Leavenworth - DrewLinky - Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika (2024)

Chapter 1: With Tailor-Made Suit and Mien Severe

Chapter Text

“It’s official,” Olathe murmured so that the wind atop the tower almost stole her words away. “Kaycee Kay is dead.”

Kansas City heard her just fine anyway, hiding her scowl. “Hate to say I told you so,” she grunted. She chewed on an overworked piece of gum for a second and blew a bubble. It popped and made a mess on her chin. “I thought it would take at least a couple more weeks, though.”

Her navy cloak flapped noisily behind her, silver trim catching the night lights of the city and obscuring her burly form. If she had to be distinguished from her westerly counterpart then it was technically KCMO, but no one liked saying that sh*t all the time. Kaycee, then, looked out at her namesake and sucked the gum back into her mouth.

They were perched atop the vertiginous stone of the Liberty Tower, a Great War monolith which reared far above all else around it. A jet of angry steam sprayed forth from the top of the monument. With a sharp click it was illuminated by red and orange flood lights, bathing them in false fire. They hid their eyes away from the harsh glow, casting their gaze to roam over the small but proud cluster of skyscrapers.

The last month had been strenuous even without a rogue girl muscling in, one who didn’t hesitate to commit magicides. All of them were high profile, messy affairs: streets in Kansas were running red with the blood of magical girls.

Their numbers–Kansas and Missouri both–were already stretched thin. Faceless specters roiled in the dark: Troost, South Blue Valley, the Paseo all overflowed with them, their spillage a rot which grew harder to cleanse each night.

Just like it had been before. Kaycee’s lower gut twisted painfully, thoughts turning inexorably to the crisis last year.

That whole thing had been dubbed in official channels as the Magical Calamity, a clean name from clean people. Frankly a bit of a mouthful, and not terribly meaningful to any of them. After all, most magical girls already had lives that were generally catastrophic.

Some of those who had experienced the full brunt referred to it instead as the Unveiling; it had uncovered them, after all, rendered them visible and naked.

Of the original crew Kaycee had inherited alongside control of the city, two had perished in the year since. Kansas City had never been that strong a region, and every loss made the survivors more vulnerable. Just thinking about it tinged her sapphire soul with a trickle of darkness.

Breathe. Focus on the now. She listened to herself, closing her eyes, and when she opened them again her friend Olathe had plodded forward to join her. They looked out across the expanse of the southside together: Union Station squatted directly in front of them, a masoned behemoth propped up on Tuscan columns.

Normally, the Station was lit in full with the emblem of whichever sports team was in season. The President had urged most franchises back towards normalcy, “to raise the spirit of the nation up once more.” Their major league team took that request with some alacrity, vaulting the modest Midwestern hub to the top of their division.

The World Series was all but assured, for the first time since the f*cking eighties. Too bad the Royals’ sense of timing wasn’t better. Union Station remained dark, the city refusing to fly the team’s colors to avoid accusations of wasting resources.

Kaycee blew another bubble, a sharp pop piercing the gusty silence. This one got on her nose. “You guys figure out why she’s going on this rampage in the first place?”

“Nah,” Olathe sighed limply as her own dress tugged in the wind. The petticoat always managed to feel faintly itchy, and she had to cross her arms to resist the urge to scratch. It just made her look like she was always pissed off. “Nah,” she said again. “If we could start a conversation with her it might be different. Everyone who’s tried so far ends up dead.”

“Doesn’t seem like she just wants to be left alone, either.” Kaycee’s vision continued to wander. Further off in the Crossroads, the concave glass of the Kauffman Center reached to cup the night sky, a knock-off Sydney Opera House. It too laid in darkness, unable to be lit even if the city had wanted, owing to a gaping hole in its glass face. No operas or ballets or symphonies graced its vaulted interiors now.

Sweeping their eyes out and away from downtown, they spied two spotlights to the southeast, translucent pillars waving lazily through the night sky. Emanating from some sh*tty stripclub in Raytown, no doubt Raytown herself could be found there, though Kaycee had never bothered to check it out for herself. The idea of stepping foot in the town itself, let alone the disgusting hovel that Rayotwn claimed as her lair, made her insides squirm.

Olathe cleared her throat, scattering the unpleasant thoughts. “We always knew she was wild, but the destruction we’ve seen in the last few weeks is just f*cking nuts. Give it another week and none of us will be left.”

The third among them rose, drawing the gaze of her fellows as she broke her silence. “A week is a generous estimate. If she wanted, she could get rid of the rest of you inside the next thirty minutes.” Lenexa stretched tall and proud, a stone cut from the monument they stood upon.

Her outfit was the simplest of the trio. A simple lavender piece without even a petticoat to give it volume, it lay flat on her stolid frame. Her words were blunt to match: “I didn’t want to believe she was capable of this. As her former teacher, I demand responsibility for all of it. I’ll take care of her.”

God, she was always so f*cking dramatic. Kaycee and Olathe openly side-eyed each other.

“Don’t give me that look,” she admonished them. “No one else here can even touch her.”

“You know Overland Park better than we do,” Kaycee admitted, “but I’ve been hearing some really intense sh*t. How has she not gotten a Terminatrix called on her yet? Who was the last one, Wichita? Was there anything even left of her?”

“I’m not sure the Incubator wants to risk wasting muscle on this. As to the second question, I don’t think you really want to hear that.”

Got her there. “Yes, well,” Kaycee finished lamely. “I couldn’t stop you even if I wanted. Just try not to get yourself killed.”

“I won’t.” In one smooth motion, Lenexa turned and kicked off westward, disappearing so quickly that Kaycee and Olathe felt a woosh of warm air dragging in to fill the space her body left behind.

The red of the fake flame shining on Lenexa was replaced with black sky so that an afterimage of her in negative haunted their eyeballs. They stared at it and let a few seconds trickle by. “Do you think she meant, ‘I won’t get myself killed,’ or ‘I won’t try not to get myself killed?’” Olathe asked coyly.

Kaycee blew another bubble at her.

“Fair enough. What are her odds?”

“Not good. If it were just about territory we could probably negotiate or something, but…” Kaycee shrugged. “I want it nipped in the bud. This is the last thing any of us need right now.”

Olathe sat down, dangling her skinny legs over the side of the memorial. “Are things really that bad for you guys too?” Her feet rested above the head of one of the Guardian Spirits. Four enormous sculptures of women crowned the tower, each named for a virtue. She could never remember which was which, but she thought this one might be Sacrifice.

“I don’t know. Has Kyubey talked to you at all recently?”

“No more than anyone else.” She waved down at the sculpture: Sacrifice stared out over the city, heedless of the greeting.

“Then it’s pretty bad. We know he’s still contracting people, but we have no idea how many or what’s happening to them.” The Incubator had stopped most communication with them months ago. If you lived on your own in a smaller town then he was chatty as usual, but if you resided in a city with more than two magical girls to its name you were chopped liver.

It reminded Kaycee a lot of how he had behaved during the DuPage administration. The silence had become so protracted that their group was dwindling again. Normally, theirs was actually a pretty ideal size: large enough to accumulate some semblance of talent, but not too attractive for the real big hitters. It meant their only real threat was not being able to replace manpower quick enough.

Their group did better than a lot of the larger cities could to mitigate losses, but sometimes there was nothing you could do. A younger girl bit off more than she could chew while hunting, or an older one got got by the Law of Cycles. Pretty typical, all said and done.

But now this sh*t. If Overland Park had only been after the late Kaycee Kay, it would be pretty cut and dry. As it was, the reported deaths coming from suburbs on the Kansas side were just baffling. Girls she knew and worked with before, all the way from Holton to Ottawa, had been slaughtered. Executed, really.

In lieu of a sigh, Kaycee blew one more bubble, though it popped too soon and turned into a sad dribble. “Mandy, I’m going to be blunt.” She took out its wrapper and gently pulled the wad off of her skin. “I’ve made it a point not to stick my nose in your affairs. My predecessor was firm on this: Missouri and Kansas girls keep their problems to themselves.” The last of the residue off, she folded it neatly in the wrapper to throw away later. “Last year was the first time we broke that rule since the archon of ’81. You’re asking me to break it again, but I’m not so sure that our cooperation is necessary, or even in my best interests.”

Olathe nodded. “I’ll be frank too: on our side, things have been dicey for a while. One of us might have approached you sooner, but ever since the last Kaycee Kay bit it, we’ve had no real cohesion to speak of. No one felt like taking the initiative.”

That came as no surprise. Kansas City Kansas had fared better than her Missouri counterpart at first, but on that last day just before the crisis ended she and her successor were consumed, literally.

In effect, the Kansas girls had been decapitated. The third in line to lead was some plucky little thing from Topeka. She had been attentive, even eager, but weak both in raw power and her ability to keep the girls on her side of the state line in check.

To her credit, she had lasted longer than most expected.

Conversely, the former KCMO had been killed within the first week of the DuPage administration, leaving her protégé–the erstwhile Independence—to pick up the slack. “Why didn’t Lenexa take charge?” Kaycee continued. “She’s clearly capable.” Until now, she hadn’t thought there was anyone inside of a six hour drive who could take her on.

“The last time we tried, about half a year ago, she tore Lawrence’s engine block right out of her car. We decided to stop asking after that.” Olathe swallowed nervously. “In truth, we probably should have asked you to take charge permanently. You went through a real trial by fire, kept your girls and ours alive at the worst of times.”

“Not all of them.”

“More than would be here otherwise. They trust you, and the city is still doing okay. Maybe things would be even better if we had gotten this sh*t done already.”

Kaycee grunted. She took out another stick of gum and offered it to her casual friend. Olathe abjured, so she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. She savored the gnashing of her jaws and the fresh, sweet juice dribbling down her throat. She was way too fond of it, and she wondered vaguely if their healing powers could restore enamel. “Let’s call it a tentative yes,” she chewed.

There was a nauseating pressure in her lower belly whenever she thought too much of it: she was just starting to forget the faces of the girls she had lost back then, wasn’t sure if that made her feel more sick than remembering their last moments. She fought with the anxiety that was rising in her chest and throat, trying to choke her. You’ll lose the rest of them too if you’re not careful, it whispered. You were never cut out for this and you know it, you worthless piece of sh*t.

An impulse rippled through her nerves, a violent twitch of her head that worked to dispel the hateful voice. At least for now. This kind of self-flagellation was becoming ritualistic and she couldn’t help cursing herself for it. If Overland Park decided to kill them, that was a problem she’d deal with come hell or high water. “I still need to go to Perry’s. Come with? We can keep talking shop or relax, your choice.”

“Are you sh*tting me? Abso-lutely,” Olathe clambered to her feet excitedly, abandoning Sacrifice below. “I didn’t know she was still kickin’ around.”

“She’ll probably be around long after the rest of us, honestly. C’mon.” Kaycee angled herself to the northeast, between the lights of the city and the shining pillars of Raytown. Pushing off, she was immediately buffeted by the humid air, covering herself in a thin sheen of wet and heat. Though there was only darkness ahead, she knew the way already.

Chapter 2: How Brief the Whole Life of Man

Chapter Text

One hundred and fifteen miles to the east on a little piece of property just north of her namesake, Syracuse rounded her verdant property one last time for the night. Her eyes darted back and forth in quickly fading light on a perimeter trail she had slowly been beating into the ground, a ring around the small parcel she had cleared of brush and most trees. Outside that perimeter was a forest that engulfed her land, comprised of all manner of thick and thorny vegetation that was too much for her to bother with. She wiped an accumulation of sweat off her brow, leaving a light trail smeared across the grime of her forehead.

It was taking all of her effort not to grimace as she pounded dirt. A girl no older than thirteen followed her, jabber jawing about her plans the next day. Syracuse did not know her name, she only knew that the girl was annoying and stupid. She talked about going to St. Louis and staking a claim there. Absolute drivel. If she were lucky, she would be dead within minutes of crossing into the miasma.

The crease of her frown deepened, and Syracuse whipped around to face her guest, which made her shut up immediately. If only she had known it would be that simple.

“Look,” she said flatly, “why are you so hell bent on going east? Where did you come from? What’s your name, for god’s sake?”

The girl looked frightened all of a sudden. A skinny, gangly thing in a ratty cartoon t-shirt and sweats, she looked oddly like a schoolgirl caught in the act of playing hooky. Annoyingly, it caused a small pang in Syracuse’s heart.

The girl’s breezy disposition was gone, an awful little tremor in her voice now: “I’m Winterset.”

“Bullsh*t. Winterset ain’t a name, and it certainly ain’t yours anymore.”

Winterset looked like she was going to burst into tears, god damn her. “I’m from Winterset,” she corrected, gulping a bit of air. “My name’s Cathy Renshaw.”

Syracuse consciously took in a breath, made a passing attempt to look less hostile. “Alright Cathy,” she sighed, “Where’s Winterset?”

Cathy looked down at her little Mickey Mouse tee, festooned with the little stains and holes which accompany all children’s clothing. “Outside Des Moines,” came out in a mumble.

Not a bad clip from here. Syracuse crossed her arms. “Let me guess,” she consulted the dozens of conversations like this she’d had already. “You signed the contract, whoever’s in charge found you, pushed you out. Des Moines is a no-go and Omaha is too far west, so you hitched it to Kansas City. You’re not strong enough to hack it so they told you to head here instead.”

“I was in charge of Winterset,” Cathy peeked up at her angrily, roses flaring in her cheeks. “There was no one else when I started, but after a month someone else came in. They were stronger than me, kicked me out.”

Getting beaten out of a no-name place like that did not bode well for this girl’s chances no matter the cardinal direction. “Well, what can you do?”

“Sorry?”

“What powers you got?” Syracuse twirled the fore and middle fingers of her right hand in the air. Hurry up girl, we don’t got all goddam day. “Don’t transform, just tell me. Don’t need you wasting your energy.” Too many chats like this. It made her impatient.

