“Young woman, care to spend a few coins on the disabled?”

Boscha rolled her eyes at the question as she simply kept walking through the market. She was there to look for some cheap deals on jewelry or clothes, not get scammed by some beggar. After all, Odalia didn’t give her kids that much of an allowance and the rough girl hadn’t built up the courage to talk to the head of the family about maybe being given something so Amity gave half of hers to Boscha. The bully didn’t like it and so supplemented it with how she used to get money by extorting losers, but even that was coming up less than it used to since both Luz and Amity still got on her case about being too mean.

“Come now, even for answers I promised.”

Boscha stopped at that before thinking for a few moments. The voice sounded familiar. Like she’d heard it both only once and a hundred times. Though usually much louder and anno- “Luz?”

“Close.” A figure in a black cloak on the ground and a metal staff beside her waved at Boscha. “But not quite.”

The bully’s eyes widened before she stepped over and slammed a foot next to the stranger’s head. “Amity isn’t about to come to save you if you were hoping to just mess with me.”

The beggar shook her head though before sighing. Wisps of blue smoke escaped her mouth with each breath and her body language spoke of each breath being agony. Boscha mostly recognized it from anytime she cracked someone’s rib on the field but this looked worse. But this was also someone who stalked Amity and her so she wasn’t about to feel too bad for them. And yet, the beggar’s voice was weirdly bright in spite of it. “Oh, I hoped as much. We need to-”

The stranger’s voice then fractured.

“No, we don’t!”

“We can’t ask for help!”

“We need to hide!”

“We should be going to Luz!”

“We shouldn’t exist.”

“-talk.”

Boscha’s leg slowly retracted as she moved away from the figure. To her, it sounded like all of the things had been said both at the same time by the same person, but also by a hundred individuals, each quietly until their voices became something much stronger. “What the fuck was that?”

The beggar took in a breath that did seem to actually hurt them before they raised the one hand they have to take off the hood of the cloak. Her face was cracked with blue lines that periodically smoked with the same blue energy she kept breathing out. The scars that covered where her eye should have been had caved in to show some sort of black void instead of brain or skull and the other eye was a mix of milky gray and brown. Her longer brown hair was unkempt and had long ago stopped hiding inside her beanie and so fell all around her face. What skin she did have looked blackened like it was rotting. That, or burning from the inside. “I… I’m falling apart. So they’re getting stronger.”

Boscha looked the stranger up and down before sighing and scratching the back of her head. “Damnit. I should just be able to ditch you.” She then looked the stranger in the eyes and said, “You’ve got a minute to convince me I should stay around.”

The stranger needed far less than that as she said, “If you betray me, you could make sure that Luz can never get as close to Amity as you are, but you need me alive for that.”

The bully blinked a few times before putting her hands on her hips. She knew that wasn’t possible of course. Amity and her were best friends. Boscha knew things about Amity no one else knew. Connections no one else could with her. She made Amity happier by just being around… “That’s already impossible, but you have my attention.”

The stranger sighed in relief before leaning her head back. “Good. Good. G-”

“Not good.”

“We can’t get help.”

“She’ll betray us! It’ll hurt Luz!”

And then a very specific voice that seemed to override the main voice, and the stranger’s lips actually moved with the words, “Good. We deserve to be hurt for our beliefs.”

“Okay,” Boscha growled, “I want a real explanation for that. In fact, who the fuck are you in general?”

The stranger took in a few labored breaths before nodding. “I like to call myself Cool Luz, or Cluz, but you’ll likely agree that Clone Luz is a better reasoning for the name.”

“Wait, so you’re a clone?”

“Yep.”

“Bullshit.” Boscha narrowed her eyes before starting to say, “Clones can’t be-”

Before Cluz cut her off and continued with, “-older, can’t appear drastically different from their original, and can’t survive for a long time outside of their creators. Did I get all of that right?”

Boscha scowled before crossing her arms. “Okay, then explain how you do exist if you know why you shouldn’t.”

