#hes grumpy and hell complain but hell let sakura make fun of him

[hellcifrogs]

I really wanna see everyone's reaction to Naruto's fox summons

One reaction I have for sure!

[my-words-are-light]

Knowing (a Dame Daffodil fanfiction)

So I’ve been reading Dame Daffodil for a while now. I can’t exactly remember how I found it but I am most certainly not complaining; it’s just the light, fluffy, heroic and optimistic magical girl story I was looking for. Not that such adjectives stopped me from writing this but I enjoy the webcomic all the same.

So I dedicate this fanfic to @sakura-rose12. Thanks, Hayley! Every Monday’s a pleasure with Dame Daffodil!

Anselmo had little choice but to keep waiting in front of the grocery store. He liked spending his weekends doing nothing but this was a lot more tiring and painful than normal, primarily thanks to the bags hanging from his arm. Plus, Anselmo doing nothing typically involved being on his own, not standing in the middle of a shopping mall looking like an idiot. It was much better to do nothing back home.

Sadly, there was another piece of baggage he needed before he could leave: Charo, his little sister.

Where did she run off to this time? He told her to meet him right here after she got back from the toilet. He wouldn’t put it past her to get distracted but the mall was a big place; who knows where she could have gone?

A quick scan over the shuffling sea of heads failed to find that of Charo’s. A pair did catch his bored attention, though; a little boy talking with a middle-aged man—probably his dad—in front of a claw machine. He couldn’t make out what they were saying but, judging by the boy’s bright red tear-stricken face and the dad thrusting his open palm forward in a ‘Stop!’ motion, he imagined he wouldn’t be too far off the mark in guessing the kid wanted to play with the claw and his dad was saying no.

Anselmo thanked his lucky stars. He couldn’t hear the kid crying from all the way over here. A shame the stars weren’t helping him find Charo.

... Wait, there she was. In the distance, Charo was walking towards the boy and dad. His happy-go-lucky sister, completely oblivious to his (admittedly distant) shock, walked up to the machine and put a coin in it, most likely a coin he gave her to use on something for herself. She then waved goodbye to the child and parent, who had stopped crying and being angry respectively, and strolled merrily back to her dear big brother.

“Hey Momo!” she greeted in her usual sickeningly saccharine style with that stupid nickname. “Did you get every—”

“Where have you been?” he asked her.

“I went to the toilet, like I said. Took a while.”

He looked down at her palms and knees. They were scuffed all over. Sure she went to the toilet. You always got scuffed from going to the toilet.

“I tripped.” Playful as she was, she was observant enough to notice him looking at her new injuries. He was very certain they were new; no way could she pull the ‘I had them before, you must have missed them’ junk again. At least she had the good grace to not try.

But they’ve danced this dance before. He knew she wouldn’t say a thing no matter how much he prodded. It was better to bury it and move on. “I have been here for ten minutes.” He lifted the grocery bags up to her face. “Do you have any idea how heavy these are?”

“Hm...” Charo narrowed her eyes at the bag and rubbed her chin. It was hard to tell if she was really into it or if she was making fun of him. “Well, a hero bears the weight of the world on their shoulders so... I guess it’s kinda heavy?”

He still couldn’t tell. “Close enough. Let’s go.”

The two of them disembarked and made their way to the mall’s exit. On the way there, Charo looked this way and that at every store, every stall, every person, and every other thing with the same level of enthusiasm she had when she first came here with him so many years ago. She—and he as well—hadn’t been in many of the stores but she’d walked through here many times. Even so, she still smiled with an enchanted satisfaction like she was making a new discovery.

Not like everyone else. The other folks near them were impatient and quick, frowning and grumpy, focused and inattentive of their surroundings. Well, not the kids; they were fresh and excited for the most part. But the adults had somewhere they knew they wanted to be and they didn’t make time for anything else, probably because they only had so much of it before their parking expired. They didn’t look around or take in the mall like Charo did. They didn’t care at all.

“Ooh! Hey, Momo?”

Oh no.

“Momo?”

Oh no. “What?”

“Can we have lunch there?”

Anselmo took a deep, mentally-preparing breath before he brought himself to look. What restaurant caught her eye?

Sushi Supreme! said the six-foot sign above the entrance, displayed entirely in white letters and surrounded with red and blue. Is nothing sacred...?

“Why there?” It wasn’t even new. The pair had passed by it every time they came in here and it never failed to make Anselmo inwardly cringe at how loud and extravagant it looked. Yet Charo was looking at it so intensely, leaning slightly forward all the while, that you’d think it was her first time seeing it.

