Chapter 23: The Witch Brigade
With the destination settled, Uriel moved on to the next problem.
Three years of academy life, and his social situation had been, in a word, ruined. The cause was singular and constant. One Galatina. The same one, every day, from day one.
In fairness, none of it was her fault. Every single thing she did was internally coherent — reasonable by her own logic, often genuinely thoughtful. The problem was the gap between her logic and the world’s expectations, and three years had proven that a direct approach simply didn’t work.
Which meant the frontal approach was done.
He sat at the desk, fingers tapping the surface, turning the problem over.
Agreements didn't work on her. Not because she didn't want to keep them — she did. The issue was that her nature dissolved constraints the way water seeps through any container that is not completely sealed. It always leaked out in the end.
So agreements were out. He needed to find something she'd follow willingly. Something that engaged what she actually cared about.
He thought for a while. Then something clicked.
A thing he'd been pretending to forget, when in fact he'd never forgotten it at all.
---
That evening, he closed his book and pulled his chair toward Galatina.
"Mom. Do you remember the Witch Brigade?"
She set down the clothes she'd been folding and looked up. "Of course. Little Uri's story. The game you used to play with the other kids."
"I want to revive it." he said.
She tilted her head. "Revive it?"
"For the higher academy. You play the witch. I lead the brigade. On the surface we're ordinary students. In secret we're something else — dealing with problems, stopping things that need stopping." He paused. "But it only works if we stay under the radar. Which means you have to stay completely in character. No breaking the role."
"What happens if the role breaks?"
Hooked.
Uriel didn't answer immediately. He looked down, let a moment build, and when he looked back up, his eyes had gone slightly glassy at the edges. His lower lip jutted out in a subtle pout. His voice came out noticeably softer, almost plaintive.
"Then if Mom won't cooperate," he said, with the full commitment of someone who has decided dignity is a temporary resource, "I won't cooperate either. I’ll wander off on my own every day. I’ll start trouble. Pick fights. Kick stray cats. Everything Mom taught me? I’ll do the exact opposite."
He held the expression. The full package: misty eyes, wronged mouth, voice that implied he was one more disappointment away from a life of petty crime.
The gap between this and the cold-blooded strategist who had been planning all of this was so wide it could have its own zip code.
Galatina stared at him.
A long moment passed. He could see it happening behind her eyes — the internal deliberation between this child is emotionally blackmailing me and little Uri is upset. The two thoughts went back and forth several times.
The maternal instinct won. It was a flawless, undefeated record. She exhaled softly and patted his head.
"...All right. I will cooperate."
Uriel's face snapped back to default neutrality faster than a triggered trap. The mist vanished from his eyes. The pout disappeared.
"Great," he said, his voice returning to its usual flat cadence. "I'll design the character. Give you a few options to pick from."
---
He spent several days on it.
This was the first time his accumulated library of obsessive media consumption from his previous life had been useful in a genuinely systematic way. He pulled from everything — a lightning-fast, rapier-wielding vice-commander, a dramatic shadow operative, a white-haired officer in military dress, a magical girl.
He sketched them out on paper. Not detailed illustrations — just silhouettes, hairstyles, approximate costumes, the general atmosphere each one carried. He folded the pages and brought them to Galatina.
"Pick one. We'll work out the specifics later."
She took the pages and went through them with serious attention, examining each one from top to bottom. Every sketch got a compliment — this girl's face is cute, this uniform is very cool, this staff is interesting — delivered in the tone of someone reviewing candidates for a position that mattered.
Midway through, she flipped back and looked at the third one again.
Uriel watched where her eyes settled longest.
Then she pulled one page out and held it toward him.
Military coat. Silver hair, pinned back, cut to just below the jaw. Cap angled low over the eyes. Epaulettes. A posture that communicated, without apparent effort, a quiet and undefined pressure.
Uriel looked at it and felt a deep internal satisfaction.
Naturally. Of course she picked this one. White hair, military dress. No one can resist that combination. I raised her right.
"Good. That one."
He'd have pushed for it anyway if she'd chosen something else. Some things were non-negotiable.
"The hair matches," Galatina observed, holding the sketch up and considering it. "Same as Mom's now. Easy."
"Exactly. Minimal adjustment needed."
"And the name?"
"The Holy Sword Witch," he said.
She repeated it quietly to herself. Her eyes curved. "I like it."
---
He turned the plan over a few more times after that, checking for weak points.
The main risk was character bleed — specifically, the phrase little Uri escaping at the wrong moment. That needed its own dedicated reminder. More than once, probably.
Then something else surfaced. Something he'd been carrying quietly for a while.
"Mom. Have you heard anything from Lumina and the others?"
"No." She thought about it. "Three years. No contact."
"...Yeah."
"Does little Uri miss them?"
"A bit," he said, which was true. He didn't expand on it. "Maybe there'll be news at the higher academy."
"Maybe," she said. "There might be."
---
The exam. The enrolment. Everything went according to plan.
He managed his scores with precision — solidly middle of the range, unremarkable in every direction. The kind of result that, placed among hundreds of students, generated no particular interest in anyone. Invisible by design.
The dormitory assignment came through: a standard double room in one of the regular blocks. Middle floor. Window facing the courtyard. Decent light.
He stood outside the dormitory building with his room number in hand and awarded the situation a perfect score.
No special scholarship. No private room in the prestige wing. No immediate architecture of expectation to dismantle before he'd even unpacked. Just a standard double, a number on a door, and the clean anonymity of being one student among many.
This is exactly what I needed. Invisible. Ordinary. Free to move without being watched. Three years of this and I can actually get something done.
He picked up his bag and went inside.
The corridor floor had a slight resonance to it underfoot. Most of the doors along the hall were still closed; a few stood open, occupants visible inside, arranging their things. Uriel walked the length of the corridor, found his number, and stopped.
The door was ajar.
Someone was already inside.
He stood there for a moment. A roommate who had arrived ahead of him — nothing unusual. Except that, without any clear reason, a specific variety of unease had begun accumulating at the base of his skull.
He pushed the door open and looked.
Half the luggage was already put away. Books stood in a neat row on the shelf. The curtains — he noticed this immediately — were different from the academy's standard issue. The colour was better. The bed was made, the blanket pressed flat, the pillow set at a precise right angle to the headboard.
Uriel's gaze moved from the books to the curtain to the bed, and paused.
What kind of roommate does this. What kind of person walks into a shared room and immediately improves it.
Then he found the figure at the window — back to him, bent over an open trunk, still sorting through something.
Silver hair, cut short, pinned back behind the ears, tips just reaching the jaw. Clean and neat.
Male student's uniform, indigo, properly fitted. Sleeves folded back once at the cuff. No creases anywhere.
Slender frame, clean lines — though something about the chest didn't quite match the silhouette the jacket was designed for.
Uriel stood in the doorway and went through this inventory from top to bottom. His feet stopped working. He told them to move. They declined.
He knew that curtain colour. It was the one she'd always preferred. He knew the way that pillow was folded at the corner — he'd been shown how to do it at age ten, hands over his hands, until he got it right.
His grip on the strap of his bag tightened by one notch.
The figure heard him and straightened. Turned around.
Same gold eyes. In this face, with this hair, in this uniform — those eyes found his across the room and curved into two crescents, radiating an expression that Uriel would recognise even if he were reduced to ashes: that pure, undisguised, absolutely radiant "Praise me!" aura.
Uriel stood in the doorway. Looked at the face. Felt the room tilt slightly on its axis.
"..."
He had several thoughts simultaneously.
None of them were appropriate for the occasion.
He settled on the only one that seemed to encompass the situation in its entirety:
What the ...