Cluz glanced away for a second before nodding. “The simple one to answer is that I stop by Amity’s house to recharge off of Edric and Emira at night since they created me. I don’t come to hurt anyone and Amity has known for a while that I do that. It’s also how I caught you sneaking out commonly since I don’t need to sleep while I recharge.”

Boscha slowly nodded but said nothing. She wanted the rest before she acted this time, especially since so far she could get why Amity would call this clone a friend. If this was actually a clone of Luz at least. She wasn’t exactly looking the most Luz-like right now, or acting like the idiot either.

“As for my existence… Well, you’ve felt Luz’s magic before. How it’s different from yours. How it's charged from your mind and heart, not by bile. How the stronger her emotions get, the stronger the effect. She was put in distress. Made to hate herself just before I was made to try and help her hunt down other clones that the twins had been making for practice. They cast it together while their circle was damaged and Luz was begging for someone who would help her. Someone who understood. And,” she said with a very half hearted flourish, “thus I was m-”

“I don’t buy it.” Boscha was actually bored by how dumb of an answer it was. “You have met Luz, right? The idea that she has a bone in her body that can hate is absurd which is part of why she’s so infuriating.” She then summoned a fireball and looked at Cluz with a small smirk. “So, next test, give me a reason why I should believe you.”

Cluz smiled a little as for a moment the cracks on her looked like they dimmed. The clone’s voice then came in strong and confident as she said, “I am Cluz Noceda, Greatest Witch of the Boiling Isles. With me and my dark side, I shall vanquish all evil that lurks in the shadows, and bring cookies to the good that exists there too!” Cluz then leaned back and raised an eyebrow at Boscha.

The bully just stared at the clone for a second before rolling her eyes. “Yep. You’re definitely a part of Luz.”

“Yep. And instead of trying to describe the hate part,” she said with a soft smile, “let me try and show y-”

“Oh, Mija, that’s… wonderful.”

“Oh, Mija, how… unique.”

“Oh, Mija, it’s great how… different you are.”

“Oh, Mija, I love that you think outside of the box.”

“But you need to learn to separate fantasy from reality.”

“It’s gotten out of hand.”

“Do you have any friends? Not imaginary or drawn?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be so busy balancing checkbooks and learning to appreciate public radio that the time will fly by.”

The voice was not Luz’s. It wasn’t multiples. It was… warm. Which only made the statements weirder to Boscha. “What?”

“And those are from her mom. Someone who loves her. Not the other kids who mocked her. Not the ones who she tried to reach out to but rejected her and made her turn to other outlets. Who never gave her a chance. They-”

“What makes you think anyone wants to see the backs of your gross eyelids?”

“You need to not shout all the time. No one is that enthusiastic about things.”

“Wow, in love with math and books like this? Can you get any geekier?”

“This hoody of yours just makes you look like a furry freak you know so go look for an otter to mate with and stop thinking I’m some sort of Luzbian.”

“Did you hear her speak Spanish in third period? She seemed to straight up forget that no one else understands her when she does that.”

“I mean, who wants to understand that mess?”

Boscha’s arms were at her side while her jaw had gone slack listening to the words. She was a bully. She liked making fun of people. In fact, she could see herself maybe poking fun at Luz for some of those things. She was weird after all. She did suddenly start speaking in tongues and looked like she was trying to pass as a cat girl sometimes, though Boscha didn’t really get why you’d make fun of those things. Not when there were dozens of languages in Bonesborough alone, and who knows how many types of monsters. And what was Luzbian supposed to be a play on?

But it didn’t change the tone. Change the fact that Boscha had used those same sorts of mocking inflections. Had seen the damage it all could do. And there were a lot of different voices saying a lot of the same things then. “But… People like Luz.”

Cluz shook her head. “People like Luz here. She’s special. She knows a type of magic that no one else does. She’s the only human amongst witches. Everything that would get her pushed away at home seems to draw people in. And any day I’ll wake up and be alone again…”

Boscha flinched at the last line. She was still waking up in a cold sweat every few nights from thinking she was suddenly back home again and that everything that happened since the sleepover hadn’t. “Luz… Luz can’t think those things. She’s Luz.”