“Because I haven’t been there before.”

“Same, and that’s the problem.” The big brother turned to the little sister. Not that she’d listen to him any more for it but it just felt right to him. “I’m hungry, annoyed, and tired. Therefore, I want to go somewhere I’ve been before so I can rest easy knowing I’ll enjoy what I get. I don’t want to roll the dice with something I might hate.”

“But it could be an adventuuuuuuuuuuuure!” Charo’s eyes had a habit of sparkling when she wanted to be heroic or adventurous, which was so often that Anselmo wasn’t unconvinced his sister wasn’t some adopted fusion reactor. At least she tried to appeal to the dead sense of adventure in him, as poor and blatant an attempt as it was. Most kids just sulked or cried if they didn’t get what they wanted. Case in point, the claw machine earlier.

... Oh what the hell. That’s the sort of attitude you reward someone for.

---

Most people like to talk while they wait for their meal. Not Anselmo; he preferred to be left to his thoughts. Speaking was strictly reserved for things that needed to be said, and they had to be massive fire-breathing elephants in the room to warrant being talked about. He liked his quiet time; he wished he got more of it. Too bad Charo sapped it away like a mosquito.

Rather than let him be, Charo captured his brother’s attention with how she used one of her chopsticks (tacky bright red and blue chopsticks with giant red balls on the end, at that; this place was an abomination) to go through the menu’s items one by one, carefully reading each. Without fail, every single one would make her smile in an I-can’t-wait-to-eat-this kind of way. Much like everything else, every single food was a new discovery just waiting to be discovered.

Alright, he couldn’t resist. He cracked a small smile.

“What are you going to have?” she asked.

“I’ll have the soy chicken rice.” Truthfully, Anselmo glanced through the menu precisely once and picked out the one thing he could understand that he’d hate the least. He could’ve asked Charo for a recommendation if he cared enough. “You?”

“I dunno...” She tapped the side of her chin with her chopstick. “I’m stuck between the norimaki-no-umiou, the... um...” After squinting at her menu, she sighed in resignation and turned it to show her brother while pointing at an item with the same chopstick. “Do you know how to say this one?”

“As it turns out, no.” He didn’t actually take a deep look at the words—partly because the chopstick was insanely distracting—but he was very willing to guess they were far beyond his ability to pronounce.

Charo looked around at her surroundings. She didn’t have that lustre of discovery about her, though. Well, you can’t be excited about everything. “You know, this doesn’t really feel like a genuine Japanese restaurant.”

“What gave you that idea?” Anselmo himself got it from the chairs, which felt like they were ripped right out from an ‘80s arcade. Their poles even had swirling red and blue strip—

CRASH! went somewhere out in the mall as a tremendous rumbling shook the restaurant. Anselmo held tight to the table whereas Charo wisely prioritised gripping her chopsticks.

Anselmo looked around as the aftershock rattled on. “What was—”

“ROAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” wailed several shoppers that ran by their window away from the roar. Some stumbled and tripped and most of them were left behind by the others to fend for themselves, with the exception of more fortunate trippers that were approached and summarily helped up by someone else before they ran off together.

Through the window on the opposite side of the restaurant, Anselmo and Charo saw a black shape that they couldn’t see the top of thanks to the thick window frames. All they could see was that the shape widened the higher they looked and its tendrils, seemingly prehensile, danced and coiled as if searching for something to touch. Both the tendrils and body were sprinkled with dirt and ceramic. It must’ve burst from the ground.

“Oh you’ve got to be kidding...?!” muttered Anselmo, pushing back into his chair as if it would help protect him. It was stupid but he wished his little sister would at least try something for self-preservation; she looked over the back of her chair at the beast as it impaled the ground with its tendrils and lifted itself up, probably out of a hole it made.

Ding-ding-ding! rang the bell at the counter. “Don’t panic, people!”

Everyone in the restaurant looked towards the speaker, the attendant woman with her black hair in a low bun. She held up her hands flat, a gesture widely understood to mean ‘calm the hell down while monsters are afoot while you’re not yet underfoot’.

“Stay calm. You’ll be okay,” she assured in an assertive yet gentle manner. “This shop has an emergency exit. Take your time and leave in an orderly and timely fashion. I promise you, it will be okay.”

