Knock knock kn- BOOM!

Eda looked up from the couch as her front door went flying past her. When she looked back she saw Boscha standing in the doorway with two of her eyes twitching as she held up a prepped fireball. “Well, what has you in such a bad mood?”

“He met me a mile away. I couldn’t punch him while on crutches. So I waited until the door. Then he dodged.” Boscha then leaned forward on her crutches as she screamed, “Can’t dodge a fireball though, can you fucker?”

“I was wondering where Hooty was…” Eda waved the thoughts away as she got up. “I guess I’ll live with you breaking part of my house this time.” The old witch then shook her head as she thought about how expensive it was to keep having a home at all ever since the kid showed up. The first kid. Boscha had been surprisingly good about not blowing up her house so far. She blamed that more on good aim than lack of explosives though. “Anyways, what brings you here? Luz and Amity are at the beach.”

“I don’t need them to be here to c-” Boscha blinked a few times before holding up her phone and rapidly texting, You two went to the beach without me!? She would get apologies and claims that they didn’t want her to have to be stuck in the sand while they played in the water, but Boscha would still light Luz on fire tomorrow for not telling her.

None of that was what was important to the angry girl though. Well, now it was important but she had priorities. Besides, Luz not being there was for the best. “I want some of Luz’s stupid cards.”

Lilith paused in the middle of the stairs. She’d heard the explosion and had debated coming down until she’d heard Boscha’s voice. She had mostly avoided the angry girl, as the bully’s mean spirited snark sometimes reminded her far too much of Kikimora, but she knew she was supposed to be trying to be normal and normal meant putting up with angry children. Theoretically. “I would have thought that you would have no interest in those. After all, you haven’t been entirely respectful to her form of casting in the past.”

Boscha rolled her eyes as she hobbled her way to the couch and then fell back onto it. “Trust me, I like this about as much as I like Luz herself, but then I got to see first hand what they can do. So, I want to know how to make the cards she has that could blow up a whole wing of Hexide.”

The two Clawthorn’s watched as Boscha crossed her arms like she expected them to simply give those to her. Well, if they could even. They had done a bit more research into Luz’s magic but so far neither of them had managed to even meet Luz’s most average spells, let alone-

Eda’s eyes widened for a second before she looked at Boscha with a wide smile. “Luz blew up a whole wing of that stupid school? That’s my girl!”

Lilith and Boscha both rolled her eyes at the compliment before Lilith then noticed the young witch’s eyes glance away. The Clawthorn reached into her pocket and pulled out a light sigil card before extending it to Boscha. “Tap this, please.”

Boscha spent a second looking at the card skeptically before sighing. “I want to explode things, not make pretty lights. If it makes you happy though,” she said as she smacked it out of Lilith’s hand, “there you go.”

The paper only fell a few inches though before the sigil on it glowed and quickly the slip was consumed to become the small mote of light that had been prepared for it. Eda snickered at the sight before leaning in and whispering, “Oh, looks like someone wants lights more than they let on.”

“The f-” Boscha tilted her head a bit before lifting up the light with her hand. “All you have to do with these is smack them, right?”

Lilith frowned a little at that before pulling out another light sigil. “I think it’s best that we show you. Do you think you can clear your head and do your best to not feel anything?”

The young witch tilted her head up before saying, “You sound like the therapist Odalia got me, and about as stupid too.”

Lilith’s eye twitched for a second before taking a long breath in. “I promise you that there is a method to the madne-”

“Still sounding like them.”

The older Clawthorn stared at the angry girl for a few moments while she got a cocky smile in return. Then, before she could react, Boscha snapped her hand forward and smacked this card out of Lilith’s hand too. It was instant that this one turned into a mote of light, and one that was even a little larger than the last.

Lilith and Eda glanced at each other before Eda went, “So, how did it feel to use human magic? Everything you hoped for?”

Boscha looked at Eda in confusion now. What was wrong with these two? “Disgusting since I can do actual magic, thanks.”

The sisters looked at each other before Lilith, with a nervous smile because of what she might have to tell Boscha, raised a hand and asked, “Nothing, uh, hurting your hand or the like?”

Boscha growled at this point before slamming her fist into the back of the couch. “Will you two sto-” She then stopped as suddenly sigil cards flew around her.

Eda blinked a few times before smacking herself and leaving her hand on her face. “I should have known she’d just move her stash when I asked her to get rid of it.”

The angry witch looked at the cards before snatching a few of them out of the air. She then looked at the two of them as she waved the now crinkled pieces of paper in front of them. “So, how strong do you think these ones are?”

