
"Hey, did we get new decorations? ★" Maguro quips. "I wish I'd been consulted on what we could do, but I guess this is acceptable. ★"
"Hi, Maguro," Ringo says.
"Hello, Maguro," Risukuma says.
"Heya, ★" Maguro says.
The glittery pink cloud floats a little further into the room.
The three of them don't speak further for a long moment. Ringo watches the clouds dissipate. Risukuma finally uprights himself, but chooses to stay sitting on the floor. Maguro drifts closer to the other two, whips out a small handheld console, and begins a new run of the rougelite he's been hacking away at.
Click, click, go the buttons.
"Is it just your kendama," Ringo says. Maguro nods. "Did anything else explode weirdly," and Risukuma shakes his head.
"Are you still shocking people, ★" Maguro asks, and in response Ringo pushes his handheld shut. Electricity flickers between her fingers and the device and when Maguro opens it again, he frowns at the screen for a second before perking up.
"Hey, you gave it, like, an extra two percent! ★"
"That's possible?"
"It's magic, Ringo. ★"
"Magic can do some incredibly unscientific things," Risukuma mumbles. "How wonderful."
"You wanna try that again? Maybe you can get it to a hundred. ★" Maguro's definitely joking, so Ringo takes the bait.
"And maybe I can blow up the battery! You wanna give it a shot?" Ringo flexes her fingers threateningly, and Maguro laughs and pulls the console a little further towards him. "C'mon, Mags. Just one more itty bitty touch, it won't hurt," and somehow she ends up chasing him around the clubroom, dodging around tables as he holds the console protectively in his arms.
"You'll blow it up! ★"
"You don't know that!"
"Yes I do!! ★"
"The forms love can take," Risukuma says as he watches them.
The clubroom doesn't explode again, thankfully.