“Oh,” Cathy breathed. “Um. I can make… a mist.” She started turning red, creeping from the roots of her hair into her face. “It stuns wraiths, they get sorta slow and confused. Makes them easier for me to hunt.”

Jesus Christ on a cross. She supposed it could be worse, though she had to actively try to hide her annoyance with this useless child. Careful now, work through her logic. “Why are you so sure you want to go to St. Louis?”

“I heard magical girls can work together there,” the smaller girl said. “The people in Columbia are organizing it, you keep what you clear out.”

Syracuse’s stomach did a funny little flip flop. Sending less valuable girls into a f*cking shredder was one of the more efficient ways she had heard for keeping competition to a minimum. She bet Columbia was responsible for spreading this twisted idea around.

She decided not to sugarcoat it, planting her fists on her hips. “Listen carefully, alright? You’ll die if you go there. You’ll f*cking die.” She opened her mouth all the way to enunciate the syllable properly. “St. Louis is a pit that no one comes back from.”

Cathy’s breath hitched just a bit, but to her minor credit she didn’t outright dismiss this news. “Well, what’m I supposed to do then?”

God dammit. “Stay here for a bit,” she wished she could bite her tongue off even as she was saying it. “It’s the sticks and all, I know, but we have work. You saw that board near the gate?” Cathy nodded. “Keep an eye on that. It’ll tell you where you can hunt nearby. It’s not a lot, but it’ll keep you alive. Hell, maybe you can find a small town and stick there.” Why did she feel like she was begging? “Just don’t go to St. Louis, is all I’m saying. You’d have better chances with a grenade in your mouth.”

Then Cathy did start to cry, and Syracuse was fighting to keep back tears of her own. She f*cking hated when people cried. Trying to ignore the sharp pain in her own chest, she wrapped her right arm around the tiny teenager’s shoulder, made cooing noises like a moron. What an awful day.

“Look, it’s okay. It’ll be okay,” she lied. “Shh, shh. Here,” she offered a nasty, sweaty handkerchief out of her overalls to her guest. “Let’s get you back, okay?” Cathy thankfully did not take the soiled offering, just wiped her arm on her nose. Little brat.

They hiked the rest of the path slowly, falteringly. Cathy wasn’t quite sobbing by the time they rounded the bend and came upon her Homestead: a glade populated by a smattering of tents, one edge taken up by a rusting fence with an iron cattle gate and an exceedingly small cabin a stone’s throw away from the tents. Humble and quiet, she noticed with irritation that there were articles of trash littering the grass. She’d have to pick that up before she was done for the evening.

“Here,” she ignored the garbage. “Do you want to know what I wished for?” She had no idea why she was saying it, though she told herself it was to get the kid to stop sniveling.

Cathy snorted snot back into her runty face. “Sure, I guess.”

“I wanted a place of my own.”

“What, this?” She sounded weirdly surprised by that, producing a lilt in the question which was definitely offensive.

“Yeah,” Syracuse sighed. “Not all the stuff on it now. I put that up later.”

“Why?”

Syracuse wasn’t sure if she meant why the wish or why all of this f*cking crap, and mercifully Cathy did not press her any further. They ambled towards what she was pretty sure was the right tent: dinky and rusty red plastic with holes in the canopy, she was thankful it was already twilight so it was harder to see.

“Look,” she whispered, “you can rest now. Try not to think too much on it for tonight. Try and get some sleep,” she unzipped the entrance flap, though it caught near the end so Cathy had to awkwardly maneuver into the tent. Syracuse would have just set up a better one if she had any more to spare.

The flow of magical girls from Kansas City had lessened considerably in the last half year or so, but the reputation of her Homestead had grown enough that it didn’t matter. Country girls from all over flocked to her humble abode, swapping the latest hot gossip as they caught a night of sleep on their way to better pastures. Or so they hoped.

Syracuse had been told that other patches like this one had sprung up around the country during the Unveiling, as weaker girls fled the cities in droves, including a f*cking huge one down near Dallas. Some of those tent towns were better organized than hers by now, but so far as she knew hers was the only one which preceded the event. A small point of pride, but for all her grumbling it was important to her.

Other migrants milled about, relaxing or studiously tending little campfires. There was some chatter here and there, too low for her to hear. Air rushed out of her, and she suddenly felt sapped of her energy.

With leaden bones, she forced herself to move on. Still the litter to pick up thanks to these ingrates. Couldn’t rest quite yet. She spent the next fifteen minutes in dwindling light picking up refuse from the corners of the campsite.

Lush oak trees soughing in the evening wind were interrupted by a sharp clang of metal on metal. The interweaving songs of twenty three different species of birds and countless insects were instantly cut short, replaced by a pronounced awkwardness. Idle conversations in tents fell silent too, their occupants offended at the lack of grace their host was displaying.

“Sorry,” Syracuse called out to the clearing’s occupants. “Just dumping the TRAAASH,” she called out to her sh*tty guests. After a few seconds of the unfittingly merry crackle of someone’s fire, there was a lot of audible grumbling from the closest tents. The bugs and birds also gradually returned to their inter locutions, whether to persuade others of their kind to stay out or invite them near. She heard someone lightly call out “bitch” from somewhere.

Yeah, she wasn’t all that sorry, she decided. It would be so much nicer if they didn’t bring all this sh*t for her to clean up. It had been better when there weren’t so many people here.

Gritting her teeth, she stalked away from the heavy steel dumpster to the tiny cabin–a large shed, really–that served as her home.

The Shed was of Syracuse’s own making, and given that she was no carpenter, it could politely be said to look like steaming sh*t. It was cobbled together from a few planks and no less than three different types of wood she had found on the property, speckled with small, poorly caulked gaps between the unequally sized logs. Various additions over the years such as a fading blue tarp on top helped improve its weatherproofing, but not by much. Were it not for a couple of opportune enchantments from grateful visitors, it would basically be completely unlivable.

And yet, live in it she did, for almost two years now.

Two?? Yeah, she supposed, perhaps a little more. It was June 2nd of 2015, a quick glance at her cracked phone told her. Hard to believe she’d made it this far, frankly. She had been convinced for some time that she would succumb to starvation or the Cycles, whichever got her first.

Dim memories swirled in her mind like the clouds of dust she kicked up, trudging along the short beaten path to her ramshackle house. Such a lonely first year, and now there was no shortage of visitors.

She guessed she didn’t mind them all that much, compared to what it had been like before.

Miss Wilds.

Her head whipped up, dirt eyes spying above a dirt path. A trickle of rage entered her.

He better not be on her porch.

Nah, worse. He was inside her Shed, the worthless slab of a door had popped ajar because everything about the place fit together so god damn poorly.

The Incubator stared at her from within, his blood moon eyes the only thing about him that she could see. She grimaced; these visits were always unpleasant, and often she wondered why he didn't go bother the city girls for a change. Feeling too fatigued to expel breath for this conversation, she squared her shoulders and indulged him telepathically: What do you want, cat.

In the interest of avoiding unnecessary conflict and reducing potential fatalities, I am here to urge you to dismiss your guests and evacuate the premises.

And why on earth would I bother doing that? Syracuse crossed her arms, sweat glistening even as it was carried away in the cool breeze of deepening night. This land is mine.

Please don’t mistake my meaning, Miss Wilds. As per the conditions of your wish, this land was indeed titled to and is owned by you. However, it has come to the attention of the United States Magic Force that an increasing number of Magical Girls dwell here alongside you. The organization has consequently deemed this gathering a threat and is moving to disperse it.

Whoa whoa, whoa now. They what? Realizing she had spoken the last word aloud, she wrenched her back to look behind her. No sign anyone in the tents heard her. While she was already looking that way, she took it upon herself to take count.

One, two… five… her heart sank as she tallied nine fabric tops out there in the glade, uniform in their shabbiness. A couple were, to her knowledge, being shared by more than one person.

Okay. That was definitely a lot of magical girls for this part of Missouri. Before, it had been typical not to have even a single girl per three or four counties across the middle of the state. Common enough situation for most of the Midwest or the South, to be honest.

Despite the soothingly dropping temperature, she felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of her dirty neck.

Most of them are just passing through, she turned back slowly, calmly as she could manage herself. Come this time tomorrow, half of ‘em will be fifty or more miles away.

Kyubey’s red eyes remained unmoved in the deepening shadows of her house. The birdsong seemed to fall away as his thoughts intruded on her further. This is understood, and has been deemed irrelevant. Since last year, the number of visitors to this region has risen by an average of 32.85% month over month, and after thorough investigation there is no other rational explanation except your arrangements here, which are clearly intended to foster a community of some sort.

I explained this to you before, Syracuse thought, her fatigue slowly being replaced with a creeping dread. It stole the little feeling she had left from her roughened fingertips. It’s just the signboard, it helps us hunt. There are pockets of wraiths that pop up all the time around here, without word of mouth they would go totally unharvested. She licked her lips, tasting grit from the day’s work. When in doubt, appeal to Kyubey’s unfettered desire for production.

My model suggests that the potential gains here do not merit the degree of effort sustained by you and your cohorts. In other words, Miss Wilds, she did not see his ear twitch but somehow heard it, an absurd little squeaking noise that made her want to decapitate the f*cking thing, the operations carried out here are inefficient to the point they are not worth defending. Even if they were, you have absolutely no chance of resisting successfully. In the face of an overwhelming threat, there is no rational reason to continue in this manner.

The f*ck, she mouthed inaudibly and unthinkingly. Most of these girls don’t even have internet anymore . The cruddy little message center she had thrown up was the main way magical girls in this and the surrounding area got their work. Countless no-name towns and communities had their own smattering of wraiths to take care of, and girls–both those who lived in the area or those on their way to more bountiful lands–would check her roughshod community board to avoid wasting time or energy. It wasn’t the best system, but it had worked to keep them from falling to the Cycles quite as often.

When she thought about it, that’s probably how it had worked before cities were a thing. She bet Kyubey hadn’t been an asshole over it back then .

A twitch rippled through her and that spark of rage grew inside her. Unconsciously her fists clenched, unclenched. Breaths one, two, and three entered and exited. Restraint was needed.

How long?

They will be here tomorrow evening. This should allow you and all current occupants time to leave with your possessions. I would urge you to take advantage of this and not linger.

“WHAT?” There was no hiding it this time. Heads popped out of tents to glare as Syracuse transformed, draped in a green and brown frock as a giant steel mattock appeared in her weathered hands. “AND WHERE DO YOU S’POSE I SHOULD TELL EVERYONE TO GO, YOU LITTLE PRICK? ”

Given the mantle you’ve taken up here, I presume that’s your responsibility to figure out. Best of luck to you, Ms. Wilds.

She howled, guttural as her insides turned to white fire. She hurled the grub ax with startling force, spinning end over end like a helicopter blade to embed itself squarely in her floorboards. She knew she wouldn’t hit him–he was already gone.

Stomping over to wrench it back out, she whipped her head around towards the pasture: none of the girls were looking now. Let them think on that for a minute. But her fuming went as quickly as it came, and she sank on her rickety porch as the fight went out of her.

This wasn’t the first time people had tried to squeeze in on her territory by force. There’d been that one in her first year, some weirdo from the Chicago area who had been talking a lot of sh*t. Something about claiming the land as a castellum , if she remembered right. Frankly the girl had come across as kind of insane.

Then the one after she and Tipton had struck their bargain with Kaycee, the chick from Arkansas that was built like a brick sh*thouse. Dressed all in yellow, looked and kinda smelled like piss. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together.

Each of those girls had a grave in the woods for their efforts.

This, though, was a different matter. After all, what the fresh f*ck was she going to do against the military? The Homestead was a refuge for the weaklings, the dime-a-dozen girls without talent or strength who already couldn’t hack it elsewhere.

Syracuse stewed, not moving but crumpling inward all the same. The last light faded out of the dusk and the songs of the countryside shifted into their nighttime timbre. She didn’t have the heart to swat the errant mosquito that came to take a tithe from her.

After an hour or so, the sound of a large car approached from the east. Headlights swept briefly over the camp as it swung into the packed dirt path, then settled on Syracuse, turning the insides of her eyelids red, then back to an empty black as the engine stopped. Shoes swept through the grass toward her, and she felt her chest lighten. Just a bit.

“Oh dear.”

Despite the buoying sensation, Syracuse couldn’t bring herself to say anything. She sat there, a meal for the bugs that crawled through the unkempt grass. Maybe if she was lucky they would eat her outright, or some venomous snake would bite and kill her.

Tipton sat down next to her, and the trickle of optimism intensified. “One of the girls giving you trouble?”

After a few minutes, Syracuse gathered the energy to open her eyes and look at her companion. Garish pink caught the light of a full moon. Tipton was usually transformed, and she always looked bright and clean.

Syracuse drank it in, relishing in her presence. After a bit, she consciously breathed in for the first time since the Incubator had departed. Oxygen nourished her ailing brain. “No. Kyubey.”

Tipton offered a rare frown. “Weird. The little guy hasn’t been around much.”

“I’d have preferred it stay that way.” Syracuse closed her eyes again. “He said the army’s coming and we have to leave. Didn’t say what would happen if we didn’t, but I’m sure it’d be nothin’ good.”

Tipton sucked air in through her teeth. “How long have we got?”

No question of the facts, just straight to business. God, how nice it was for someone else to do that right now. “He said tomorrow. Probably don’t need to move them far, just can’t stay here anymore.”

“I’ll start moving people out in the morning.” Gentle arms draped around Syracuse’s shoulders, a cotton softness that she could feel scrubbing her soul clean. “It should be fine, love. We only really have to move the girls Kaycee sent our way, the others are used to taking care of themselves.”

“I know. Just… sh*t , Aimee,” Syracuse sniffled, and wiped at her stubby nose angrily. Here it came. “We just can’t win, can we?”

