probably not the best idea
“Absolutely not!”
“Why not? It's perfect!”
“I'm not fighting you!”
“But why?”
“Oh, let me think, uh, I don’t want to hurt you, for starters?”
“Eh, I’ll be fine.” Agatha waved her hand.
“Darling.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
“But I’m not going to hit you.”
Agatha groaned. “Please!”
“No!”
“Pretty please!” Agatha gave her puppy dog eyes.
“That look isn’t going to work on me.”
“It did last night.”
“The answer is still no.”
“Ugh, just— c’mon. Hit me. I can take it.”
“No, you really can’t.”
“I’m not even injured anymore, you have no excuses.”
“So because you aren’t injured, I should risk injuring you?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Please!”
“Agatha. I am not hitting you.”
“It’s either you hit me or we go to the village with potentially ineffective spells and people who want to kill me hit me.”
“Or we could just not go to the village.”
“Too bad, we’re going.”
“Why do you want to go so bad anyway?”
“I need some stuff.”
Rio tilted her head. “And?”
“...and I kinda ruined your first time out.”
“Agatha–”
“Is it that bad that I want you to live out your dream?”
“I’m not letting you put yourself in danger for my stupid little dreams again.”
“They’re not stupid.”
“Yes, they are.”
“No, they aren’t. They’re cute and innocent. That’s hard to come by these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, most anyone wants to do lately is hurt each other. It’s hard to come by people who don’t.”
“Why?”
Agatha shrugged. “Who knows? Some woman named Brennan says it’s to “avoid responsibilities” and honestly, she has a point.”
Rio considered, then closed her eyes and sighed. “I can’t believe I'm about to do this.”
“You’re doing it?” Agatha’s face lit up.
“Yeah.”
“Yes! C’mon. Hit me.”
“Sweetheart?”
“Yeah?”
“You have to actually cast the spell for me to test it.”
“Right.” She summoned the book, flipping the pages as fast as she could. “Got it! Okay, so…” She read it silently before chanting, a purple rune appearing on her left forearm.
“I assume that’s the spell.” Rio inspected it.
“Yeah. Looks like a T.”
“So does that mean it’s activated?”
“Only one way to find out.” They went out into the yard, standing apart. “Kay, so, I don’t know your power level, so maybe start with something light?”
“Okay.” She sighed, getting ready to fire. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yup. Just don’t hit me too hard, m’kay? Something light.”
“Okay.”
Agatha closed her eyes, repeating to herself that it wasn’t her mother firing at her, but Rio, someone she trusted and who would never hurt her.
Rio blasted a beam of light toward Agatha, throwing her against the house. Her vision narrowed before she reminded herself that she wasn’t with her mother anymore.
Rio ran over to her. “Are you okay?”
“I said light, Rio.” She groaned as she sat up. “Light.”
“I can’t go lighter than that.”
Agatha did a double take. “I kinda wanna know what you could do at full power now.”
Rio shrugged. “I’d probably destroy a couple of systems or something.”
Agatha stared at her.
“I’m not kidding.”
“I know, I’m just– I don’t think I ever stopped to think about how powerful you are.”
Rio smirked, then sighed. “So that was a bust.”
Agatha leaned her head on the wall. “There’s gotta be something else in that damn book, right?”
“Damned book?”
“Damn book. It’s to exaggerate and whatnot.”
“Oh, I thought you meant the damned book. The Darkhold.”
“The what?”
“A spellbook. Don’t worry about it. But you’re right, there were other spells there, too.” Rio summoned the book, slowly flipping through the pages.
“My mom was so bitchy about how messy my room was, there’s no way there isn’t some kind of order to this madness.”
“Well, we’re not going to figure it out standing on the porch. Let’s go inside.”
“Good call,” Agatha said before taking Rio’s hands.