"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?"

"If we happen to kill a witch in their territory, during the leadup to Witchzilla - you think they'd overgeneralize?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

"Uuuuugh well I can handle hunting more witches if I accidentally make a couple people lazy, it's whatever." In he goes.

Wherever Haru goes, Yutaka follows, of course.

This witch is creepy as fuck. It looks like one of those hillside graveyards, rows of markers in gray and black and white stone, swooping up in steep cliffs all around where they step in and looming above in an impossible overhang. It's infested with plague rats the size of dogs, vicious and red-eyed and hostile on sight.

The witch, when they stop time and track it down, is a blindfolded ghost, dressed in white and soaked in blood and stinking of iron more intensely than any normal wound could, and Haru throws up his ramen.

"—Haru?? Are you okay?" He thought he was defective for feeling nausea in his brand new magical boy body but maybe not.