Haru leans his head on Yutaka's shoulder for a moment.

His stomach is feeling really bad right now. He kisses Haru's head then clears his throat and grabs his phone from his buckler. "Stop over there a sec? I need some water," he says, waving his phone with the water map app open on the screen.

"Yeah, of course."

Cool cool some water is just what he needs right now. Maybe he ate something bad. Honestly, he's been feeling nauseous so often recently, he doesn't know what's up with that, maybe being a magical boy is just too stressful.

Haru has some too as long as they're stopping.

This... helped. He guesses. Probably. He's not sure. It probably helped? It probably helped.

"Witch thataway."

Witch thataway! That way he can focus on something else!

It's in a subway station. "Oh, this kind," Yamanaka says, peering at the sigil. "Don't step on the lilypads, they're actually frog familiars, you've got to go above the water - swinging from the vines works, but I usually just do platforms. The witch is this crazy origami thing with weird geometry? Like most of it isn't - it. You can stab it all day and it doesn't care, till you get it to unfold just so."

"—oh this is where the Lotad comes from. Last time, uh, a week and a half from now? End of next week? I ran into another one and called you guys to kill it."

"Yeah, it's fulla Lotads, don't step on them - they don't usually attack if you don't step on them, but if you do you're in trouble."

"Do I need to know what a Lotad is to unfold the origami witch correctly?"

"Nope, different places you can hit make it fold different ways and when it turns into a crane, then you can cut off its head and that'll do it."

"It's a Pokémon," he explains helpfully. "—probably we can just skip them in time stop. Haru and I did some experiments last week, being in time stop is, like, similar in cost to Haru using his arrows. The three of us will be more arrows but it's still not, like, horribly expensive."

"Skip them like step on them and just try to get out of their way before they eat our feet, or like just walk over the water while also unrelatedly time is stopped?"

"If you step on stuff in time stop it doesn't usually unstop, you gotta like kick it, just standing on it won't do it."

"I nominate one of you two to try that."

"Sure, I can do it. Ready when you guys are."

"Lemme know if you need me to grow your foot back, I'm the team healer," Haru says, manifesting his bow, and in they go.

From their perspective, as soon as they step in, Yutaka teleports slightly to the side. "Yeah we're good, tie our fingers together?"

Strings strings.

And once they're sufficiently connected that all three will stop together, he demonstrates standing on a lily pad. It is solid like stone.

"Keen." Lotad-hopping.

"I can't believe this isn't expensive for you, that's so handy. Gotta fight the witch in real time though. I can do it but I will want to not be tied to anybody."

"It's probably to make up for not having a weapon, is my guess? Or, I guess my buckler is kind of my equivalent to a weapon."