Tipton shifted closer, squeezing tight. “It does seem rather sudden,” she said soothingly. Placating her, like she was a f*cking baby.

A couple girls were still fooling around in one of the tents, the two could see their silhouettes against the pale moonlight. Their forms were distorted through Syracuse’s magic, their proportions exaggerated and inhuman. They were less people, more amorphous blobs smashing together. Copulating aliens. Unknowingly squeezing the last bits of reasonable privacy they might have for a while. Maybe for the rest of their lives.

Syracuse continued grousing: “All of this sucks. None of us knew what we were getting into, doesn’t matter how much explainin’ Kyubey does. Not that I expect he’d be truthful about it even if he had to.”

“No, I don’t think so either.” Tipton sighed, looking for the right words and finding none. “You’ve gotta make the best you can of it, right?” Platitudes were quick and easy enough.

“Yeah, ‘course. That’s what we were trying to do out here.” The Homesteader balled her fists up, squeezing until her arms shook and color flared on her cheeks. “That’s what I mean. The cities are a meat grinder and the country’s a wasteland. We tried to set something decent up for ourselves out here and now it’s being taken away for no god,” huff, “damn,” huff, “ reason. ”

“Well, not for no reason–”

“No good f*ckin’ reason! We weren’t hurting anyone out here!” Syracuse leaped to her feet, apoplexy in her face and eyes. “We did good work, we helped everyone out with this sh*tty little place, and now that’s over just ‘cuz the government got some bug up their ass?” And then she snapped and came undone, falling to weeping.

“Whoa, whoa.” Tipton clambered up to put her arms around her partner. “I know. I’m sorry, Sophia. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She mumbled it a few more times into her friend’s dark hair, kissed her head softly. The dirt and grime from the day’s work started to magically clear away, slowly but steadily.

“It’s just unfair,” Syracuse repeated in fits and starts. Snot and tears ran down her face, disappearing after a few seconds. “Of all the girls that have passed through here, I doubt one of ‘em will be alive in another five years.”

They held each other for a little while as the cool of night settled and the cricketsong slowed. When Syracuse was done, her eyes puffy and red, the two gently climbed up and into her humble house.

As small as it seemed on the outside, it took a minute of fumbling to find the switch to the crappy, $5 battery-powered lantern above her bed. Regardless of quality it did its job, revealing a space that was about five times larger than it had any right to be. The wooden floor and walls fit together poorly just as it did on the outside, but the dimensions were impossibly blown up to stretch the space. Syracuse’s own enchantment suffused the shoddy gray planks with a hint of jade.

She didn’t have many things to her name, so there was ample room for her to walk around. Aside from her bed–little more than a pile of sleeping bags and blankets in the corner–there was a little green propane stove, a portable battery for charging her phone (Tipton kept it full for her), and a dinky cooler filled with her food. The latter was mostly stuff she grew out on the property, plus a couple items from the store that Tipton brought her so her diet wasn’t 95% root vegetables and grass.

A lot of loose dirt decorated the floor as usual, but Tipton’s presence caused it to slowly vanish. Syracuse herself was almost completely clean again at this point, and the ache of the ill news wasn’t quite so sharp anymore. She looked at her soul gem–the green was horribly muddy, but less than it might have been otherwise.

She sighed and opened the cooler. Its interior was also stretched, the geometry wrong in ways that made her eyes hurt to look at for too long. She reached into one corner and brought out a healthy pile of grief cubes cupped in both hands. Her meager savings.

“We’re gonna need to be fresh for tomorrow,” she said as she offered some to Tipton. “I feel better now, thanks to you, so please take some.”

“You sure?” The pink girl fingered her own hazel gem, a ruby studded into a bracelet on her left arm. It had taken on the dirt and filth that her presence scrubbed away, and it was looking decidedly spotty. “I’m not that bad yet,” she said truthfully. She left it unsaid that Syracuse didn’t have all that many to spare.

“This time tomorrow we’ll be outta here. Probably best to use them now and not have to carry ‘em around.”

A few minutes later the grief cubes were spent, their umbral luster gone. With a sigh Syracuse dropped the magic and transformed back to her usual ratty messy self, then dropped onto her sleeping bags. Too hot to crawl in, and too tired besides.

Tipton was not quite glowing, but her cheerful demeanor was restored. She patted down her bright dress, flattening the petticoat. She stood out like a twinkling star in the dingy Shed. “Well, looks like I have some calls to make. You need anything else before I go?”

There was no response at first, but then the Homesteader stirred, her eyes flitting open. “Come lay down wi’ me,” Sofia mumbled, already half asleep. “Jus’ a few minutes.”

Aimee tittered under her breath. “Alright, love.” She didn’t actually lay down, opting instead to kneel on her knees, stroking her friend’s rough hair as she fell to sleep. She always had such an easy time drifting off. Sure enough, within 30 seconds there was a pronounced snoring.

Aimee stayed there a bit longer anyway, watching over her.

Sophia didn’t remember waking up. Happened often enough for her, when there were things needed doing. Tipton was gone by the time she was cognizant was all she could say for sure. Her soul gem felt just a little bit heavier for the absence.

The sun was already out–normally unthinkable, it meant she was sorely behind on the day’s work–but Syracuse did not give a single sh*t right now. She had the hard job of informing all present they needed to vacate, and rounded the tents. Some occupants were still sleeping. She hated late sleepers, and felt less bad about giving them the boot.

She didn’t avoid telling any of them why. Depriving them of that information could get them killed sooner rather than later. She avoided reconciling with the fact that most of them did not have long to live on average anyway.

Most got the hint and cleared out, saving her a headache. From a couple there was a lot of shouting and arguing, which ceased the moment her mattock came out. Cathy in particular was vehemently upset–understandable, given the informational whiplash. You can stay here, nevermind you gotta clear out, get f*cked kid. That’s life for magical girls, get used to it or f*cking die.

She was young, though. Made taking that message all the harder. Syracuse couldn’t help feeling a little stab in her chest when she saw the girl’s pimply face fall, watched her storm off into the woods.

As long as she was gone soon, that’s all that mattered.

There were a few out on the hunt she would have to tell later, but she set to tearing down the tents of the ones already gone. It took longer than it should have. She felt remarkably sluggish like her mind and body were disconnected, her spirit struggling to find desire and turn it into action.

Tipton returned at some point in the early afternoon and helped her clear the rest of the area. It was quicker work with two pairs of hands and a lighter heart. By the time they were done, the sun was well past its zenith and they were itching to be gone.

“So,” Syracuse sighed, sitting down in the packed dirt of the driveway. “What did Kaycee say?”

Tipton opted to stand. She was like a tinsel angel, a pink ornament without a tree to hang upon. “Kaycee said she has some space for us, thanks to Kyubey. Apparently the little guy has been giving her a hard time too. She gave me an address to our new accommodations, they’re expecting us tonight.”

“Us?”

“Of course, you little dork.” Good god, why did her stomach have to flip when Tipton said sh*t like that? “I was only staying out here because of–” Her? “--the Homestead.” Close enough. “They’ve wanted me to come over for a while, but I always said no.”

“Right,” Syracuse said noncommittally, absorbed in her private thoughts. They sat in comfy silence for a bit, relishing in the heat of the day and listening to grasshoppers jumping through the grass. The sun was clambering down, passing through some cloud cover coming in from the west.

A strange feeling wormed its way through her legs and into her belly: this was her last day here at home. It was a hollow sensation at first, but it soon turned to itching, an inflammation that made her hem and haw and fidget.

As the light dimmed slightly, Syracuse pawed her way up and stretched. “Fine,” she grunted. “Guess it’s time then.” She did her best not to look at her Shed while she said it.

“Sure enough, love.” Tipton bounced–actually bounced with the grace of a gymnast – to the driver seat door and the vehicle promptly roared to life.

Syracuse clambered into the interior like a f*cking goblin, scattering soil all over the footrest and the seat. Tipton laughed at her crudeness, making her stomach do that little flip again. “C’mon. There’s a good hill just a bit down the way here, should be able to see… whatever it is they’re gonna do.”

By the time they had driven over, gotten out, scaled the hill of some nameless farmer’s property, angry clouds had formed out of the northwest and robbed the day of its brightness.

It wasn’t unusual weather for around here, but if you looked closely there were little things here and there that struck wrongly: the stormwall was unnaturally flat, and it was narrow. Storms should wrap around the horizon at least one way, but this one didn’t really fill the sky on either side of them.

A slice of some tempest had been carved out just for them. It built up and loomed, an ugly, bruised purple mass that was coming at them fast.

Looking back to the earth, that was when they spied it: a large van, unmistakably decorated in the camouflage of some military outfit, had pulled into the dirt path of the Homestead. A girl, two, three got out hastily, all clearly transformed into their magical girl outfits. One sported a black beret, completely incongruous on top of a long dress bedecked in bright blue and yellow. A couple of them spread out over the property and one entered her Shed, looking for god knows what.

After a few minutes they reconvened by the van… one of them dragging a girl out of the woods.

Syracuse choked on her own breath as she saw it: that was Cathy. The ratty Mickey Mouse shirt didn’t lie.

Probably thought she could wait out the eviction, stupid f*cking girl. The three soldiers engaged in a curt discussion, the one with the beret was shaking her head. Once, twice. Barked something, impossible to tell what from this far away. They opened the back doors of the van and threw the hapless intruder in. Syracuse could feel Tipton shaking with anger next to her. She would have been doing the same if she could feel anything in the first place, but emptiness had made its home in her breast.

Then, as if this mortification was not enough, Beret looked square at them. There was no mistaking that visual contact, she knew they were watching somehow. She threw something shiny onto the ground and dug it in with the heel of one shoe. The soldier looked up at them again.

We’re watching. Don’t come back. Syracuse recoiled as if physically struck.

Their message delivered, the three of them climbed back into the van and took off, a blooming cloud of dirt and dust rising after them.

Within seconds of their departure, the heat of the day was swept away by a cold gust. Unnaturally cold. It swept through the treetops, shaking the boughs. The deep green around them clattered as the lighter undersides of the leaves were exposed by the wind.

Hot and cold air whorled, deepening on itself and forming that telltale tail. A cyclone wrought of magic swooped to touch the ground, to kiss it, and as if the swirling formation wanted more, it plowed down with a firmness that brought vivid, malapropos memories to the fore of their minds. Only briefly; the disaster unfolding in front of them brooked no delay.

The roiling reverse spire simultaneously widened and darkened. At first it was quite narrow, a bent straw reaching down to suck from the Earth. Then very quickly it resembled those obscene educational videos she remembered from somewhere in her stunted education, warping and stretching into a floating pyramid which seemed as if it must fall and crush them all beneath its unimaginable weight. But there was no weight, only the howling and screeching of a good old MIdwestern tornado plowing towards the Homestead. It bore down with cycladic forces that, given the chance, would have turned them into mincemeat long before they even had to enter the funnel itself.

“Well, it’s all f*cked now,” Syracuse said, belaboring the obvious.

Tipton, snapped from her reverie, heaved a sigh that could not be heard in the pitching wind. Her mouth moved: “Everyone else was out, you said?”

Couldn’t even f*cking hear themselves talk now, the wind was hurting her ears. Yeah. I was talking with the one they nabbed, but everyone else packed up and got out of here at least an hour ago.

Then that’s all you can do, isn’t it?

“Yeah… right. Who gives a f*ck?” She whispered it with a growl which did not quite convince that she in fact did not give a f*ck.

Indeed, her desperate eyes stayed focused on her dingy little hut that she had sweated and frozen in, gotten wet in, gotten bit by countless bugs in, failed to sleep in properly for two years. She watched her Shed hold on for longer than it had any right to–the enchantments at work, no doubt. Her heart plummeted into her stomach when suddenly the light touch of magic keeping it all together failed.

With a strange flicker of color the structure practically exploded into the wind, which was now surely in excess of a couple hundred miles per hour. Merely akimbo for a split second, it then truly broke apart like so much flotsam and jetsam on the waves of the storm. They watched it as it was sucked up into the sky, disappearing into the darkness of the cyclone.

Briefly she felt a spot of madness descend on her, a fleeting desire to leap into the vortex along with it. Take me with you, she thought, I want to go to Oz too. She had never even seen that piece of sh*t movie before. She giggled like a lunatic, but Tipton didn’t even look. The wind was too loud to hear the laughter bubbling up beside her, the Good Witch growing to meet Dorothy in Munchkinland.

Then as quick as it came, the fever passed. Wrong state anyway, Syracuse thought glumly. And there was no Good Witch to help her even if she could go. There was no such thing as a “good witch,” and the only Wizard was that little white sack of sh*t whose only gift had been to tell her to get out of here or else she could not keep working for him, not to whisk her away and give her and her friends a heart and a brain and courage and a way home.

No, the Incubator’s true gift was to render them as willful flesh with no other thought but to grind the ghoul grass in their teeth and eventually be harvested in turn, whenever their time came.

Well, at least she wasn’t in the back of that van right now. Wherever that poor kid was being taken, this girl was striking out west towards greener pastures. The Gateway Arch was lost, but Kansas City had always been the true Gateway to the West , where the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails finally diverged and scattered pilgrims to the far corners of the continent. It was there where she would look and start something better. Something more meaningful. Anything less awful.

She forced the edges of her mouth to straighten out, refusing to let any tears eke out as she watched. Didn’t work, of course. Unable to stomach witnessing the trees and the dirt of her awful little home being ripped up by the unending squall, she turned her eyes away from the screeching darkness.

She cast her face instead towards the fading glimmer of the setting sun, a droplet of gold that peeked at her just between treetops below and roiling gray clouds above. It mocked her, questioning her life choices as it hung there so serenely atop the canopy. It was still too high in the sky, the shine hurt too much to look at directly, and she looked away, down towards the earth. She didn’t owe the sky her attention, she decided.

f*ck her wish. It had always been worthless anyway. Should have thought to make it tax free.

