Chapter Thirty-Two

“What?” Cassy snapped. The girl stood up and paced over to the side where she could lean against a pillar.

The divide in the group was rather stark. Amber and Morgan and Jade all within a pace or two of each other, and Cassy separated from the rest. This isn’t great.

“Cassy,” Amber repeated. “Come on, we’re just worried.”

“That’s fine,” Cassy said. “But keep it to yourself, alright?”

Morgan huffed. “We’re meant to be a team, aren’t we? That kind of attitude isn’t helpful.”

“What’s not helpful is you not minding your own business. You don’t see me complaining about the rod you shoved up your own rear.”

Morgan sat up straighter, brows furrowing while Jade held back what was no doubt an inappropriate giggle. “Girls!” Amber snapped. Morgan and Cassy jumped. “No. Just no. I don’t want to see you fighting.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to fight either,” Cassy said.

Amber nodded. “Fine, so we won’t fight. No drama, alright? We’re a team, and I want us to be friends.”

“Cool,” Cassy said. It didn’t sound to Amber that her heart was in it, but she took the tiny victory where she could.

“Good,” Amber said. “So... do you want to talk about it? If you’re not ready now, that’s okay. We can do it later, or maybe you can talk with someone else if it’s more comfortable for you.”

“Talk about what?” Cassy asked. “You’re making it sound like you’re my mom who found drugs in my room or something.”

Amber shifted. Do I really want to do this?

She knew that Cassy had some sort of problem with eating. She’d heard stories of girls that were anorexic getting into all sorts of trouble when their body needed more food than they were taking in. Cassy eats enough to be safe, for a normal person.

On the other hand, Amber was a little leery to start any sort of fight. No, it wouldn’t be a fight, Cassy does have a problem, and... and is it our job to try to do something about it? Should we just report it and let the Academy figure it out?

“You ran out of magic today, right?” Amber asked.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you use it,” Cassy said.

“And you’re not hungry now?”

Cassy’s expression became pinched and she didn’t meet Amber’s gaze. “I’m fine. Can we stop with the questions?”

“... No.” Amber shook her head. “Cassy, I’ve been looking at how much you eat. I’m not any sort of expert or anything.”

“So keep your opinion to yourself, then.”

“But,” Amber continued as if Cassy hadn’t spoken. “But I know that magical girls need to eat a lot more. I don’t know why, I guess we’ll learn about it eventually, but we need to eat more than normal people.”

“It’s fuel,” Morgan said. “Our bodies burn magic as well as calories. We have new organs that are constantly hungry for more magic. We get that naturally, from just living, but it sends signals to our body that we’re hungry whenever our magical reserves aren’t overstuffed. It actually fades after a few years. Your body learns to cope with the fact that food won’t feed the new organ. It’s not even a real organ. You get better eventually.”

“Better how?” Jade asked.

“I... don’t know, exactly. It’s been a year since I had a lesson on it, and it wasn’t the most interesting at the time,” Morgan said. “Basically, the same thing that makes it so that our bodies are at their peak means that we digest food faster and our metabolism runs hot. The magical organ isn’t actually an organ, it’s not a physical thing, but it does interact with your body in weird ways.”

“So, the long and short of it is that we need to eat more,” Amber said.

“Basically... You could live on fewer calories, but eventually your body will think that you’re basically starving. It doesn’t matter that we’re at peak if our bodies start cannibalizing us. Then our magic tries to fix things, which burns through our reserves, which tells our body that we’re hungrier...”

“Damn, that’s awful,” Jade said. She looked down at the little cake in her hand, a bright pink log with sprinkles atop it. She shoved it in her mouth and started chewing. “You guys want anything?”

Amber nodded. “Yeah, sure,” she said before eyeing Cassy. “You haven’t been eating enough.”

“I’ve been eating plenty,” Cassy said.

“Maybe for a normal girl. You’re not normal,” Amber said.

“Speak for yourself, red,” Cassy snapped.

Amber gestured toward Jade, and the shorter girl underhanded something that Amber snapped out of the air. “They have Twinkies?”

“Chocolate ones!” Jade cheered. She poked the vending machine some more and soon came to sit next to Morgan, her scarf turned into a basket that she filled with chips and cakes and candy bars.

Amber flung the junk food to Cassy who caught it. “Eat, please.”

“I’m fine,” Cassy said.

Amber shook her head. “I don’t know if you ran out of magic so fast because you didn’t eat enough or not, but... look, we’re just... argh, I hate this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I think I know how you feel,” Cassy deadpanned. She crossed her arms, cake still in its wrapper.

I’m really not fit for this. “Okay, look, we’ll talk to someone about it, if they say that it’s fine, then you can eat as little as you want. But if it puts your health at risk, then we’ll do something about it, okay?”

“You know what you could do?” Cassy asked. “Mind your own business.”

“Your health is our business,” Jade said between bites. “Let’s face it, we’re in this as a team, which means that we need to rely on each other, but also look out for each other. One of us suffering means all of us suffering.”