Cluz smiled briefly as she said, “Those with the brightest smiles can often hide the worst scars.” She then sighed. “And of course, I couldn’t help Luz by entirely robbing her of these voices. The wounds run too deep. But I could make them quieter. Give her some peace while she figures things out. She’s happier without them, but also needs them so I can’t die.”

Boscha scowled before cracking the wall beside Cluz’s head this time when she stomped it. Her pain was trying to turn into anger and she hissed out, “Who the fuck needs those sorts of voices?”

Cluz sighed as she looked at Boscha’s shoe. “Because even with those holding her back, she was hated. She was still too weird. Every lesson people tried drilling in her brain that formed into one of these has been almost forgotten with their absence. Here, that’s okay. You all like weird. But one day she needs to go home. One day she needs those lessons. Otherwise she’ll just have to go through all of it again to relearn how to live with humans, but now she’ll be older and missing people like you and Amity. If she has to live through that…”

The silence and Cluz hanging her head was all that was needed to be said for Boscha to lower her foot. The bully tried slowing her breathing, even as her chest felt like it was in agony for some reason. “But… But how do all of those lead to you?”

Cluz laughed for a second before a new crack ran down from her ‘good’ eye to her jawline. “That’s the worst part to me. I’m what she thinks of as a Luz who can take it. Who can be herself. Who is the same weirdo but none of it touches her. None of it hurts her. She stays who she wants to be and does what she wants and can face the consequences. The only flaw with her perfect Luz is she never managed to think of someone to be with her. Anyone to stand by such a weirdo’s side.”

“That’s why this is painful.” Cluz looked up at Boscha and locked eye to eye with the young girl. “I’m not supposed to have allies. I only do things like talk to you today because I can’t shake what was originally asked of me. To help Luz. And even then, only in knowing that you are just as likely to hurt Luz as help her helps me do this. Because I deserve to be hurt. Deserve to be alone.”

There was a long silence before Boscha hung her head down. “What do I need to do?”

Cluz nodded and was kind enough to ignore the tears that came down the bully’s cheeks. She’d always known this wasn’t going to be easy on the other girl. “I’ve tried recharging from Emira and Edric, but I’m missing something. I can only figure that it’s because Luz’s magic was a part of my creation so I need to recharge from her. But there’s no innate magic for me to latch onto and even if I’m there for when she cast spells, I seem to get nothing. I only have a theory but I think that if she’s emotionally charged while thinking about me, I may be able to sap some of those emotions to repair myself. Then I can keep surviving and keeping these thoughts away from her.”

Boscha was silent for a few more seconds before wiping at her eyes. “Or, I could simply tell her that you’re hiding nearby and she gets all of those voices back when she absorbs you, right?”

Cluz smiled brightly at that. “Right on the money. And then Luz never has the bravery to take the steps towards what terrifies her about Amity. And then you can take all the time you want to take those same steps in her place.”

Boscha shifted her feet a bit before asking, “So why are you asking me? Amity likes you and you wouldn’t need to be worried about getting absorbed. Or talk to Luz! She’s probably been looking for you to make a friend if you’re right and those thoughts are still there.”

Cluz smiled a little at the sentiment. It was time to doom her and Luz though. “That’s impossible. Anytime Luz thinks about me with Amity, she thinks about the fact that the first thing I did after being made was threatening to kiss Amity before I then made the two kiss. That’s also why Luz hates me. She feels betrayed because I was supposed to understand and yet seemed to go straight for what she’s afraid of the most.”

So that’s why they’ve kissed… Boscha shook her head to clear the thought, even as a part of her got increasingly angry at the idea that the thing in front of her was why someone else had taken Amity’s first kiss. Even if it had never been hers to take, since they were just friends… “So that’s why it’s me. And only me.”

