"Dunno if they're all the same but the one I saw with Yamanaka, you start at the edge of a cherry blossom tree branch and you gotta go in along the branch because space is fucky and you can't go from the ground, and then when you get to the trunk you climb down and find the witch. There's evil flying squirrels and clouds of razor cherry petals but honestly we can just stop time and skip all of that."

"Sounds easy with you along."

"Yeah! Let's go."

In they go. The witch is like the one Yutaka saw before. The exact configuration of the branches and positioning of the sakura and the squirrels differs but the basic idea is identical and they can go to the trunk and down to the floor and slay the witch in very short order.

Hopefully the fact that they spent a lot of it in stopped time means that there's no chance for any squirrels to escape.

It doesn't look like any do!

Pop goes the weasel witch.

"It's really damn striking how different these tiny ones are from witchzilla."

"Did we just not have the vantage point to strike Witchzilla directly, or..."

"It had a lot of reach, and you guys were surrounded by its familiars and barely managing to fend them off."

"And - didn't have enough magic to do the platform thing?"

"I—don't know. I was on the streets and you guys were on a rooftop, but it just—it was over in seconds, I don't think you guys had the time to even react."

Nod.

"Maybe we've just run into some pretty weak witches and they tend stronger than this so it's not as big a jump as it seems?" he hypothesises. "I dunno."

"Or it's because we're in a city and there's enough magicals to compete over territory, and the big ones get big in less policed areas."

"Oh that'd suck. And make sense. ...let's get dinner in Shibuya then try to run into the magicals there."

"Do you know a good place?"

"I mean, it's Shibuya. I know several."

"Surprise me."

He can do that. Shibuya has some nice restaurants, and Yutaka wants to show Haru them all, one at a time.

Haru likes fancy ramen, turns out, yummmmm.

And Yutaka likes Haru, so that works out great for them.

And then, full of soup (and a few kisses), they can dowse to see if they can run into local magicals at the obvious magical Schelling point.

Oh yeah that's a good idea, Yutaka was starting to fret about how the fuck they were going to find someone but that's the obvious place.

They find a witch, but there's nobody at it, or in it.

"...weeeeee could kill it and then offer them the seed from it if they complain about it?" Haru says uncertainly.

"...I guess from their perspective that might be a strict win but what if that makes them decide to stop killing witches since we'll do it for them...? Am I being too cynical?"