An hour later saw them in Tipton’s oversized car, spotlessly clean as always. All of Syracuse’s earthly possessions were in the back compartment, squashed into the cooler, which she had wasted some magic resizing to fit everything. Some mindless grinding pop played on the radio, which she studiously ignored. She wasn’t into music and she did her best to tune it out so she could sulk in her ruination.

Westbound on 50, rolling pastures and clusters of trees flashed them by.

They were in the Desert of Billboards. Back when she had traveled wherever with her family, she had always f*cking hated these monuments to stupidity on the side of the highway. Towering advertisem*nts littered every quarter mile, half of them some religious nonsense (“KING YESHUA IS COMING” with a picture of Jesus poorly photoshopped as a half-lion, “ARE YOU PREPARING TO MEET GOD? CALL 1-65-FOR-TRUTH”, the infinite anti-abortion ads, take your pick) and the rest a smattering of advertisem*nts for local colleges or the billboard owners themselves begging people to put up advertisem*nts on them.

After a half hour, they were passing through Sedalia. There was nothing of interest here aside from an art college, everything else being warehouse stores and fast food restaurants packed right next to the highway for a couple of miles.

Despite being the closest sizable territory to her Homestead, this area was unfamiliar to her. Sedalia the person was absurdly territorial in a way that most other magical girls around here were not, a product of her transferral from some sh*t f*ck place down south. For ages Sedalia had actively pushed all intruders east towards the Homestead. Syracuse wished avidly for her slow and agonizing death.

Mercifully, there was no sign of the self-serving bitch interrupting their peregrination today. As they emerged on the western side of the stroad, Tipton briefly dispelled the haze of misery. “I need to drop something off to Warrensburg,” She said cheerfully, “So we’ll be exiting there for a bit. Sorry love.”

Syracuse didn’t have the heart to respond. Whatever, Warrensburg was fine. Had only met her once, was a polite girl if kind of weird. It was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment. She was growing sick inside, like a snake had slithered into her guts and was eating away, hollowing her out. Thank god she had Tipton driving her around, she wouldn’t have been able to do it on her own. She grit her teeth, refusing to look at her soul gem. She would be fine, she told herself. The snake continued to eat.

Another 20 minutes of endless squares of farmland and the occasional, bizarre roadside business brought them to the turn-off to yet another stroad. The exit to business 13, rolling straight through the entirety of Warrensburg, was packed somehow even more tightly than Sedalia.

Syracuse closed her eyes as Tipton turned south towards the university, enduring the gentle stops and starts of streetlights guarding the path. She didn’t want to see the tenth McDonald’s or the fourth Wendy’s or the second Taco Bell for the day, just wanted to close her eyes and sleep.

God damn she hated the way these towns all felt, it was so cluttered and claustrophobic, endless sh*tty drywalled stores all shoved right in your face, horrible traffic, people everywhere, no peace or quiet. She hadn’t been to Kansas City since she was a little girl, but she knew it was going to be even worse.

The bevy of businesses began to thin as they got closer to campus. A short bridge over train tracks divided a strip mall and student housing, and suddenly it was like they were in another town all together. School was out for the season so there was no one left but the townies, scattered here and there on the cracking sidewalks. A pedestrian bridge loomed over the road, a couple students lounging with their arms through the safety bars and chatting aimlessly. Probably talking about what classes they were taking next semester.

Syracuse stared at them as they passed through and under the walkway. Couldn’t help wondering idly about what she might have done if she never contracted. She kinda hated farming, if she had stuck it out through school she likely would have gone for a degree in basically anything else.

Tipton turned right to go deeper into campus, passing the Union and going towards university housing. Buildings taller than any other in the town rose in front of them, dorm rooms awaiting the turn of another semester. How many people even still went to college, after everything? She supposed there must still be a demand for education, but so far as she had heard, things were still shaky after last year.

A few twists and turns later found them emerging on the opposite side of campus, towards residential apartments next to a sandy volleyball court. There were a few people playing, laughing loudly. Not sure if that was a pleasant sound right now.

Finally, Tipton pulled into a lot past a copse of trees. There was a girl standing out front, which she recognized as Warrensburg. Her dress was elaborate and elegant, bouncy with a dark blue and black design, a fine mixture of curves and edges. Her heeled shoes clacked on the pockmarked pavement as she moved towards the car’s driver window, which Tipton rolled down promptly.

“A pleasure to see you Aimee,” the girl said huskily.

“And you, Brenda.” Tipton offered a limp and opaque bag, large and completely unmarked.

The college girl took it gingerly. “My thanks to you again.” She made a show of peering into the car. “I see you’re carrying a passenger?”

“Yes,” Tipton said cheerfully. “This is Syracuse. We’re heading into the city together.”

“Ah, I remember you,” Warrensburg nodded politely. “You seem rather down today.”

What a remarkable f*cking observation. Syracuse did not have the energy to give a response, but she envisioned something using a couple fingers. Or fists.

“I see,” Warrensburg nodded again. It was a strangely pronounced movement, her entire head bobbing up and down with exaggeration that Syracuse did not know what to make of. “Here,” she said, extending her hand. Covered in lace so she could barely see any skin, it held some grief cubes, which surprised her enough to momentarily dispel the acid brain fog.

“... Thank you,” was all she could bring herself to say. After a few seconds, she frowned. “Why?”

“You need them,” Brenda said simply. “None of us are strangers to hardship, and many of us perish without one another. Pass it along to the next girl who needs some help, yes?”

“... Sure.”

Appearing satisfied with that answer, the college girl turned smartly and clacked back into her apartment complex, a plain brown door closing to complete the brown edifice in its entirety.

Their business conducted, it seemed mere seconds before they were back on the lonely highway, westward bound.

“What was in that package?” the Homesteader asked quietly.

“Hmm? Oh,” Tipton tittered. “I have no idea. Never thought to ask before.”

More billboards lined their path as they rounded curves and flowed through peak after valley. Syracuse’s favorite was a dilapidated mess with no advertisem*nt at all. On some bend past the lone gas station which made Pittsville worthy of incorporation, it was just a heap of particle board on which someone had lazily scrawled “STOP DRINKING” in maroon spray paint.

A few more hills passed by, then the town of Lone Jack with its population of two gas stations, a decrepit retirement home, and a Confederate graveyard. Supposedly there was a museum dedicated to the Civil War battle that had taken place here, not that either of them gave two sh*ts about that. They passed the failing exurb without comment.

Rural green turned into the gray of civilian sprawl as they passed into the first of Kansas City’s actual suburbs: Lee’s Summit suddenly bloomed into existence around them with its countless, densely packed strip malls and interweaving highways. The roads suddenly expanded, the grassy median turned to concrete barriers. Oncoming traffic was suddenly only a few feet away on their left, and the burgeoning of the roads was accompanied by infinitely more cars around them.

Syracuse worried they would get in a f*cking head-on collision like this. The snake squirmed, and her misery was joined by more than a smidgen of fear.

She had no idea how Tipton was able to handle this bullsh*t. There were dozens of them all packed tightly around, yet they moved in the smooth, practiced concert of regular commuters. A waterfall of blinding white headlights came at them on the eastbound side, chock full of people returning from the city to whichever cookie cutter neighborhood they called home around here.

At this point, Syracuse was officially lost. They flew around at a cool 75 miles per hour, getting onto a different highway and then another and switching lanes seemingly at random. The car hitched and accelerated and slowed down, causing her heart to race in the same erratic fashion. Tipton lightly honked at someone getting a little too close on the driver’s side. Syracuse did everything in her power not to physically claw at the upholstery, the fear turning now into a full blown panic.

They glided into an area she knew vaguely as the Triangle, an intermeshing series of highways that all exchanged in one spot just south of the downtown area. All she knew about it was that there had been a sniper briefly terrorizing people here back before she was born, a tiny fact which did nothing to ameliorate her worry.

There were buildings and streets everywhere , concrete highways fifty feet high that were impossible to follow with her eyes. Despite the enormity of it, Tipton appeared to know the way. Before she knew it the Triangle was gone as they angled north, swooping through the air onto yet another highway. They were thankfully lowered back onto the ground as the asphalt stretched out in front of them, exits peppering the road every mile at least.

Her heart slowly stopped hammering in her chest as they slowed down to match with gathering traffic. This part of the highway was crammed with cars going into the city, she guessed. God, she hoped they would just f*cking get there already. She’d rather have taken the tornado than deal with this.

Just as that thought crossed her mind, they crested a hill and a splendor of skyscrapers and hotels and dazzling lights filled her eyes. Kansas City arrayed itself before her in all its bruised glory, glass and steel and stone monuments that reached to the sky.

It congealed into a throne to the aspirations of humanity: the staggered Art Deco of the Power and Light building and City Hall, blocky obelisks reaching out from the 1930s; the Pavilion and One Kansas City Place, glassen mountains that dwarfed the rest from atop rolling hills of concrete highway which surrounded the city, passed through and underneath it.

The vision of these heaven-bound spires dangled there in front of her for a second, and then the car dipped down into the next valley to obscure it all from her view.

“Just a few more minutes,” Tipton said. “I know how you feel, but it’s not all bad. You’ll see.”

Chapter 3: Blue Springs - "Take No Pleasure In Being Found"

Chapter Text

SEVEN MONTHS AGO

A stream of light illuminated a white board placed slightly off center on the front wall of a barren conference room. This light took form as a legally mandated Standards and Safety presentation. Nine haggard plant workers slouched in their chairs, paying little to no attention to the facts and figures being presented to them. They preferred instead to stare at the blank walls or tables which all managed to be various shades of puke. One openly snored with his head down on the table in front of him. Charlene would eviscerate him afterwards. They were 23 minutes in with no end in sight.

At least they weren’t out on the floor, Ella Maloney thought from inside the concentrated haze of her boredom. “Be aware of your surroundings and potential exits,” the soulless, emotionless drone of the video went on. “Have a plan. If you see something, say something.”

It was in the running for most generic corporate presentation in existence. Information floated into the glaze of her eyes, sanitized messaging so thoroughly numbing it managed to bore into her skull like a drill. It threatened to let loose the pressure that was building up inside of her brain. If the presentation kept up, her head would actually burst and coat everything in a nice wet sheen of red.

At least they were getting paid to watch it. Beats a monotonous eight hours of picking through recycling in a dirty, greasy room that smelled so strongly of decaying food and trash that it made her want to empty her guts all over the conveyor belt. Couldn’t ever actually do that though; cleaning it up would make her coworkers upset.

Yeah, instead of doing that for eight hours, she only had to do it for six today. She had that going for her, she guessed.

The barrage of information continued, and miraculously her torpor deepened. She considered fighting against it, sitting up straight to avoid any scrutiny from the micromanaging blob called “supervisor.” Settling for scooching forward in her stiff-backed chair, her head rested slightly off kilter from the top of her neck.

That oughta keep the talking-to after at a minimum.

Over the course of the next 20 minutes she made it a goal to avoid moving as much as possible. Aside from the constant up and down twitching of her diaphragm, there was nothing to suggest there was life left in the husk of her sweaty, stinking body. A numbness started in her fingers and toes, crawling up from her limbs and into her organs. It was almost like being asleep, and despite the droning she siphoned some rest out of the self-induced stasis.

As she finally started to tune the smooth, glossy voice out, two words stroked her eardrums. Just two words, a preamble to an otherwise innocuous sentence.

“Magical Girls are not a very well understood phenomenon yet.”

It shook her like a tsunami striking a small coastal Asian town. The slide flickered too quickly for her to read the intro, but the next was crammed full of text. She was suddenly, painfully aware that whoever had put this travesty together hadn’t the faintest f*cking clue about condensing their points down.

The mellifluous voiceover disappeared from her consciousness as she opted to read the verbatim text instead, as quickly as she could:

“There have been reported incidents of so-called rogue Magical Girls conducting attacks on various properties both public and private throughout the United States. Magical Girls working for the United States government, especially those engaged in active duty with the United States Magical Force (or USMF) are responsible for responding to such threats and containing them in a timely manner. However, rogue Magical Girls may still have time to inflict damage or endanger staff. Over the next few slides we will cover basic strategies for protecting yourself in the event of a magical attack.”

A couple slides passed by with remarkably useless information. Ella didn’t believe for even one second they would be of any real help–how the f*ck do you prepare for a magical attack you aren’t already aware of? It’s magic, the sh*t is fundamentally unknowable to begin with.

She dimly registered a bullet point which said “If unable to escape, lock yourself into a safe, enclosed space.” Her minor telekinesis didn’t exactly make her a powerhouse, but any two-bit cantrip rendered this advice absolutely worthless. See how much good a lock does when you can disassemble it from the inside out. Most of them could just rip a f*cking door off its hinges anyway.

There was one piece of information she did think was helpful, that Magical Girls could sometimes be identified by strange or ostentatious jewelry on their person. It even used the term “Soul Gems,” which made her feel strangely exposed, and almost without realizing it she stroked the small topaz she kept nestled on its chain under her stained work shirt.

The juicy tidbit, however, presented itself on the final slide concerning this personal topic. There were a few bullet points recapping the “advice,” and a fairly succinct appeal at the bottom of the projection:

“If you are aware of any Magical Girls who are not subject to the authority of the USMF, you are legally obligated to inform local law enforcement so as to protect the public interest.”

Holy sh*t.

Holy f*cking sh*t.

Her body felt like breakers in a switchboard that had just been shunted to the “on” position. The federal government was mandating training materials which concerned magical girls, and the USMF was getting involved with incidents. The Kansas City community had grown suspicious of this for a little while already, but hearing it in such plain speech gave it a startling, incontrovertible quality.

Now the government was assembling motherf*ckin’ lists.

Kaycee needed to be told about this. They all had to start lying low immediately. No doubt the other cities would start doing the same, if they had any brains to work with.