Cluz nodded. “And I would say we have a handful of days to do something, at most, so there’s not much time to think. In fact, us even seeing each other again was simply luck. My good leg gave out two days ago and I crawled myself to somewhere where someone who knew Luz might find me in case I needed to beg to join back with her.”

Boscha merely nodded before stepping closer. “I see no time like the present then. May as well just finish this nonsense, right?”

Cluz smiled a little before giggling as all of the voices agreed that she’d made the right choice in Boscha. Luz deserved to be alone after all…

======+++++======

“Message from a Hooty hoot!”

Luz glanced up while working on a new set of sigil cards. Or, ‘set’. She currently had about a hundred sheets of paper around her, calmly stacked into four piles as Luz worked. The extreme practice wasn’t just to constantly be armed though, unlike what Eda thought. She was trying to get to the point where she could draw in a second without even looking at the paper. Of course, she could already do that but what if she was slow on the draw? Or in a panic? She needed to keep a cool head right now not to mess up Light after all. “Hi, Hooty. What is it?”

“Your mean friend is waiting outside the house.”

“I didn’t hear her kno-” Luz cut herself off with a brief snicker as she saw where Boscha must have blasted poor Hooty with a fire spell. “Alright, let her know I’ll be right down.”

“You want me to talk to that psycho!? No thank you.”

Luz rolled her eyes as Hooty slid out of her room before running down the stairs. She hadn’t expected to see Boscha today since she said she was planning to spend all day at the market and, and Luz quoted, ‘I don’t need to look like some sort of furball, thanks,’ and Amity had even mentioned that Luz did seem to like animal outfits. So what if she did? Animals were cute…

She shook the thoughts off as she slipped out of the house. She’d started making sure as of late not to slam the door since Lilith was so often asleep. Even after so long since their escape, the effects of sharing Eda’s curse was still draining her of her energies. Well, that, or Eda was right about her sister catching up on over a decade of sleep deprivation. Unfortunately, turning around to do that usually gave Boscha a chance to catch her off guard and startle her by being way too close. Even worse was that it was the weekend. And she went clothes shopping. Oh no. What was she going to be wearing?

But, when she turned around, Boscha wasn’t immediately in front of her. Instead, Boscha was leaned against a tree at the edge of Eda’s yard. She was wearing what were her normal relaxation and pajama clothes, which consisted of an overly large jersey that showed off one of her shoulders, a pair of loose shorts, and Luz kept hoping for a bra but the bully had never quite confirmed. She had confirmed that they weren’t what she slept in but had left it there, much to both the distress of a blushing Luz and Amity that night.

Luz slapped her cheeks lightly to snap herself out of it. She used to be so innocent but Boscha kept making her think of all these weird things. It didn’t matter of course. Even if she was hotter than the sun, she was still nothing but a jerk. Or, mostly. There were times when Boscha was just as willing to do the insane as Luz was. She just wished the other girl didn’t remind her of home as much as she reminded her of The Isles.

The energetic girl showed none of this as she ran up to her friend. “Hey, Boscha. I’m surprised you’re not in something new. Or do you want help from my sigils to really make it sparkle?”

The bully smiled a little before snapping back with, “Shining like some child who just found out glitter existed for the first time is more a you thing. I like to smoke more often.” Boscha then pushed off of the tree she was on to stand properly. “But that’s why I’m empty handed. See, I heard an oddly familiar voice in the market today.”

Luz blushed a bit at the callout, though it was mostly from remembering when she was coated in sparkles for a whole day after introducing Guz to the mighty weapon that is the Glitter Bomb. However, she gasped at the mention of a voice. “Did Kikimora attack you? Or Belos? Are they still chasing you?”

Boscha rolled her eyes before flicking Luz’s forehead. “No, nothing like that. Those two would have been a lot less annoying to have interrupt my day out. After all, I don’t need to think there are two Luzs running around.”

“Tw-” Luz’s eyes became wide enough to cover most of her face before she began to nervously laugh. “Two of me? Wow, that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? I mean, if there were then one of us would be way cooler than the other. That one being me of course! Way cooler.”