Lilith sighed before she decided to drop the charade. “Boscha, that’s not how Luz’s magic works. The size of the sigil can influence the spell’s power, but the main part is emotions. However,” she said as she glanced at Eda, “it’s… dangerous. For witches, it seems to give a bad feedback loop of some sort, if it can register our emotions at all. The most common side effects are spasms in the arms or numbness, though the most extreme cases verge on being… lethal.”

Boscha blinked a few times at the older witch before dropping all of the cards except a fire sigil and punching that one into her other hand. She then moved her hand away with a fireball that would match most of the fireballs that Boscha casually made to threaten people with. “Okay, I’m getting really tired of the run around. So talk, or,” she said as she pointed at Hooty, who was doing his best to play dead, “I finish the bird off.”

Eda snickered before whispering, “Good luck.” which seemed to only make Boscha angrier.

Lilith was still mostly confused by what was going on though. How was she casting these so casually? Eda had managed a dozen small cards once but those were while her emotions were barely registering on the card and Lilith had managed half of that. Sure, the young witch was only at three but each had been larger than what either Clawthorn normally managed.

She had to stress test this. “It’s okay to be upset. After all, with your lack of control over your emotions, my answer means that you’ll never be able to use Luz’s spells safely. It really is a shame but you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. After all, Luz must be better than you in some way.”

Boscha slammed her hand on the table to help herself up as she stood in front of Lilith. Her anger only sparked higher as she was reminded that she was injured but if this bitch was going to say Luz was stronger than her then she wasn’t going to let some shattered knee keep her down. “Oh, you want to play that card?”

Lilith finally got her fears of having to tell Boscha that she was somehow part human as the young witch’s arm spasmed at her side, but they also got to watch a sheet of ice as tall as Boscha erupt from the table. The older witch gave the angry girl a nervous smile, also aware of how raw this form of casting could make someone and how dangerous that could get with Boscha, before saying, “Now now, maybe if you turn ar-”

“Will you stop trying to trick me?” Boscha’s hand shot out and grabbed Lilith’s collar. “I came here for answers and you all just keep trying to confuse me. Luz’s magic can hurt me? Like hell! Nothing hurts me!”

Eda decided that at least taking some of the heat off of her sister might be a good idea at this point. “Your knee says otherwise.”

Boscha immediately dropped Lilith, or as best as she could since she was still about a foot shorter than the ex-coven leader, and turned to Eda, entirely ignoring the sheet of ice beside her. “Oh, fuck off! I got this protecting Luz because the fucking idiot protected me like some kind of amazing moron.”

Eda raised an eyebrow before grinning. “Oh yeah? I thought you got it in a Grudgby accident.”

Boscha paused for a second as Lilith, who didn’t want to risk the chance to better understand this, slipped another light card into Boscha’s hand. The bully then looked away and crushed it as she said, “I-I mean, yeah. Doesn’t mean she didn’t still need me to save her. Or that she needed to save me…”

When Boscha opened her hand, the light was about as small as the first light she’d made, in spite of the fact that she was obviously far more emotional than she had been when she first came in. Eda was more interested in what Boscha had to say about Luz than that though. “Oh, is that why you’re actually here? Did you have to get saved by my student’s dumb magic and want it for yourself now?”

Boscha let out a deep growl as she leaned in and brought her face close to Eda’s. “I don’t want it. It’s still dumb. I just want to know how she got it to be so strong.” She then brought a hand up to her head. She looked like she was in pain but both Clawthorns doubted that it was physically. Something about Witch physiology, or maybe just how they had become under Belos, made their emotions go wild when they tried using the sigils and Boscha was likely beginning to realize that.

And then they both got very concerned as Boscha’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Yes! Yes!” They both watched as the bully grabbed the nearest sigil card, her eyes almost twitching as she held it up. “This is why. These things made her dumb and that’s why she stuck around. That has to be it!”

She then clapped the card and made a fireball the size of herself before looking at Eda and Lilith with tears coming down her cheeks as her arm violently shook. “Right? She… She can’t just be that nice, right? They were going to kill her if she hadn’t been so strong. Been stronger than me. But she’s normally not that strong. Normally not that angry. But she was for… For...”

The fireball slowly faded as Lilith and Eda both came to Boscha’s side before helping the girl to Luz’s room where she could lie down while dealing with whatever snapped in her brain. After only an hour though, she left. Neither Clawthorn knew it was because something had apparently crawled onto the beach to start some high pitched ‘singing’ so Amity and Luz were on their way back. Neither knew that Boscha simply couldn’t deal with them now, though they guessed as much when the two girls got home.

And neither knew that Boscha had stolen four sigil cards from Luz’s room because she wasn’t going to let such small things beat her. Or, that’s what she told herself.