As the voiceover returned to ramble on more mundane topics, Ella allowed these thoughts to percolate in her brain, which now felt like it might pop for entirely different reasons. Somewhere at the back of it all was the realization that she needed to quit this job, something that both relieved her a bit and scared her immensely. She hated change, and they were all about to get their world rocked in ways they could scarcely imagine.

The presentation ended unceremoniously. Lights switched back on at the behest of their placid leader, rendering all of them purblind for a second. Half-formed plans and what-ifs rolled around in her muddy gray matter, and she was vaguely thankful for the fact that they still had some time left in the shift. She needed to think.

Before she knew it though, 2:45 PM rolled around. Gettin’ close to quittin’ time, can’t wait to do it again tomorrow, her fellows lining the conveyor belt all laughed as they said the same quips they said every f*cking day. She offered a weak chuckle of her own as she washed the belt with a mid-pressure hose, scrubbing off bits of decomposing cardboard and moldy food. It was all stale commiseration, trading the raunchy locker room jokes and bitterness at management that were staples of their blue collar lives.

She never felt much like joining in, but today especially she kept her eyes on the belt. More and more it glistened as the fetid residue of reclaimed waste came away. Slicks of water and suds came away from her scrubber pad which had once been stiff and green, but had long since turned limp and dirty and a sickening minty gray. The sponge reminded her of the first day she worked here when she had thrown up from the smell.

The conveyor was an endless rubber tongue that fed the gaping maw of the processor. Many times she had considered flopping her senseless mass on and sacrificing herself to it, throwing herself into the churning, crushing innards of a dragon whose name was Langley Recycling Incorporated. She stared at the hanging strips of dirty plastic that were all which separated her from a painful but swift death.

Fifteen minutes later found Ella in her boss Charlene’s office, squirming on the second hardback chair that day while she waited for the waddling mass to finish up a phone call that was completely superfluous. A long and progressively infuriating string of “yes”s and “I understand”s and “of course”s issued forth from the supervisor’s mouth, flopping up and down in short chomps.

She wondered if it were possible to die from this. An overdose of performative professionalism seemed about as bad a way as she could go, honestly. She’d take her chances with the processor first.

Against all odds, the endless conversation did finally end when the receiver clattered into its rest. Her supervisor displayed the slightest touch of reproach with a sigh that also seemed like it might never end. It took all of Ella’s strength not to visibly squirm in her chair.

“You’re quitting.”

“Yes.” She offered nothing else, thinking that if she had another wish it would be for this discussion to end instantaneously.

“You sure there’s nothing I can do to change your mind? We’ll be disappointed to see you go.”

Yeah, right. You’ll be disappointed you need to get someone to cover the labor gap, you f*cking cow. Maybe you’ll even have to help out for once instead of just looming over everyone, like Saturn preparing to eat his own children. “Personal circ*mstances don’t allow for it,” she said instead, chewing the inside of her cheeks as discreetly as possible.

“Well,” the doughy lump of fat said, and paused to tap her short but squeaky clean nails on the lacquered surface of her desk. They clacked in a wave, remarkably dexterous for how chubby the fingers were. Two waves. Three waves. Silence. A fourth.

Ella’s stomach was clenched so tight she thought she might vomit on the table just to expedite matters.

Another lazy sigh escaped the manager. “I understand,” she begrudged, and suddenly spoke quickly. “You will of course not be able to return, as you’ve offered no two weeks’ notice. Regardless, it was a pleasure working with you.” A well-rehearsed speech; Ella wondered how many times she’d given it before. Charlene held out a pudgy stump for a goodbye shake and suddenly a river poured through Ella’s brain. On that river floated memories of her time at this casual nightmare of a sh*t f*ck job.

It wasn’t a pleasure when you had to have everything your way. Your way or the highway, you said once. Rush into a task headlong, get it done in the most haphazard and inefficient way possible, call it good enough afterwards. You’re the boss, and that’s all there is to it. Talk down to the crew about “organization” and “planning ahead” when the plant manager yelled at your fat ass after sh*t went south.

It wasn’t a pleasure when you tried and failed to ask what was wrong, when I was crying in my car after work.

It wasn’t a pleasure when you felt the need to hover over everyone’s shoulder all day. A small annoyance, one that builds up over time, a microscopic but tangible violation of dignity that causes fractures of trust which turn into chasms.

It wasn’t a pleasure to have a boss who is kind of a decent person sometimes, but a decidedly mediocre supervisor. Would have been easier to just hate you completely instead of having to be vaguely conflicted about it.

It really wasn’t a pleasure working with you.

She realized her teeth were gritting of their own accord and forced herself to stop working her jaw.

Ella took the stump in her own hand, expressionless in the set of her lips and brow. “Goodbye, Charlene.” She disengaged contact, picked up her lunch pail and opened the door. Slinging the bag over her right shoulder, she walked out of this dead end and hoped she wasn’t just walking into another.

Chapter 4: Sugar Creek - "Woe to Him That is Alone"

Chapter Text

ONE WEEK AGO

It was supposed to be simple, she thought miserably.

Julia Alvarez examined her right hand, bloody sinew all that was left of its stolen fingers. Kyubey insisted they would grow back, but she wasn’t sure how much to believe him on that. He clearly hadn’t been forthright on anything else.

She hadn’t been doing this for very long, just a couple weeks. She had been so excited when the Incubator had approached her–she had heard of this creature, a being who would fulfill a wish and give her powers. That was one of the ways magical girls were made according to her friends at school.

So when Kyubey had offered her a contract, she had taken it without a second thought, clinging to escape from her dreadful life.

Her wish had been obvious: ever since the Catastrophe, her parents were fighting constantly. For over a year the muffled booming of traded insults and thin threats rattled her. She wanted them to stop being at each other’s throats, and then she’d be happy again too. She wished that her parents would love each other once more. She even said it just like that to give it that little twist of cutesy magical charm, and then Julia was Sugar Creek (her friends also said that magical girls all used the name of towns they lived in, a privilege she was thrilled to share).

It had worked, at least initially. Her parents were suddenly very involved with each other, seeming to forget about the world around them. She saw them in the living room and the kitchen and in the hallway, engaged in passionate discussion, openly ignoring her as she passed. That was all fine and good, Sugar Creek figured there would be some adjustments. Instead of bothering them she went out, exercising her new powers to their fullest extent.

She didn’t have a bad kit, either. Her wish was fairly generic, but Kyubey said her potential was “moderate regardless.” Her outfit kicked ass, a short rouge dress that felt oddly comfortable and easy to move in. Her divinely inspired weapon was a sword, unfortunately rather plain looking, but its iron weight felt right in her hands as she swung it to and fro.

The problem, then, was that she didn’t know how to use her powers. Didn’t even know what her power was to be honest. She had asked Kyubey for advice on the matter, but his answers hadn’t really made any sense. Something about it just didn’t click.

So she had asked for a mentor. Surely there were other magical girls in the area.

I advise against asking the local girls for help, the Incubator had said. When the magical girls in this city find you, they’ll ask you to join them and have you do all sorts of dangerous things, or they’ll make you leave. They’ve already sent many girls to other cities like St. Louis!

That was sufficiently terrifying to keep her from reaching out, not that she really knew how. She kept working at it on her own under Kyubey’s instruction, covertly practicing with her weapon and struggling to understand her magic.

After a week without much progress, Julia decided to try going out anyway. Between the effort of training and dismayed at the lack of progress, her soul gem was steadily darkening. In the dead of night when she was sure her parents were sleeping (she was sure they would have been too busy canoodling to notice anyway), she transformed and set out to prowl her neighborhood.

Sugar Creek abuts the northwestern portion of Independence, just south of the river. Though Independence was rife with plenty of game, Sugar Creek itself was affluent and had weathered the storm of the DuPage administration much better. It translated to slim pickings for her, and something craven inside hoped she would find nothing. After a couple hours of walking her neighborhood, feeling extremely visible and foolish in her frilly getup, she chanced upon her first wraith.

It dwelled within a children’s playground attached to an old brick and mortar church, separated from the sidewalk by a rusty chain link fence. No streetlights reached that far and Sugar Creek almost missed it in the dark, but once her eyes locked on it felt impossible she hadn’t seen it sooner.

It loomed unmoving in front of the bright yellow slide gouged with countless scratches, as if it had just gotten done taking a turn going down. Taller than any person she could think of, its body was man-like but its head contorted and shifted endlessly. She couldn’t make out a face no matter how closely she looked, sliding away in her vision like grease on teflon. It reminded her distinctly of when she dropped her laptop once and corrupted all of her photos, which struck her as strange.

The ghoul seemed to ignore her existence so she took a haltering step closer, somehow stumbling on thin air. The more she looked the harder it was to see anything definite. Swirling, shifting flecks of light resolved into nothing particular, except occasionally they looked something like… letters? This shiftless thing was not what she had been expecting at all. Why would a supernatural being look like this?

In the midst of her contemplation she suddenly realized that it was right in front of her, like it had been there all along. Her heart rocketed up to a million miles an hour, she jumped back and even gave a little shriek, but the wraith was unable to move over the fence. It bumped mindlessly against it in her direction, settled for stretching stinking hands out at her. Its rotten fish flesh fingers dripped pallid ichor.

She didn’t bother looking closely at it again, summoning her sword. Suddenly she felt horribly aware of her deficiencies, and her slashes fell awkwardly against the creature’s limbs. She retained none of her hard-earned grace, looking and feeling more like a child beating a tree with a sh*tty stick.

With some effort, an arm came off. The only effect was that the wraith instantly grew agitated. Now it did try climbing over the fence, a furious poltergeist seeking revenge. Adrenaline pumped through her heart and made her limbs tingle painfully. She was already hyperventilating, panic substituted for exhaustion.

Quickly! Kyubey cried at her from nowhere in particular. Wraiths are more susceptible to magic than regular weapons. If you use your powers you’ll defeat this one easily!

f*cking how, Kyubey? She hadn’t had any success doing magic in a whole week. There was no time to consider it now. She lashed out desperately at the thing’s head as it clambered angrily over the fence.

As it fell on the other side, suddenly she had the presence of mind to try stabbing. The tip of her blade penetrated the wraith’s nebulous glitch cloud, she felt a little twitch somewhere back in her brain. Something powerful twisted, though she couldn’t tell what it was exactly.

The wraith instantly, noiselessly poofed into dust. On the grass where it had fallen were three cubes the size of play dice.

Well done Miss Alvarez! Your first successful hunt, Kyubey cheered, appearing seemingly from nowhere to give a cute little hop under the streetlight.

There was a sense of elation in her chest, but it felt strangely muted and his praise rang hollow. It had been a lot scarier than she expected doing all this, and she wanted desperately to go home.

You should use those grief cubes, Kyubey explained. Hold them up to your soul gem, and your despair will be siphoned away.

Sugar Creek did as he suggested, and within a matter of seconds some of the cloudiness in her little opal cleared up. For a wonder, she did feel better. Not as much as she would have liked, though, and the first tinges of dawn were starting to creep in on the horizon. How had she been out all night already?

You may find that time passes strangely when near wraiths, especially a great number of them. Don’t worry Miss Alvarez, as you improve you’ll be able to hunt more efficiently. If you have enough grief cubes, they can even stave off hunger and the need to sleep!

That sounded kind of… awful, actually? Maybe she’d get used to it. Whatever the Incubator said, she had to stifle a yawn as she trudged back to her house up the hill.

She slept through school and had another outing that night. Her parents didn’t notice her slipping away, but this time she didn’t find any wraiths. Endless wandering up and down the suburban neighborhood turned up nothing but figurative ghosts.

The place you live is quiet and contended, Kyubey explained. You may need to look further out to find anything. The nearby area of Indian Mound might prove a more fruitful hunting ground.

What? That’s five miles away! How did Kyubey expect her to get there at this time of night?

You should be able to make that distance with less effort now. Your contract has given you increased strength and speed, it’s a simple matter of tapping into that.

No no, not this sh*t again. His explanations were bad and made no sense. He hadn’t mentioned anything about this before! f*ck this, it was already 4 AM anyway. She would try some other time.

But she didn’t hunt the next night, trying desperately to catch up on her real life responsibilities (mostly mountains of homework the teachers had thrown at her). Feeling her spirits sink, she snuck frequent glances at her soul gem. Cloudier, slowly growing darker by the hour. The cat hadn’t really explained what would happen if this kept up, but she didn’t care to find out.

Sugar Creek put it out of her mind for now, opting instead to suffer through algebra and geography. Slightly delirious and definitely irritated, she decided she would follow Kyubey’s advice that evening. With the last of the daylight leaking out of a twilit sky, she put on a non-descript hoodie and took off on foot over highway 24 to the west.

Regret filled her within minutes. There was thankfully a footpath for some of the journey, but it left little clearance between the busy road on her right and the sprawling tangle of trees on her left. There was a lot of construction that obscured her path, and at times she’d have to step onto the street to bypass a hulking machine that had been dumped in place, waiting to be picked up in the morning by its master. She couldn’t stop herself from wincing every time a car flew by, flash blinding her and roaring in her ears.

Westward she trekked, passing the License Office and closed restaurants and a couple Dollar Generals with crusty geriatrics shopping for sport. There were a lot of boarded windows and doors, far more than she was used to seeing. She dragged her feet a little faster past these, her mother’s shrill warning of strangers playing in her head.

Her family never went to this part of the suburb, it had started festering before she was even born. By the same token, it meant she didn’t have to walk quite so long before stumbling on potential prey. She felt more than saw a dimming in the air, an oil slick draping over the world. Light didn’t reach as far as it should, choked by a sinful force that made the scraping of her shoes echo uncomfortably.

Near one of these closed shops, a crumbling facade that claimed proudly to be “The Best Place In Town” to get empanadas, Sugar Creek felt the hair on the back of her neck stand straight on end. It was an unusual sensation for her, just as alien as the three ghouls which stared right at her from between slats of moldering particle board.