The instructions were clear. Reasonable, too. And the woman must have had plenty of experience with situations like this, given how she handled it like a professional. Really, the delivery couldn’t have been any better, so it was hardly surprising that the customers didn’t hear anything beyond ‘emergency exit’ and ran for it like water down a funnel. Eh, points for effort on the attendant’s part.

“Come on, Charo!” said Anselmo as he gripped his sister’s hand and pulled her along after the others.

“Wait, Momo! You forgot the shopping!” He was never quite sure how she could worry about that at a time like this but it never surprised him.

“I’ll buy it again later! It costs less than a doctor’s visit!”

“Ugh, Momo...! All our meals for the week are in there!”

“Not really that big of a deal right now!” He made it out of the restaurant. She was still inside but only by a single step so she was figuratively out.

“But I can—”

“CHARO!” He turned to roar in her face. “We are leaving this place and we are leaving NOW!”

They came to a stop. He was outside glaring down at her. She was inside looking up at him, aghast and still. He had never yelled at her so angrily. He’d shout, like when he called everyone who saw a monster a drunk. He’d hit her, like when she got her daffodil hairclip and he left her with a swell so big and round that she put a beanie on it just to see what it would look like (it was tacky but cool).

But not once had he ever been angry and... spiteful towards her.

“Momo...?” she said so quietly.

“Charo,” he began again with a cleaving voice, “we’re going to the car and we are driving away from here and going home where it’s safe. This is not up for debate.”

“But...” Normally, she was much more passionate about this. She shone when she was needed the most and her excited spirit would carry through her voice. But Anselmo hammered her down with just eleven words. “They’re right in there. I can just duck in—”

“You will not go in there and risk your life. This is not up for debate.”

He was being so cold to her. Honestly, it... annoyed her. “What is your problem? Just trust me on this!”

“Trust you? Why?” He was inflamed again. “You’re getting hurt and coming home with new injuries every week and I have no idea where they’re from! You don’t tell me anything! I’ve let it go so far but, if you think I’m just going to let you run back in there with a monster, then you know me as much as I know you!”

“Momo—”

“Shut UP! I DON’T CARE!”

As he was about to yank on her arm, a crack from above caught their attention and not a moment too soon because the wall was coming down. They both backed away, with Anselmo covering his eyes with his arm.

“AHH!”

Anselmo’s eyes snapped up. That was Charo’s scream. She wasn’t there. A pile of debris had fallen. Dirt and gravel had kicked up, irritating his eyes. The emergency exit doorframe had fallen and the door itself had huge dents in its sides. What used to be an ordinary looking exit door had become a misshapen hole around a ruined door and a pile of broken bricks and mortar.

But he couldn’t see Charo.

He couldn’t hear her.

Where...?

“Charo?”

He muttered the name quietly, more as a password to himself than a call for her. Fittingly so, it activated him from his shock.

“Charo?! CHARO!”

He leapt right into the debris. He dug his fingers into any loose piece he could find and flung it away. However sore his fingers got, however much they ached or bled, he tore into the pile that separated his sister from her.

“ARE YOU OKAY?! CHARO, ANSWER ME! PLEASE!”

---

To Charo, everything was muffled. After the debris fell, everything sounded like she was underwater. Her head ached too; something must’ve fell on it, maybe a loose stone or something. Whatever it was, it gave her a massive headache and it was probably bleeding.

Oh yeah, and her foot hurt as well. It got caught under the debris but it didn’t break. How lucky was she? It was still hard to get it out, though.

“Nngh...” She couldn’t hear her own grunting. Something else was drowning out all the sound, like a current beating against her knocked mind. She forced herself up—well, to the best of her ability, anyway—and looked around.

Everything was blurry. She blinked a couple of times. When that didn’t work, she gave them a rub. Everything was still blurry but slightly less so. That would have to do. At least she could make out the black mass beyond the broken windows. That white mesh of cracks really made a good contrast with it.

Alright, enough with appreciating coincidental aesthetics. Time to be a hero.

---

As she left the mall, victorious in her battle, Dame Daffodil could feel the phantom pains from her head and foot. It’d be risky to transform back and suffer a potential trip and fall but, once she found Momo, she could simply relax as they drove home together.

Momo... Although Momo could be a bit stubborn and opinionated and a grump who told her she couldn’t just save people because he was a meanie, he was always... ‘big brotherly’ about it? Wait, no. Well, he always cared... No, that doesn’t sound right either. The thing is, he was never hostile. He looked after her when she was sick, right down to getting emergency chocolate and hot water bottles. He would never yell at her... so what happened now?