Boscha half closed her eyes before flatly saying, “I think you’d both be idiots.” She then yawned for a second before adding, “Unless you want to say the other one calls herself Cluz because the C stands for cool.”

Oh crud. Luz let out another broken laugh as she broke out into a cold sweat. They were kind of trying to keep news about Cluz down in case anyone with ill intentions decided to go after the clone and kill her. They still didn’t know what had been taken from Luz after all. “Oh, that’s such a weird name for a per-”

“Dumbass, I met your clone.”

Luz was quiet for a few seconds before moving to wrap an arm around Boscha’s neck to try to secretly plan with her about where and how they might get her with the other girl’s information. She for once remembered not to touch the angry girl though, even if it led to her spinning her arms wildly because she didn’t know where to put them suddenly. Once she finally had herself together she asked, “Um, where? And what did they tell you?” She then turned incredibly pale at the thought that Cluz told her about Amity and her kissing. Boscha knew already of course but she didn’t want to get mocked for that.

There wasn’t even a second of hesitation from the bully. She merely leaned to the side and said, “For maybe a minute, in the market, where they made fun of me by claiming that one of my nightmares had been realized by her existing. Then she took off before I could stop her.”

Luz slapped her forehead as she let out a yell of frustration. “She wasn’t even hurt? The last time I saw her, there’s no way she could have gotten away from you!”

“Nope.” Boscha then raised an eyebrow at Luz and asked, “When you last saw her? What, did you leave her with a broken leg or something last time you two met?”

“Oh,” Luz said as she obviously had to think. “Well, uh, like I said, I’m way cooler than any dumb, smooth clone of mine, so when we met on the field of battle, I had her on the backfoot the entire time.”

Boscha simply stared at Luz and waited and that was enough to get the energetic girl to elaborate over and over again as she tried to convince the bully that she was telling the truth. However, after the third pause, Luz stopped and tilted her head. “Boscha, is something wrong? Do I have something in my teeth?”

The triclops blinked a few times before patting down her jersey. She hadn’t even noticed she’d begun squinting, even if she knew why. “Yeah, just trying to put everything together. Say, think you could go in and get me a pen and some paper? Multiple sheets if possible.”

Luz glanced back at the house as her cheeks lightly burned and she rubbed her arm. “Oh, uh, actually, I was going to head out to get more paper tomorrow…”

“You’re saying you have literally no paper? Even for me to take notes on your ‘epic’ battle?”

Luz pouted at the obvious sarcasm to her friend’s description of the mighty battle she was describing. She was a bit curious though how Boscha would translate her babbling into. Or if she was just going to be doodling while she ignored Luz. If it got her friend not to worry about Cluz though, she supposed it was okay. “Alright, give me five minutes. Tops.”

Boscha nodded and waited for Luz to slam the door closed, and for there to be mild cursing from the house, before kicking the tree next to her. “So, how’s that whole healing thing going?”

Cluz leaned out from where she sat behind the tree and looked at Boscha with a bright, brown eye and a half formed blue flame on top of smooth skin. “Still missing an arm but I appreciate being able to properly see again. Mostly. Still can’t really feel my legs either though.”

Boscha groaned at that before going back to leaning against the tree, in part to help hide Cluz. “Please tell me it isn’t going to take forever every time we do this.”

“I promise never to let it get this bad again.” There was then an audible pause before the clone asked, “Why didn’t you tell her I was here? You didn’t even pause.”

Boscha rolled her eyes before saying to the air, “Sorry, but do you want to get healed or answers?”

“I’d prefer both.”

“Tough luck. Amity gets that trying to get stuff like that out of me just doesn’t happen. Not that easily at least.”

Cluz let out a light chuckle before sighing. “I guess I should know that from out on the field the other night, shouldn’t I?”

“She’s my oldest and best friend. Why shouldn’t…” Boscha grit her teeth at how dumb was she being. Just because she had Amity shouldn’t make it so easy to give Luz a free pass on all of this shit. Especially when Cluz herself admitted that Luz was still trying to race her about who was Amity’s best friend. And yet, everytime she thought about Amity right now, she couldn’t help but see herself all alone. “Why shouldn’t she get me?”