It took her another two blocks before she realized they were stalking her, shambling specters reaching out for her like lovers keening for a fierce embrace. She transformed, caught in a red flash of light that threw up weak shadows around her. Her sword was in her hands the same instant, but when she held it up she found she was shaking so hard she could barely keep it pointed straight.

They were closing the distance quickly, too. There wasn’t room for all three on the sidewalk, so one of the wraiths shuffled onto the highway to keep pace with its fellows. A car ran it over almost immediately, exploding it into an amorphous cloud of dust.

Sugar Creek felt the thrill of a laugh at the thing’s misfortune, but instead of dissipating the cloud coalesced, a mist collapsing into its original shape quicker than it took her to blink. Kyubey hadn’t mentioned anything about this to her either. The gears in her brain turned, and for the first time she wondered just how much he was holding back from her.

f*ck this. She opted to flee, to find something less menacing, less challenging. Without thinking about it she banished her sword and turned on her heels, only to be facing a fourth wraith just behind her.

Sugar Creek couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe as the thing gripped her hands and pulled. She was stuck in a vice, her strength drained out of her as it tugged at her wrists and she felt muscle fibers stretching in her arms and chest, her little body breaking. She screamed harder than she had ever screamed before, an ugly sound that ripped her throat open and filled it with desperate saliva. Another car screamed by unseeing, uncaring.

Her lungs emptied as the other three wraiths caught up and started to bite her somehow, flailing at her tortured flesh. The pain wasn’t as bad as she thought it should be, but she was so frightened she couldn’t think straight. Most of all she needed to get away, a simple enough goal for her to cling to.

With a desperate burst of concentration, she felt that thing that had been there on the first night. A little nodule in her brain, something that hadn’t been there before contracting. She tugged at it, a tiny pinch that turned into a death grip.

The wraith holding her exploded into greasy flames and shrieked, dropping her. After a single second of conflagration, it poofed and did not form again.

Openly gaping, she just had time to remember the wraiths behind her before they seized her by her clothes, a clump of her hair and her left hand. She didn’t want to do this sh*t again, pulled her body away with an animal’s desperation. There was a sharp flair of pain in her scalp and hand that lanced through her brain, but she had ripped free she could get away. With haggard breaths she jumped so hard that for a few seconds she left the ground entirely, putting distance between her and the wraiths.

She landed on the other side of them, on the way towards home, and sprinted as hard as she could.

Twenty minutes later found Sugar Creek approaching her front door, not quite limping on the shoulder of the road, but close enough. Five minutes after leaving the wraiths out of sight she had finally slowed down, nursing a stitch in her sides. It took her another five minutes to realize that the wraiths had taken a couple fingers off her, the index and the middle, and she had immediately hid the stumps in the folds of her rouge dress before she had a chance to see her torn sinews wriggling. She hadn’t even gotten the f*cking grief cubes from the one she did kill.

She felt blood draining, seeping into the folds of the outfit. She failed to notice the living room lights were on, and she walked in on her parents sitting prim in the living room, waiting for her.

They demanded to know where she had been for the last two hours. Two? She couldn’t have been gone for more than one, but the clock on the wall said otherwise. Why was she sleeping in class? Her teachers had bothered them today about it. What was she wearing? What’s that on her dress? Was that blood dripping on the floor?

More than the confrontation itself, there was something in their tone that didn’t feel right. They were usually pretty attentive, but this felt… accusatory. All anger, no concern.

Sugar Creek considered for a little bit in silence, unsure how to explain. They demanded an explanation, and her heart started to hurt.

sh*t. It wasn’t a secret anymore really, was it? The world knew about this already. She opted just to tell them outright: mom, dad, she had become a magical girl.

Their eyes widened with comprehension, and impossibly to her, disgust. She was what? What did she say?? How could she do this? Didn’t she know what magical girls had done to this f*cking country last year, what the President was trying to protect them from? Her father especially was getting louder and louder, bits of spittle flying from his mouth. Everything was different now, it was wrong, and now she’s part of the f*cking problem too. His face was turning purple, and for every shade it grew darker the more scared she became. First she ruined their marriage, now this? How could she turn out to be one of those freaks?

Wait. What? She had done what? She stuttered, unable to tell if she had heard that last part correctly.

Her father also seemed bothered he had said it… but not too bothered. Yeah, you heard him. Their marriage had been falling apart ever since they had her. They bent over backwards to take care of her. They had been on the verge of divorce, actually.

A week ago they had broken down and started to discuss things, tried to figure out where they stood. When they realized why exactly they had gotten so distant, that was all it took for them to fall in love again.

Instantly the tightness and fear in her stomach disappeared, ice taking their place. Wordlessly, Sugar Creek turned and walked out, heedless of their shouts. Lights flicked on in neighboring houses as her father screamed at her to come back this instant, but she paid him no mind. She was numb, her senses refusing to report. She forgot her missing fingers and blood trailed on the sidewalk.

Fifteen minutes later she was back on highway 24, her sword already out as she stalked down the tattered walkway and in the street. When she passed by the best empanadas in town, though, the three wraiths were nowhere to be seen.

So she kept walking.

Things blurred around her. She wasn’t reading signs or the names of stores anymore, and when she bothered to look they were inchoate anyway, broken shapes emulsifying with the black night sky.

She couldn’t stop hearing those words flying out of her dad’s mouth. Ruined our marriage. They bounced around in her head, jumbled up her brain and turned it into steaming goo. Ruined our marriage. She came to the underpass of North 435. Ruined our marriage. Crossed the bridge over Blue River. Ruined our marriage.

Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. There were no shops anymore, no corner gas stations, no 24 hour fast food or boarded up buildings. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. The world slid around and away from her. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. She was in a gray haze, alone. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. She drifted through it, trudging as blood dripped from her missing fingers onto the shoddy pavement beneath. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage. Ruined our marriage.

The world took little note of her passing besides.

After a few days she felt the ice in her chest thaw a little bit. Looking to see when and where she was, her phone (she awkwardly tapped at it with her left fingers, unable to hold it steadily in her right hand anymore) told her that it was merely 1 in the morning, a scant few hours after her departure. The nearest road sign told her she was on the Paseo, just east of 71. A dangerous part of town, especially at night, for just about anybody.

Kyubey hadn’t told her about miasmas yet, but she didn’t need the explanation to know the simmering fog wrapping around her was unnatural and wrong. It boiled with malevolence, spewing a promise of distortion.

This was the second to last place on Earth she wanted to be right now. Despite the pain that intensified in her hand, she hoofed it away from the wraith fog towards the highway.

Maybe she could get in contact with the other girls here? Kyubey hadn’t exactly been forthcoming, maybe they weren’t so bad as he made them out to be.

But where the hell should Sugar Creek look for them? She doubted that the cat was going to tell if she asked. She was utterly without tools or knowledge. The gravity of the situation quickly sank in.

The highway sprawled in front of her then, with a couple of bums sleeping in the shadow of the upper recesses of the underpass. Looking at them, she suddenly felt very tired too, an ache that surpassed pain and crept into her bones, liquifying her muscles. Hoping she wasn’t bothering them, she sat down on the hard concrete nearby and pulled her phone out. She got a little blood on it, but at this point who could care.

Doubtful that she could get any rest, she decided to take advantage of the stable mobile data she got here in the city and trawled through the internet. Social media held little allure for her, with the only people she knew frequently unable to access it regularly, so she opted to check the news.

There were a myriad of articles on any and all developments related to magical girls–the hot ticket news item that never went away now. Against her better judgment, periodically she also expanded the comments to see what thoughts they had to offer.

Most of it was horribly vacuous. Poorly spelled, intellectually bankrupt garbage that offered no insights whatsoever–aside from indicating the miscreant who posted it was fit only for removal from the human species. Occasionally there was something that scraped at her like flint off steel, producing a spark, a mote of capacity for thought. Mostly though, as she scrolled through endless layers of dreck she felt her mood dampen and rot in real time.

Magic is real? Give me a break!! When will they tell us the *actual truth?*

They all need to be aressted for hiding for so long! Wtf is the presdent doing??

the magic (read: SATANIC) administration continues to menace true-believers

wow it is dangerous to be around magic users? who would of thought”

The government has been using these poor girls all along and chose not to tell us. People wouldn’t be afraid for their lives if magical girls simply came forward and added themselves to a public registry, it’s very simple.

Miss Alvarez.

And on and on. The clock in the corner of the screen ticked on, incrementing steadily from midnight to 3 AM.

Miss Alvarez, I must advise against continuing this recreational activity, it appears to be distressing you to an extreme level.

Unbidden, thoughts of cruelty entered her mind. Every comment she saw drained her just a little bit more, spawned a fleeting mental image of her finding the person who posted it, whipping a gun out, and shooting them right in the head. She heard the bang in her mind as clearly as if she was actually doing it.

magical girls can just wish for money, they have unlimited funds to tell lies that everything we’re suffering through isn’t because of them. Bang.

MAGICAL GIRLS ARE A PLAGUE ON THE EARTH THEY MUST BE HUNTED DOWN AND DESTROYED BY THE COMMAND OF GOD Bang.

I would rather die than be forced to go against what I’ve believed my entire life. Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

The only time she looked away from the screen was a flicker of her sunken eyes towards her soul gem. She put the swirl of its encroaching darkness out of her mind, did not allow herself to register its torpid light dwindling… quickly.

You are approaching the point of no return.

BANG. Each one so insignificant on its own, together it drowned her like the whole of the ocean.

BANG. Her eyes were bugging out of her head, she was a maddened horse frothing at the bit.

BANG. She wanted to drag her nails across her arms, to flay the skin of her body so that it hung from her like ribbons.

Very well. I regret to inform you that our business is concluded.

BANG. Her head twitched frantically back and forth, the muscles in her neck bulging. A thin veil of red draped itself over everything, baptizing the world in her wrath.

BANG. Her impotent rage came out of her eyes, hot and salty to cleanse her face.

How could so many people she had never met hate her so much?

How could her parents do this to her?

Clack. Her phone clattered awkwardly onto the pockmarked concrete. Screen still on, it accumulated a few more scratches and dents, flecking a couple drops of blood away.

After a few minutes, one of the bums nearby took notice of the glaring light and shuffled by. Stooping to examine the device, he looked around. Seemed decent enough to him, in his amaretto haze. Before touching he cast a glance around, trying to see if there was an obvious owner just waiting to f*ck with him. There was some weirdo here just a second ago.

He did not notice the figure flying overhead, would not have understood the fleeting form of a magical girl who up until a few minutes ago had felt the presence of another like her, somewhere around here. The bum could not perceive a girl named Kaycee conducting a now fruitless search.

Eventually, satisfied with his caution, he pocketed the phone and went back to his tattered blankets.

Chapter 5: Perry - "The Single Best Restaurant in the World"

Chapter Text

“Are you sure this is it?” Syracuse mumbled, unable to hide a grimace. Tipton’s four door glided through the urban wastes, grass jutting up through cracks in the asphalt and colonizing the sidewalk. They were passing a barred fence that sealed off some kinda parking lot with nothing inside of it, similarly overgrown where no plants should have been in the first place.

All four corners of the intersection were like this, fenced off properties with no-name buildings inside. They were all covered in graffiti, tags so esoterically stylized that they might as well have not been the Latin alphabet. There was more paint than brickwork on most of these surfaces.

Casting her gaze around, there wasn’t a human in sight. It might as well have been the f*cking apocalypse again.

“Not quite yet, love. Kaycee said stay on 18th and then north on Brooklyn,” Tipton sounded quite unbothered by the detritus pressing in.

The car swerved dutifully to instructions left in a text message the night before. They passed upwards into the city, down through the numbered streets. Under 70 highway, past 14, 13, 12, finally to 11th Street.

“It’s around the corner here,” Tipton said as she hung a left onto the one way. Syracuse gripped the armrest, doubt plain on her face as if the vehicle was already being broken into. By God did she hate the city.

Not that this was the city proper. All the taller buildings were more northwest of them at this point (she struggled in vain to make it seem like she wasn’t looking for another glimpse of those skyscrapers). These were a perverse fusion of urban planning and suburban buildings, squat strip malls and high-rises mashed together.

It wasn’t anywhere near as desolate as she had led herself to believe all this time, especially considering the last year. As they moved further towards some condominiums a smattering of people were even walking around, patronizing one run down business or another. A citizenry did in fact live here, somehow.

There were of course the boarded up places, houses that leaned in on themselves without any occupants to keep them satisfied.

“Does she have a sign up or somethin’?”

“Yes, in fact. It’s called ‘The Shack.’ Should make you feel right at home, huh?” Tipton grinned.

Syracuse didn’t find it funny, and went back to looking out the spotless windows at a strip mall, half of which was shuttered. This was going to be their new home, and the sulking briefly magnified into doom.

A few minutes of looking down 11th brought them to the place in question. The larger building lacked decor or advertisem*nt, making the sign the only indication that anything other than an empty building was located here. Despite that responsibility, the sign was modest: blue paint crying out “THE SHACK” at passersby was flaking so badly that the E was almost gone. Halogen lights that probably hadn’t been replaced in years shone through the grimy yellow of aged plastic.

Tipton parked her car in the lot, which was thankfully better maintained than some of the others they had passed by earlier. Some of the paint lines were even visible.

“Alright, let’s go say hi,” she chirped. “We’re guests, Sofia. Let’s act like it.”

“You don’t gotta give me the third degree.” Syracuse tried quirking her lips into a smile and just couldn’t do it. Came out as a rictus grin that made Tipton’s own smile falter, so she put it away.

Before they even managed to open the door, the woman known to them only as Perry opened it and stepped outside. Untransformed, she was dressed in an apron over a comfortable t-shirt with the same logo as the sign, and enormous baggy jeans. She put on an act as if she had no idea the pair were there before exiting, giving an excited cry and holding both her arms up like they had snuck up on her.