She’d have to think about that later. Right now, she needed to transform back and get to Momo... who just flew around the corner and came to a sudden stop, killing that plan in its infancy. She almost wished he didn’t look at her. Yet again he wore an uncomfortably new expression; his eyes were wide and his complexion was pale. His fingers were covered in grit and his fingernails were dark, like they were bruised or bleeding.

‘Dame Daffodil...’ he mouthed before speaking the words proper. “Dame Daffodil! Did you see a little girl inside?”

“Huh?”

“Brown hair, brown eyes, brown hair in a ponytail, kind of like yours but darker.”

As he listed off Charo’s most identifiable characteristics at a frenzied rate, Daffodil hoped as strongly as she could that he didn’t make any connections.

“She...” In his mania, it was only now that it occurred she wasn’t responding to him. “You didn’t see her...?” His eyes began to widen again. Oh no. She could tell what conclusion he was about to reach.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry!” she intervened, grabbing his hand. Although it felt weird to be cheering him up like this, she smiled at him. “Now that you mention it, I saw someone like that running through the mall. She was probably running away. That’s it!”

Upon hearing that, Momo... was still really tense, actually. But in a different way. He was excited from sheer panic but the panic started to subside. “She’s... alive? You mean it? You actually saw her, okay? Unharmed?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she answered while crossing her heart. You have to be committed to what you say if you’re a hero.

“But... why isn’t she here...?”

Okay, how to answer this one...? Ah, easy. “I wish I knew. But I think she’ll just be at home waiting… for...”

She drifted off. He wasn’t listening to her anymore. Well, at least she thought he wasn’t. He was beginning to bend over while clenching his eyes shut and holding his chest. She took a step back when he fell on his knees.

“Whoa! Are you okay?” she asked.

“Just...” He took a breath. “The... emergency exit... It fell on her... I th-thought...” He took a shaky breath. “She’s really alright...?”

“Y-Yeah... I promise...” Daffodil hoped he didn’t take her hesitation as lying. The truth was that she had never seen him so hurt, so close to breaking. He was so cool, so composed, so tall and witty; she thought he was insurmountable. And yet here he was crying over the ground. This wasn’t the Momo she knew...

“Hey, you might want to go home,” she suggested. “And drink some water, too. You need to keep hydrated with the way you are now.”

Without raising his head, he slowly nodded.

“...” She crouched down next to him. “Are you going to be okay? I can stay as long as you need me to.”

“No... I’ll be fine. I’ll take your advice, just... go home, see my sister, relax...” Momo pushed himself off the ground, even if it was kind of shaky, and stood up. His eyes were calmer than before but that somehow made them all the scarier. It was like they were close to death. “And I wouldn’t want to keep you from important things, anyway.”

“Hey, don’t worry about that. Everyone’s important! But, if you’re sure you’ll be okay, then I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, alright...” He turned away and raised his hand in a half-hearted wave. “Bye.”

The first thought that came to mind was that it would be nice if he treated her with a bit more admiration, seeing as she was a superhero. The second thought was... she didn’t know what word described it. She just saw a side of her brother that she didn’t even know existed.

But she couldn’t afford to dwell on it. She told him she was home and so she needed to be. But the first thing she needed was a safe place to transform back. She could use her empowered state to get home more quickly but that was risky; she was the celebrity superhero Dame Daffodil, after all, and people would approach her. She’d have to risk the painful walk.

---

Getting home took even longer than Charo thought it would. It occurred to her shortly after transforming back that a teenage girl limping home on a sore foot would probably get someone to call an ambulance or something, so she had to be careful to not be seen anyway. At least it attracted less attention than the illustrious Dame Daffodil walking the streets.

But it worked out in the end. Finally, after almost an hour of walking/limping, she was in front of her home… but Momo’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Did he go somewhere?

She’d find out. She opened her front door and announced herself. “I’m home!”

No answer.

“Okay…?” The house was eerily quiet. Or maybe the house wasn’t eerie itself but only because of what happened today with her and her brother. Or maybe her house was haunted! That’d be cool. Inconvenient, because she lived in it and she didn’t want to smite the evil that was where she slept and ate, but it’d still be cool.

She decided to look around. First things first, the kitchen because boy was she hungry. Nothing was out of the ordinary. She got a slice of bread out of the cupboard and a slice of cheese from the fridge and folded the bread on it. It wasn’t much but it was a nice snack for idling or wandering.