There was another pause between the two before Cluz sighed. “I’m happy it’ll be easy to repay you for this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” the clone said almost wistfully, “I hope you and Amity end up together in the end.”

Boscha blinked a few times before leaning back to properly look Cluz in the eyes. “Sorry, but can you run that back for a second? Weren’t you the one who made that idiot kiss Amity?”

Cluz nodded before she looked off into the distance. “And I’ll still help my original. It’s what I came to do in the first place. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising by now that I think Amity would be happier without me than with me. To find love with someone who isn’t a complete mess.”

“Then I’m a pretty shit option since we. Are. Just. Friends.”

Cluz glanced over before holding her hands up. “Yes, you’re right. Sorry. If you don’t want me to help you get closer to Amity, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Boscha glared at the clone, missing when it was a lot less cocky and a lot more dying. She’d made her bed though and she’d lie in it, especially as she heard Luz yell out, “Hey, what are you looking at?”

Boscha glanced over at the idiot for a second before sighing. “Oh, just a nice, big spider friend.”

Luz came to a screeching halt in the middle of the yard before shouting, “Uh, you know, it’s so much nicer out here in the sun, don’t you think? You know, where spiders can’t suddenly jump out at you from nowhere. Not that I’m worried about something like that. No, definitely not.”

Boscha rolled her eyes with a smile before striding to the other girl. After all, they both doubted that Luz had to be literally right next to Cluz, Boscha had just done that to make the clone sweat. The bully then took the pen and paper and went back to ‘listening’ to Luz’s side of the truth about Cluz.

And, while Luz lied, Boscha kept meeting the other girl’s eyes before looking back down and continuing to trace something. A small square divided into four smaller squares. Then each of those had an X through them to create four triangles in each box. Something about that statement made Boscha feel… off though. She didn’t focus on it though as she then added the outline of Luz’s iris around the weird drawing that was glowing in the idiot’s eyes.

And then she tapped it, just in case. Immediately, the paper glowed very slightly and Boscha watched as an apple appeared on the ground behind Luz. The bully blinked a few times before Luz asked, “Um, what’s wrong?”

Boscha let her concentration on the apple lapse for a moment as she looked back at Luz. “Oh, uh, just that I was wondering where you got a giraffe on The Boiling Isles. We banished those a while ago.”

Luz sucked in her lips at the callout before going into how Cluz, as the dastardly villain was inclined to do, had brought such a beast to their lands! Boscha just rolled her eyes before looking at where the apple had been only a moment ago. There was nothing but blue smoke though. The tough girl spent another few seconds looking there before flipping the page and creating smaller versions of the sigil as she continued to pretend to listen. When Luz asked if she could see her notes though, Boscha said no. After all, she’d done enough for the idiot that day and she still had one more gift to give her tomorrow. A gift she really, really didn’t like the thought of, but also made her chest hurt at the idea of not doing something like it for the idiot.

======+++++======

Luz blinked a few times as she saw Amity waiting by her locker. She was a lot more used to it being the other way around. Worse was that she looked nervous. Like, really nervous. That wasn’t good. Did she get a bad grade on a test? Did she lose her fami- No, there it was. “Amity, are you-”

Amity turned on her heel and almost slammed into Luz as she hugged the energetic girl. It lightly wounded Luz before she looked down. Amity felt so warm and was so tight against her. Like, they hugged from time to time but it was usually only for a moment and after something exciting. Or something sad… But this was just a random hug. Right?

Still, Luz wasn’t about to say no to a hug from her crush as she wrapped her arms around Amity. “Hey, uh, what’s the occasion?”

Amity looked up with rosy cheeks as she bit her lower lip. She then made eye contact with her crush and let out a long, tense breath. “Um, someone told me I should talk to you about something and that when I did, I needed to make sure you believed me. That it was how I actually felt.”