“You must be the country gals!” she beamed at them. “C’mon in, no sense in sweatin’ yo freshling titt*es off, ha ha ha!” She cackled at the top of her lungs, holding open the door just so they would have to squeeze past Perry’s voluminous frame. After some bodily negotiation they both managed to pop through into the dark interior of the joint, which was approximately ten degrees hotter than outside.

The first thing they noticed was that their shoes slipped weirdly on the tilework, an odd half-slide with every step. They realized it was grease, the smell of which was so pervasive that no doubt it had deposited onto the ground straight from the air. A dull voice issued from somewhere, the sonorous and steady gate of a news broadcaster, though they could not identify the source. Their eyes slowly adjusted to the inadequate fluorescent lighting, revealing to them an entire wooden picnic table that had to have been plucked straight from a playground or a park nearby. There was no other seating in the restaurant.

This seemed to be just the way Perry liked it, as she gestured broadly around her. “Take a seat, rest yo legs, ha ha ha.” She ambled through an opening in the counter half her size and into the kitchen. Shouted back: “I’ll getcha somethin’ square to eat, jus’ a sec’.” A few minutes passed as they awkwardly took their place at the picnic table, carefully examining graffiti carved into its surface which only reinforced their assumptions about its pilfered status.

It was adorned by the typical sophom*oric art: hearts with initials inside of them, phone numbers claiming to offer a “good time,” and countless scribbles which were supposed to be swastikas where maybe one in ten were drawn correctly. One message scratched with black ink said simply, “f*ck Bob,” to which someone had later appended “in his sweet ass.” “Ass” was crossed out at an even later time by a permanent marker which properly adjusted it to “puss*.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind Syracuse wondered who Bob was and why anyone wanted to f*ck him so bad, but her thoughts were interrupted by slapping footfalls. Perry returned with two heaping plates piled high with juicy brisket, steaming baked beans, some white sandwich bread, and sweetcorn. Despite her malaise she found that her mouth had immediately started watering at the sight of it. Looking at her friend, Tipton was similarly affected: her eyes had grown as large as the plates themselves, and her arms had gone slack.

It smelled f*cking delicious, and the plates were hardly set in front of them before they started tearing into the tender meal, almost forgetting to use the plasticware Perry offered them.

“Ha ha ha, yeah, ‘das right, ‘das right.” Perry belted laughter as she sat down next to Syracuse. “Glad you like it, ha ha ha.” She watched them eat in a kind of matronly way. A little creepy for someone who was essentially a stranger, but there was clearly no malice in it. Couldn’t focus on that, this was easily two and a half meals’ worth of food but both of them ended up clearing their plates with gusto.

There was a kind of satisfaction with it that Syracuse hadn’t felt in a meal since becoming a magical girl. She leaned back as much as she could on the bench seat and worked just to breathe. Holy f*ck.

“Amazing you white girls put all dat away so easy. Not bad, huh?” Perry was grinning at them both, arms crossed across her prodigious chest proudly.

It took her a couple minutes for the food to settle in her stomach properly. “Thank you,” she coughed. “Haven’t had a meal that nice in a long time.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, ha ha ha.” Perry leaned forward and rested her wobbling arms on the table, signaling to all that the Business was starting. “Now, Kaycee tells me you guys got chased outta your place. Government steppin’ in and all that?” They nodded, not sure if they still had room to speak properly around all the food clogging their bodies. “Lotta that goin’ round, sounds like. Ain’t permanent, but Kaycee and I got somethin’ arranged. There’s a couple cots in the back for ya. Flat as a board and about as comfy, but y’all won’t be on the streets. Why’ntcha put your stuff up and relax, then we can chat a bit?”

They acquiesced, groaning at the weight in their bellies. Their host guided them back through the kitchen, which had a huge fridge repurposed with heating shelves. Upon these shelves rested dozens of little plastic baggies and tin foil. More meat, they couldn’t help thinking as their stomachs gurgled.

In the back past the stoves and a janky water heater was a door, particle board designed to look like oak. Opening it revealed a dorm room, or like a hostel, with several unmade bunk beds. Only three seemed to be fitted with sheets, presumably two were for them. The walls were bare with peeling beige paint, except for a solitary portrait of White Jesus splitting the room in twain. He looked down upon them with beneficence, saying don’t look at me, I didn’t decorate this f*cking place.

“Liberty stays here sometimes,” Perry shouted at them from the front, “so y’all better be careful not to f*ck when she comes around, ha ha ha. Just kiddin’, no f*ckin’ in The Shack or we gonna have a problem.”

Opting to do a more thorough job unpacking later, a few minutes found them back at the picnic table while Perry swept dust out the door, Syracuse doing her best to hide her beet red face.

“That better?” Perry asked, staring directly at her blazing cheeks as she sat down at the table. “Good. Now I get why y’all both here… wait a minute.” She hauled her girth up and back behind the counter. The gentle male voice suddenly came to a stop with a pronounced click. “NPR,” Perry explained, situating herself at the table which protested loudly. “Gotta stay in the know, y’know. Now, tell me a li’l about yourselves.”

It was an age old discussion, one that every magical girl who lasted more than a month was fated to have several times. Syracuse was not overly fond of this cultural obligation, so she gestured for Tipton to start.

“Well,” the pink one began, “To be brief, my parents are hoarders. They’re otherwise rather successful, but no matter the size of our house they always managed to fill it with more and more junk,” she licked her lips. “I always despised it. They would constantly buy whatever they laid their eyes on and piled it wherever they could. The kitchen was unusable, the living room was jam-packed, they even started putting stuff in my room. Eventually all that stuff starts to get gross: food goes bad, clothes get dirty, unused possessions gather dust.”

Her smile began to falter, a rare display that made Syracuse’s heart swell painfully. The true extent of it had gone unsaid: she had seen that house, and it had been a supplication to filth. Pests of every sort had made the squalor their home more than Tipton’s. “Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. When Kyubey asked what I wanted, all I could think was ‘to be clean.’”

“Aw, honey.” Perry scooched in and offered her a motherly hug, which Tipton accepted quite gratefully. It seemed warm and inviting.

Somehow it made Syracuse feel uncomfortable. She hoped she would not be offered one. Maybe if Tipton offered. Still, it was her turn to fess up. Better make this quick.

“My parents are deadbeats,” she said flatly, quickly. “I never wanted anything to do with ‘em. I asked for a space for myself and got a couple acres outside the next town over. A little patch on the east side of some richy-rich dairy farmer,” she rapped her knuckles quickly on the wooden picnic table. Agitation was already threatening to rear its head, wrap it up. “I had to put a lot of work into it, and I lived there for two years. I’m sure you’ve heard the rest.”

Perry grunted. “Yeah, I got filled in. It’s jus’ not right.” She stood back up, heaving her bulky frame into the air. Syracuse half-recoiled, afraid she was going to squeeze her, but the woman wandered around the countertop into the kitchen. She shouted at them from somewhere in the back. “It’s not like this job ain’t hard enough already, y’know? Don’t see why we bother if the one thing we get for it can just be taken away.” Felt pretty similar to the sh*t the Homesteader had been saying last night honestly. Something came loose in her chest a bit, breathing easier for being understood.

The mountainous woman came back with another platter heaped high with food, her own dinner presumably. “Everyone’s stories are so sad, man. I always feel like I’m gonna regret askin’.” She plopped the paper plate and its offerings on the table, shaking it as she maneuvered her legs into the space underneath. “I thank the Lord every day for how lucky I was.”

“Oh?” Tipton knew how to play the game, it was time for the host to return the favor. “What was your wish then?”

“This,” the woman pointed down at her food, overflowing with all manner of sizzling beef and pork. “My dad always loved grillin’. We couldn’t have it too much cuz we was poor ‘n all that, but every time my birthday rolled aroun’, he smoked me a li’l brisket he got from his butcher friend. I loved it to death,” she smiled, smacking her gully chops. “It was my favorite meal every year. So when Kyubey came ‘round, I asked if I could have barbeque whenever I wanted.”

Syracuse raised her eyebrows a smidge. “You… create food?”

“Hell yeah, sis!” Perry popped a beef burnt end into her mouth, dramatically savoring the taste of her own magical cooking.

“Does it help you hunt at all?” Tipton inquired politely, though clearly puzzled.

“Nah, f*ck that.” Perry forked a couple more burnt ends, chomping noisily. “I was always sh*t at fighting.”

“… So what did you do? You still need cubes, surely.”

“Well,” Perry licked unctuous sauce off her fingers, “true enough, but think of it this way. Do you grow your own food?”

“I did,” Syracuse rebutted.

“Okay, got me there. Did you make the house you lived in?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you don’t count.” Perry speared a round bit of ruddy bratwurst and inhaled that next. “Most people don’t do that kinda sh*t anymore, they doin’ different stuff to fill a need. Not everyone makes food, not everyone builds houses. Not everyone fights in the army.”

“So,” Tipton filled in the rest, “you specialized, basically.”

“That’s the word,” Perry nodded rhythmically. “I turned my power into a business.” She pronounced it bid-ness. “I had a li’l truck I sold out of for a while, and without the same overhead costs, I ended up making a lot of money. Don’t hurt none that it tastes good, too, ha ha ha.” Another piece of sausage disappeared into her gullet. “I ended straight up buyin’ cubes from other girls. Don’t work if they can make their own cash but most of ‘em can’t. Kaycee found me back in like… I wanna say ’01? Nah, the year before, and—”

“What the f*ck?” Syracuse boggled at her. “The year 2000?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Perry waved a meaty hand lazily. “I know. I been around a while.”

“How old are you?”

“They never teach you that’s a rude thing to ask?” Perry chided, though she smirked as she did it. “Thirty-one this year.”

This strained credibility. Neither of them had ever known a magical girl who made it past their early 20s.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” the rotund woman shrugged. “You’d think it wouldn’t be that surprising. Tons of women live to be plenty old.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Let me let you in on a secret,” Perry leaned in, resting her elbows on the warped wood. “It ain’t that hard, if you play your cards right. You get all these girls out here, somethin’ wrong with ‘em. Chip on their shoulder, think they hot sh*t, whatever. They don’t make it very long cuz they’re young and don’t know any better. They’re still human, but most humans don’t have the same ability to invite destruction on themselves.

“Now, I’m willin’ to bet there’s plenty of us older magical girls hangin’ around. You jus’ don’t hear about ‘em because they ain’t in your face, startin’ sh*t. ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’ ‘n all that. Only reason I’m here is cuz I worked out a deal with the community here. Kaycee—not our Kaycee, the one a couple Kaycees ago—agreed to keep me safe, gets me cubes when I need ‘em, and I’ve kept ‘em flush with whatever cash I don’t need to support my kids. It’s what they call reciprocal, and it’s worked enough that they keep the deal goin’.”

“Still,” Syracuse said doubtfully, “That seems… unusual.”

“Hell, that’s how humans have done for thousands of years now.”

“No, I mean… even the most successful girls get taken by the Cycles eventually.”

Perry shrugged again, leaning back. “Can’t be too sure, but I think plenty of girls… they don’t know what makes ‘em happy, not really. Not my fault everyone else is too dumb to figure it out, ha ha ha.” She scraped a little pulled pork off the plate and lifted it into her eager mouth. Happiness manifest, apparently. “And keep all that to yourself, ya hear? The girlies over in Kansas didn’t even know I exist until last year. I don’t want no freaks hearin’ about me and tryin’ to f*ck all this up.”

“Rest assured,” Tipton smiled, “that’s the last thing we want.”

“Smart girl,” she pointed her fork at pinky. “I bet you make it a few years at least. Not like that sh*thead on the other side of the state line,” she sneered. “Not sure if either of you heard yet, this chick from Overland Park. She’s tryin’ her best to find out she can’t just beat the sh*t out of everything. Sooner or later, she gon’ run into somethin’ that just won’t take it.”

Sooner, I would think.

Syracuse hissed angrily through her teeth, a sound she wasn’t used to making. It made her feel silly, turning red again.

“Ohh, there you are, ha ha ha. Been a while since I heard from you,” Perry got up and propped the front door open to reveal the Incubator. He stood there on the cracked pavement like any other stray might, hunting for scraps. “Figured you’d gotten bored o’ little ol’ me.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“Beats the hell outta me. I make it a point not to get involved in his shenanigans,” Perry stepped back over behind the counter.

I could say that your non-interference is a refreshing trait, if you wished.

“Damn, I get two wishes? Bet you’ve never offered that before.”

You might be surprised.

This banter was baffling. Syracuse was almost too confused to want to kill the thing anymore, so she put away the desire to summon her mattock. “You came through just to hang out? Is that it?”

Miss Harding’s assessment is not without merit. Kyubey did not move from in front of the door, licking a dainty paw. Her humility aside, there have been very few magical girls who have made it quite so long. I would put her at the upper ninety-nine point nine six percent of all humans who have signed a contract.

“You sure there ain’t a few more nines in there?”

Reciting the exact figures would almost certainly bore you.

“Yeah, you probably right. You mentioned Overland Park, though. Got any hot gossip for us?”

Not as such. She destroys my body whenever I try to talk with her directly, Kyubey deigned to step inside the Shack finally, the gritty fluorescent lights reflecting off his ruby eyes. I did feel it prudent to warn you: her movements have become increasingly erratic.

“The hell’s that mean?”

Miss Aaron has always had a predisposition towards extreme violence but was largely content with guarding her own allotted territory. Three weeks and five days ago that pattern changed, and I am unsure as to the exact cause. He flicked an ear, making that stupid little squeaking noise. Chances are significant that the Magic Force is involved; over the course of this calendar year, I have started receiving more numerous complaints about them from girls around the country. It’s more difficult to tell here because she began executing magical girls she previously worked alongside with, or at least tolerated. This culminated in the slaughter of the appointed leader of the region two nights ago.