“I’m not suffering,” Cassy muttered.

“Hmm, maybe not,” Jade said. “But it doesn’t look like that to us. Amber’s right though, we should see if it’s a problem first. Then we figure out what to do from there.”

“The Academy has therapists,” Morgan said.

“I don’t need a therapist,” Cassy snapped.

“That’s what people who need a therapist usually say,” Morgan replied. “Hell, I used them, they’re pretty good here. Magical oaths of confidentiality and all that. Or you can talk to the Seelie. They’re... not human though. Their advice is very practical, but not always–I suppose it is logical, but it’s not always well-considered on an emotional level.”

“You know what I don’t get,” Jade said. “Why not eat more when you can? You realize how lucky we are, right? Most girls would kill to be able to pig out like this.”

“You’ll get fat,” Cassy warned.

Jade paused. She had a bit of chocolate on her lips and a small collection of wrappers in another ‘pouch’ made from her scarf. “Nah. Never saw a fat magical girl.”

“There’s a few, actually,” Morgan said. “Well, less fat more–” she made vague gestures in the air.

Someone knocked at the door, and it opened to reveal Professor Ploof, her arms raised to hold the door handle. “Hey,” she said. “Team Svalinn, are you all here?”

“We are,” Amber said.

“Good good,” the professor said as she pushed the door open fully. A Seelie was riding on her shoulder, the cat-like creature holding despite there not being all that much room. “Could you follow me? This shouldn’t take too long. Team Helskor have already left, I’m afraid you drew the short stick.”

Jade’s scarf twisted in on itself, and when it unwrapped, the cakes and wrappers were gone. “We’re coming,” she said.

Amber, by dint of being nearest the door, followed Professor Ploof out first. She’s so small! She held back on making any comments about it, the girl might have been small, but she looked fairly serious, and no one had argued when she called herself a professor. Who knows, magic does weird stuff.

The tiny professor brought them to a room down the corridor. Amber was expecting white walls, some uncomfortable chairs and a big two-way mirror to one side, but it was more like a lounging area, with a big leathery couch to one side and a poofy armchair to the other.

“Come on and sit,” Professor Ploof said. She backed up to the armchair, put her hands on the seat, and with a little backwards hop, sat down and sank into cushions.

Team Svalinn sat, all four of them fitting on the couch. None of them were very big, but the couch wasn’t all that big either, and they ended up sitting with shoulders bumping. “What kind of, ah, interview is this?” Amber asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing bad,” Professor Ploof said. “None of you are in any sort of trouble. You shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but that is hardly your team’s fault. Even if you acted poorly in a fight or in a dangerous situation, well, you haven’t had training on how to act yet, so you’re obviously not to blame.”

“So, what do we need to tell you?” Cassy asked.

The professor giggled. “Nice phrasing. I just need you to recount what happened, in your own words. More detail would be appreciated, but try not to embellish things. I have a pretty good picture of what happened already, but I want your perspective as well.”

Amber leaned forwards a little to look at her teammates, then when she saw that none of them were ready to speak, she bit the bullet. “I guess we should start this afternoon? We decided to see if we could join the Flight Club...”

Amber recounted their evening, with the others jumping in and adding details where they saw fit. Morgan was great when it came to procedures and the names of the pilots and officers, and Cassy had plenty of opinions to go around. Amber mostly stuck to giving as simple a recounting as she could.

What felt like an hour later, but was really little more than fifteen minutes, Amber ended her story. “And then we flew back to the base and met you when we landed.”

Professor Ploof nodded along. “Perfect, thank you.”

“Are we being recorded?” Jade asked.

“You are, yes,” Professor Ploof said. She didn’t move to show them any sort of recording device or anything.

“Is that legal?” Cassy asked.

The professor shrugged, looking for a moment like an innocent little girl. “There’s not much of a foundation for laws in Agartha. No constitution to build off of, or even much of a government. The Academy runs very much off of a sort of... common sense system. Don’t do things that could harm others and you’re fine to do whatever you want. There are rules, but they’re more guidelines to prevent students from hurting themselves.”

“Like what?” Amber asked.

“They’re on your phone, but if you want an example... there’s a rule against flying over and around the army base.”

“That’s lame,” Cassy said.

“We had a girl that got run-over by a jet coming in for a landing once,” Professor Ploof said. “She was fine after the medics got to her, but the plane had to be scrapped and the pilot got whiplash from the ejection.”

Amber blinked. Well okay then.

“We’ll do what we can to follow the rules,” Morgan said.

“Sure,” the professor said, clearly not caring all that much. “Now, do you mind if I ask a few questions? I’m mostly curious about the magicals you ran into.”

“So they were magicals,” Jade said, some of her first words since the professor arrived.

“I think they were, yes,” Professor Ploof said.

“Who were they?” Amber asked. “They had... almost uniforms, and masks, and Morgan said that they were pretty experienced.”

“That, Miss Green, is very much the question of the day.”