Luz’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Was Amity about to confess to her? She wasn’t ready for that. I mean, it was impossible, but this close to her, with her holding her so tight, it seemed so real. She tried looking back in her mind but all she found was a hundred versions of her voice squealing in excitement at the idea that Amity might love her. That she wasn’t going to have to keep wondering or be the one to need to say anything.

“Luz, I… I want to let you know that I like how weird you are. How crazy you can get. It’s exciting and fun and something that brightens my day almost every time, even if I act annoyed sometimes. Even if it sometimes seems to hurt me, how hard you try, how hard you throw every ounce of yourself into things… I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

Luz’s heart was making it hard to hear Amity over how it pounded in her ears. She… She liked how weird she was? Liked her quirks? But they’d made her cry recently. They made her constantly screw up. She barely functioned around people because of them, at least at home. But Amity liked them. “Really?”

Amity finally let go of Luz, her face bright red as she slipped her hands into Luz’s. She wanted to say more. Wanted to go the extra step. Let her know how often a dream of hers was her being able to join in on her crush’s shenanigans instead of holding herself back. But then the thoughts of her telling Luz to leave when she was just trying to help her, of her running away when she should have helped Luz off of the Blood Blossom, and a hundred other reasons for her to doubt how honest she was being came to her mind. This wasn’t even her idea. She only was doing this because with how worried Boscha seemed to be when she asked her to do this convinced her to even go this far. If she was going to tell Luz how she felt, it should be because of her own plans, not someone else’s.

So, instead of being able to say anything, Amity merely nodded as she smiled at Luz. The energetic girl squealed before tackling her crush and almost bowling her over as she yelled, “Oh, you don’t know how much that means to me! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Will you stop shouting? You’re going to give people the wrong idea.”

Luz looked up to see Boscha while Amity’s head was smoking and her eyes were spinning. The poor Blight had not needed a full forced hug from Luz. The human did think someone else did. “Oh, Amity just said maybe the nicest thing anyone ever has to me, so come in h-”

Bam!

Luz blinked once, took a step back, and then fell straight onto a blue pillow that hadn’t been there a second go as she hit the floor. That was enough to snap Amity out of her shock to throw herself right back into a different version of it. “Boscha! Why?”

Boscha looked up like nothing had happened, even as she took a hand out of one of the pockets of her letterman jacket. “What? She knows better.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to knock her out!”

Boscha rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms. “Yeah, well, it’s kind of my thing you know.”

Amity groaned as she smacked herself before saying, “Okay, so let me get this straight. You tell me that I need to be honest with Luz about how I feel when it comes to how weird she is.”

“Yep.”

“And that if I’m willing to, give her a hug too.”

“Right.”

“Because she desperately needed it.”

“Correct.”

“Why did you punch her then!?”

Boscha rolled her eyes. “Look, I’ve told her a bunch of times that you’re the only person I’m okay with touching me. She knows what will happen until that changes.”

Amity sighed as her shoulders slumped. “You mean when she finally learns better, right?”

Boscha looked down at her new friend for a second before sighing and turning away. “No. I may have my quirks, but so does she. I just need some time to figure out where a middle ground there is.”

Amity blinked a few times before taking a few steps after her friend and saying, “Boscha, wait.”

The angry girl stopped before looking over her shoulder. Her chest was already getting weirdly tight and she’d said way more than she had originally planned to this morning. She was going to blame the sigil, even if she had been feeling weirdly vulnerable all morning. She made sure not to say anything though as she simply waited for her bestie to make whatever point she had.

And then Amity gave her a soft, warm smile that felt like it shot Boscha straight through the heart. “Thank you. I know how hard that sort of thing is for you so it means a lot to me that you’d try like this.”

Boscha fidgeted for a moment. “But?”

Amity shook her head. “No but. In fact, I’m sorry to think you were just going to say that Luz needed to change for you.”

Oh. Oh. Boscha’s cheeks suddenly became flushed with heat as she turned away from Amity. She then stammered out, “I-I gotta go,” before taking off while she wanted nothing more than for her heart to calm down already.