She made her way to the lounge room. Still nothing out of the ordinary. Their mugs were still on the coffee table (on coasters, mind you, because markings are gross) from when they watched TV that morning.

After she dropped the mugs off at the kitchen sink, she made her way to the bedrooms. She opened the door to her brother’s and peeked inside. She didn’t step inside, though, because that would be an invasion of privacy. Still no sign of her brother.

Charo scoured the house from front to back. Not a single thing looked different from when she and Momo left. Did he even come home? She went to the lounge room again and sat down on the couch. Jeez, her foot was killing her. It’d be best for her to stay home for a few days while she healed up. She knew Momo would say as much. Not that she took such messages to heart.

... With a monster running rampant and people in danger, someone needed to do something, right? So why was Momo holding her back? Then again, she was just a sixteen year-old girl who had no business getting involved with that kind of thing. Ostensibly, anyway; she was Dame Daffodil, after all, and she could hold her own.

She could never tell Momo that. It was her secret identity. So when monsters ran rampant and needed to be taken care of, she came up with different excuses for why she suddenly had new injuries. ‘I fell off a tree trying to help down a cat’. ‘Someone dropped their keys down the drain and I scratched my face on the gravel trying to get them back’. ‘I wanted to pet a cat and it bit me’. She started keeping a list of excuses on her phone so that she wouldn’t repeat them and get suspicious.

Just then, the door opened with an accompanying sigh and slow, lumbering footsteps.

“Momo?” Charo called out.

A moment’s pause. Footsteps rapidly travelled to the lounge room and, sure enough, her brother came in. His eyes widened as he saw her lying on the couch, safe and sound and serene. “Charo...” he breathed.

Deciding to take a tactful approach, Charo softly lifted her hand and waved. “Hey. Where’ve you been?”

“I was out looking for you. Everywhere.” He must’ve been driving around town instead of going straight home like she told him to. “Where have you been?”

She bit her lip and wiggled her foot. “Just got home.”

He looked at her foot and his brow furrowed. “How...?”

“The debris fell on it.”

Momo’s harsh gaze moved back to her face. His chest rose and sank with every deep breath through his nose.

In spite of that, Charo managed a grin. “Hey, Momo—”

“Why did you go back in there?”

It was painful to meet her brother’s eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t get the bags...”

Momo pinched the bridge of his nose. Of course he would; he never agreed with anything like that. “Charo…” When he removed his hand from his face, he bore the same expression she saw back at the mall when she was Dame Daffodil. This time, however, his eyes were soft with relief. He got down on his knee, making himself level with his resting sister, and placed his hand on her shoulder while looking at her with a shaky smile. “I don’t care about the bags. I’m just so glad you’re okay…”

A method of restraining a cat was to hold it by the back of the loose skin around its neck, which typically left the cat immobile. Charo certainly felt that way; this was incredibly gentle by her brother’s standards. Not that she minded affection but the context was unfamiliar to her. “Um…”

“I’m four years older than you. That means I’ve had four years to relax without you and the other sixteen were spent making sure you didn’t cause a traffic jam pileup by running after birds on the road.” His grip tightened on her shoulder, not painfully but securely. “I know I can be a bit rough… I’m sorry for what I said earlier… but I want you to know that I have never regretted those years.”

“What… What are you trying to say?”

“Charo, when the wall came down, I thought you... died. I thought that, after looking after you for so long and watching you become who you are now… I thought… it was all gone… and that I failed to protect you…”

Charo was taken aback by her brother’s incredibly sentimental attitude. She managed a smile and placed her hand on his gripping her shoulder. She gave it a firm and reassuring squeeze. “Sorry for making you worry, Momo. But I can handle myself. I’ve told you that.”

With a sigh, Momo withdrew his hand. “You tell me a lot of things.”

He stood up and lumbered towards the wall away from her. He balanced himself against it with one hand, holding his forehead with the other. Charo could only see his back as he collected himself, whereas she rested on the couch with a sore foot which she got from an accident that, truth be told, could have claimed her life right before Momo’s eyes.

“… Wait, Momo.”

Her big brother looked over his shoulder at her. She swung her legs off the couch and stood up, wincing as the pain from her foot flared up.

He sighed again. “You didn’t even bandage that. Hang on, I’ll go get the—”

“No, Momo, please,” she asserted. “You’re right. I have been lying to you. I was doing it for you, I promise you… but I didn’t want to make you feel this way. I’m sorry. I don’t want to do that again. So I’ll show you the truth, for the both of us. I don’t want any more secrets.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Momo raised his eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. But she said she’d ‘show’ him the truth, not ‘tell’. He didn’t pick up on that but he’d come to know what she meant.

