"Well, first, I want to validate that something I tested earlier will work the thing I think it should. How far can your magic string stretch?"

"Not sure." He unstrings one end of his bow and starts pulling. "A ways, at least."

"Give me one end of it and hold it?"

"Here. You going to Theseus your way through there?"

"—I'm missing the reference, I'm afraid. What I want to check is whether you," he stops time, "come with me when I do this," he finishes grinning widely. "So. Tie one end of the string to my finger, tie the other to yours," make the string red, "and we can both act in stopped time just fine."

"Clever. All right, let's find out."

So, can they actually step through the portal in stopped time...? They cannot, it's solid to the touch. Hm. "Walk in together, I'll pause as soon as we're in?"

"Okay. Three, two, one."

And through and stop.

It's a coral reef. It's not underwater - they can breathe - but it's humid, and smells like the sea, and the colors are all strange like they would be deep below the surface of the ocean. The coral reef is vibrant beyond the parameters of real coral reefs, cartoonishly bright and diverse and populated by at least two dozen kinds of fish, schooling with their fellows and hiding in the anemones and the cavities in the coral. There's enough space that they'll be able to walk under arches and through tunnels of coral to explore the labyrinth.

"Oh," murmurs Haru. "I didn't realize they'd be pretty."

"...yeah. I hadn't, either, before yesterday. Didn't really realise it might be a common feature rather than just that one witch..."

"Are the fish dangerous? That's a lot of them to have to shoot..."

"I... don't know. I could try unpausing one to see what it does..."

"In the other witch were there critters? Were they dangerous?"

"There were big momonga with thick fur that attacked us and occasionally hid amidst the razor petals."

"So if you unpause a fish it might... bite your hand off."

"If it's fast enough, yeah. We could wrap some string about one and then tighten the knot while not standing too close to it? So it'd only unpause then and I could just let go of the string if it was very hostile."

"I'm not sure how to tie a knot around a fish without touching it with the string..."

"You can touch it with the string, it won't unpause until it's actually sufficiently secure in the knot that it'd move if I tugged on the string. I tested that at school earlier today after I chatted to a guy at lunch who turned out to have lots of thoughts about the use of time stop powers."

"Okay..." Haru approaches a triggerfish and produces a loop of string to lasso it.

And then once it's just a matter of tightening the lasso Yutaka can pull on the string and—

The fish tries to swim deeper into its school.

"Does that mean it's harmless, or just that they're not - berserkers."

"I'm as new at this as you." On account of how Yamanaka just wanted him as insurance and didn't really explain much. "One possibility is that individual fish are harmless but the whole school is aggressive? Yesterday plucking petals off the tree didn't do anything but when they plucked themselves off of their own accord they got evil and sharp.

"We could always temporarily unpause to see if what happens."

"...okay, ready when you are."

He's gonna stick close to Haru then—unpause.