Time to be a hero.

With that thought in her mind, warmth bloomed from her daffodil hairpin and ran through her entire body, soon to be accompanied by a bright light that encompassed her form and illuminated the room. The warmth and light draped her and her clothes like a blanket, and her form changed accordingly. She couldn’t see it for herself but the edges of the fabrics she casually wore changed; the feeling of her sleeves on her biceps or the legs of her shorts on her thighs became the feel of straps on her shoulders, ruffles of her dress on her thighs, and bands on her wrists.

When the light died and Momo stopped covering his eyes with his hand, the brown-haired girl had vanished from the room. Standing in her place, at the exact same height with the exact same face and the (almost) exact same hairstyle but entirely different clothes and hair colour, was...

“Dame Daffodil…?” Momo exclaimed. “But Charo was right there… Wait, but… Do you… Oh…”

Daffodil had to stifle her giggling. Her transformation had a glamour effect that stopped people from recognising the obvious similarities between her and Charo. For obvious reasons, she never showed her secret to anyone else. Looking at her brother’s bewildered eyes gradually widen in realisation, she knew it was a true pity she’d only enjoy this once.

“YOU’RE DAME DAFFODIL?!” Momo screamed.

“Hey, shh! Neighbours!” she hissed.

He immediately covered his mouth. “Sorry, sorry…! But… You’re Dame Daffodil?”

She nodded. “Sorry to just spring this on you. No pun intended, because spring and flowers and—oh forget it.”

“No, it’s… oh…” He walked over to a seat and fell straight down into it. “So this is why you get a new injury every day?”

“Yep.”

He massaged his forehead. “And this is because of a hairpin you just so happened to see in a shop window for three pounds?”

“Yep.”

He looked up at the roof—presumably beyond it towards the sky—with great indignation. “What? Are you bored up there?”

With that introduction out of the way, Dame Daffodil transformed back into Charo and lied back on the couch. “So that’s pretty much it. I’m… really sorry for lying to you. I hope you understand.”

Momo lied back against his chair. “… I do. That’s the sort of thing you need to keep secret from everyone so they don’t blab to anyone else.”

“No, no, I should have told you…” Charo rolled over, turning her back to her brother. “I trust you. I really do. I just… I got so into this superhero thing and everything that came with it and I didn’t think it through. I’m really sorry, Momo…”

“Charo. Look at me.”

She rolled back over.

He gave her a small grin. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. It’s water under the bridge. Like your time of the month.”

She snorted. “Only this won’t come back.”

“Well, now that you mention it, it still needs to be dealt with.” Momo’s Serious Face was back as he continued. “I think you should tell Alesea. She worries about you almost as much as I do.”

“Oh, she knows. She’s Lady Lily.”

Momo’s face turned into such a fallen-jaw, shrunken pupil masterpiece of surprise that she wished she had her phone to take a photo of it. “What?”

“Yep.”

“Alesea?”

“Yep.”

He blinked.

“Don’t blow a fuse now.”

“First you, then Alesea...” He leaned forward at her. “Is Tom a superhero?”

“If he is, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Oh thank everything…” Momo put his hand over his heart and sighed. “This is probably the worst day my heart’s ever had. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish.”

“We should probably spend the rest of the day inside, then. Watch some TV and just chill out. What do you say?”

“Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

“What about Sushi Supreme?”

“The worst.”

“And going back in the mall?”

“Wasn’t a bad idea. You’re Dame Daffodil, after all… and I’m going to need a lot of time to digest that.” Momo stood up. “I’ll go get some snacks. And jugs of hot chocolate, while I’m at it.”

Charo stood after. “Leave it to—ach!” Oh right, her foot was sore.

“Hm. I’ll get some bandages as well. Wait right there.”

Momo scurried off into the hallways, leaving Charo alone. She lied back down on the couch and, with the softness supporting her, smiled. The wrongness that pervaded the day—indeed, the last several months she had been Dame Daffodil—had left her like a bad breath. Now she felt like she could breathe easy. She could only imagine how it felt for Momo…

He popped his head in. “Crackers or cookies?”

“Cookies!”

He gave her a thumbs up and disappeared again. Like there was nothing wrong.

Maybe there wasn’t.

Not anymore.