“Yeah, Kaycee ‘n her friend mentioned somethin’ about that,” Perry mused openly. “Nasty piece of work.”

To get to the point of my visit, I urge you all caution. Without being able to speak to her I can offer nothing specific, but you must consider the possibility that she will cross the state line into Missouri and attack all of you as well.

“How thoughtful of you.”

The grief cube collection in this region has been drastically affected already. I am pleased with the continued operation of Kansas City in light of recent circ*mstances. In most other cases like this I might not worry, but Miss Aaron’s strength is quite formidable. I suggest you avoid provoking her at any cost.

“Of course. All in the name of your precious cubes,” Syracuse snorted. “With how worried you are about collecting as many as you can, I’d have figured my home would be worth protecting.”

He turned his alien head, a miniscule movement that brought the full weight of his lustrous gaze to bear. She suddenly felt uncomfortable locking eyes with him.

It was not.

“Hey now,” the pit master reached out with a prodigious hand, urging peace. “You’re both guests, let’s settle down. Kyubey, you did this girl dirty, leaving her to the wolves.”

I see no issue with my involvement. She knew, rationally, that he was not being smug about it, but Syracuse could not help hearing a little smugness in there anyway. Her wish was granted as requested. The property was never an inviolable space, it was acquired through legal means and your government has exercised… dubiously legal means to restrict it. I am sympathetic to the fact that her home is now inaccessible, but said fact comes about through no fault of mine.

“I bet if God Himself came down an’ told you what's what, you’d still find a way to twist His arm over it.”

I have tried. My goals and God’s do not quite align.

“UH uh,” Perry leaped up and waggled a sausage finger viciously. “None o’ that Muh-doh-kuh sh*t, you hear me? If I said it once I said it a hundred times, the good Lord don’t wear no dress. If you want to keep eating anything under this roof, cubes or otherwise, you’ll show some respect in my house.”

I do not "eat" grief cubes, Mrs. Harding, Kyubey protested. Their nature is actually quite complicated, harnessing their thermodynamic properties is an extensive process–

"Man, shut the hell up. You want somethin’ or nah?"

My species has not been required to eat food for a long time, he protested. It is seen as a crude way to obtain energy for our physical forms.

… but if you’re offering in sincerity, then I will hardly say no. It would be senseless to waste it.

“Ha ha ha, easy.” Perry tossed some pork chitterlings at him, landing wetly on the greasy floor. The Incubator, for all of its pretense, quickly descended on the slivers of intestine. “Never much cared for that stuff myself,” she sighed, turning back to her actual guests. “See, me and Kyubey got an understanding, or as close to one as you can get with ‘em.”

“Do tell,” Syracuse grumbled darkly.

“Ehh. It gets easier when you’ve spent enough time dealing with his sh*t. He don’t like it when you start readin’ between the lines, but if you’re smart, you can get away with it.” She leaned back against nothing, relaxing on the wooden bench. “He don’t think on the same level as us time wise.” She leaned in again conspiratorially, and the two younger girls found themselves leaning in too. “Most girls know he’s been around a long time, but they don’t really get it,” Perry breathed out slowly, gustily. “Kyubey’s idea of long-term planning ain’t years. It’s hundreds or thousands of years. To him, we’re here one second and gone the next.”

Syracuse and Tipton looked at each other uneasily, until the latter cleared her throat. “That makes it feel like there’s no point in trying to work against him, like he’s already got everything figured out.”

I do have everything figured out, Miss Reed, the Incubator said between messy bites. Most of you are not very good at listening or are simply unreasonable.

“Ah, ignore ‘em,” Perry said. “In a way he does have it all worked out, but his plans are kinda like the insides of a nice clock.” She was gesturing with her hands, miming inconclusively. “sh*t works, it does its job well, but all them individual parts are delicate. Damage one piece, the rest stops working too.”

I find that comparison lacking.

“Shut up ‘n eat yo food,” she barked without looking. “Often, he’s too stuck on plans he made years or decades ago and can’t deal with stuff that catches him off guard.”

“It can’t be that easy,” Syracuse said with a pinch of anger. “Feels like most girls wind up dead before they can really act on that, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.”

“Well, he doesn’t care for it when people start gettin’ too close.” Perry frowned, looking back out at the white cat. “You’ve almost got me a few times over the years, but you’ll have to get up pretty early to catch me in bed anymore, boy.”

I am older than your entire species, Kyubey replied as he licked at his paws gingerly. I don’t need to try, I can simply wait.

“Hey,” she pointed at him, a spatula manifesting in her hand. “I been nice enough to you, now go on. See if I don’t put some rat poison in it next time.”

Without another word, Kyubey stretched and leaped away, back out into the twilight.

His disappearance might not have been totally due to Perry tossing him out. Within a few seconds, a bewildered Kaycee stood in the doorway, her baseball cap askew. “Was that Kyubey I just saw out here?”

“Hey Kaycee. Yeah, he was looking to gloat I guess.”

Kaycee stared out into the evening for a second and blew a bubble that popped with a sharp snap before stepping in. “Well, I see you’re both settling in just fine. Thank you for putting them up Perry, I’m looking into a more permanent arrangement over in Westport.”

“Ah, don’t worry yourself. Me and the girlies were just doing some bonding, ha ha ha.” She actually cackled for a second, her entire body heaving with it. “Nah, they been just fine. They can stay, long as they need.”

“Excellent,” Kaycee clapped her hands together like an excited salesman. “I’d be more hands on, but I’m taking Liberty out tomorrow on a hunt at the Crown Center. I’ll try to introduce you both to everyone over the next few days. I know it’s been stressful, but you can relax for tonight at least, and we’ll figure out where to fit you both eventually. For now, just stay out of Kansas if you know what’s good for you.”

Another hour of idle chatting passed them by, and as the darkness of night swept over them they found themselves in bed. Separate beds, no f*ckin’ in the Shack, ha ha ha.

Syracuse stared up at the plain ceiling, faintly visible by the light of a little green LED on a water heater just outside the door. Tipton snored softly from the next bed over. For herself, she felt exhausted to her core and yet sleep did not come. The cot was fine despite the disclaimer, but the sounds were all wrong. There were no insects singing, no trees with their leaves gently rattling. Instead, she was spooked by the odd car passing through on the street outside, or else the far off sirens of a cop car or a fire truck screaming, screaming.

She blinked out a little moisture in her eyes, blurring the already fuzzy green she could see. First night in a new home was always the hardest, she reminded herself.

Aimee hitched in a dream, turning over and away in her sleep. At least she was nearby. That made it all a little bit better, the room felt cleaner for it.

Sofia tried closing her eyes again, hoping some rest would come to her. It did, in fits and spurts, and then all at once. She dreamed of trees bobbing in a soft wind, and a young girl wearing a ragged t-shirt.

Chapter 6: Lee’s Summit - "Swim to the Other Shore"

Chapter Text

Silent waters stretched on beneath the wraith fog. Its glass surface betrayed no hint of what lay below, but one look and Lee knew there be monsters here. Her hands were balled and stuffed into the deep pockets of her duster coat, a cut of dark oiled leather which kept her dry. It frustrated the moisture that tried to wet her tawny skin, and so it settled for her auburn hair instead.

Across those waters stretched a steel plank bridge, unchanging forever. Her boots thudded sharply on each plank as she ambled over them. Resting flatly on the surface, they shared in the stillness of the water. The sound of her passing brought no change to the world, no ripples, no rumbling or groaning of her weight on the bridge. There was only the rumble of her shoulders, the bounce of her wide-brimmed hat.

Her hazel eyes scanned back and forth, searching tirelessly for the foe she knew lay in the abyss below. It wanted her, and she it.

Without prompt she came to a halt, a last hollow thud which was absorbed quickly into the laden air. She joined the waters in their placidity. Her hardened gaze ceased their roaming, fixated on one spot. Just in front of her, a little to the left.

There was a dappling there, an irregularity. The water was stretched thin, strained, but not quite broken.

She blinked, and the world was torn asunder.

Something bestial was overhead now, its own gaze striking back at her as it rode the air. Golden scales lining a serpentine body flashed, reflecting a light that came from nowhere. The waters were suddenly angry and clamored to swallow her whole. She ignored the greedy lapping at her feet, the steel bridge which now swelled up and down in a squall. Rain tumbled down, kept out of her eyes by the grace of her hat.

The wraith-beast, some perverse fusion of fish and snake, slapped into the heaving mass of water with the fullness of its body. Its bronzed girth produced a wave that had no choice but to smash into her, and she was forced to grip the rail or be swept into the churning ocean.

Lee had indulged it enough, she decided. Before the last of the cool liquid had even poured down her legs and back into the sea, she turned on her heels to see the craven thing leaping straight for her, viperous fangs extending from thin lips that belonged on a monster trout. It sprayed poison at her, and where the liquid death touched her jacket and skin they melted away. The bones of her right arm were doused in rain, the flesh already working to magically knit itself back together. Not fast enough to use her gun properly.

Good thing she was a lefty. Blue steel appeared in her hand, and the palm of her tattered right fanned a hammer the size of her thumbs. Her magic eyes refused to break their concentration, she couldn’t have missed if her life depended on it.

Milky smoke belched out of the muzzle, the hand cannon exploding over and over with force that should have shattered her wrist. But the southpaw grip held firm as ragged, gaping holes materialized in the creature’s twisted body. Copper scales and pale flesh were blown apart, splinters of teeth and gobs of its eyes were cast back into the raging froth.

From start to finish it took about ten, fifteen seconds. Billie Hitchco*ck stood once more in plain clothes on the plank into the marina of Lake Jacomo. Choppy water played underfoot, catching the fair-weather sunlight.

Her easy-won grief cubes lay in a messy pile a few planks down, some of them spilling down and sinking under the surface of the reservoir. She hastened to collect the rest, grimacing for every one she lost. Shameful waste, but not much she could do about it.

She didn’t feel like diving in and causing a fuss, opting instead to manifest her soul gem and hold some of the spoils up to it. Soot receded quickly to reveal a soft earthy brown.

Satisfied, Billie plopped the rest of what she had gathered into a little cloth purse and cinched it shut, stuffing that into a tote sack. Safely tucked away, she marched down the walkway onto the marina proper. She adjusted effortlessly to the miniscule bobs of the lake water rocking the barge, enjoying the gentle tug and sway underfoot.

All manner of freshwater fish swirled in the waters beneath, but far and away the most common were invasive carp, their golden scales flashing at her menacingly. To her right, on the north side of the platform, was the dock with its navy of rusting row boats and pontoons.

She walked into the marina’s store, suffused with the moist, earthy smell of nightcrawler bait and a little fishiness on top. The whole place was comprised of only a few compacted aisles, one with all manner of tackle—hooks, bobbers, lures, jellies, fishing line in every weight, you name it—shirts and hats with odious fishermen jokes on them, the same on some dusty novelty bottle openers and license plate covers, and there were some heavily expired snacks at the front counter in case you forgot to bring your lunch with you like a retard.

Billie ignored all of this, honing in on a little basket on the counter. It contained a multitude of little ziplock baggies, each holding a sizable quantity of hard, tiny brown pellets. A crumpled cardboard sign said “Fish Food, 50 cents” in a lazy scrawl. She plucked two bags out and slapped a dollar on the counter, not waiting for the attendant to show up from wherever they were enjoying a nap.

Back outside, she made her way over to sit at her favorite corner of the platform, still under the awning of the store but on the far side away from the jetty where people parked their cars. The fish were there again, turning and tumbling over each other in their lazy, circuitous motions. A few crappie were there, she thought she spied a bluegill, but most were those huge carp. Back and forth their tails waved, gentle in the eddy of the sprawling lake.

Where sunlight struck the surface of the water, it brimmed with a pleasant green glow. Billie loved to watch the refractions, a splendid false aurora that tumbled down in little motes and beams to the obscuration of the lakebed, or else thrown back out by the shiny scales of the fish.

She opened one of the bags of fish food and sniffed it. A sharp, chummy scent filled her nostrils and stuck there. She threw a single pellet in, and the whirlpool constellation of their endless circling was invigorated for the merest second as some lucky carp got the first bite.

She threw a couple more in, watching their dance hasten and slow back down.

Strictly speaking she was in Blue Springs’ territory right now, but their towns bordered each other and intermixed, sharing roads and businesses in odd, unpredictable ways. They worked together often, assisting each other in their hunts and bounties. Billie doubted she would mind the intrusion. The wraiths had been plentiful enough to share anyway.

She didn’t really know what to make of them. The rest of the Kansas City girls didn’t bother thinking about it too often, or at least never talked about it with her. Kyubey, conversely, had taught her about it in terms of sin, of wrongdoing committed by humans against one another. Billie always felt that had to be an oversimplification, like when you explain something complex to a young child.

The cyclone of fish rippled, consuming the pellets with an increasing frenzy. As far as she could tell, no sins had been committed here, so why the great wraith? She watched the carp as the glint light scattered off of them and into her eyes. Their mouths gaped, wanting more. Feed us, feed us. We’re so hungry. Feed us, they pleaded, their bulging eyes begging for a sacrifice.

Maybe things had changed, and they were all filled with sin now. She couldn’t remember whether things had been like this before the Unveiling, but she didn’t think so.

Lee’s Summit had been with this group before all that went down, and she had swiftly taken over as their top earner. She didn’t care much for the muddied waters of leadership, but was more than fine with hunting. She got pointed in a direction and that’s where she shot her gun.

It worked well to keep her mind off things, but those times where they lost people it was harder. She missed the last Kaycee, and Gladstone, and Belton. Good friends taken away; desperate lives cut short.

She didn’t like it when she got in these moods, but it happened often enough anyway. Especially now, with the threat of Overland Park looming.

The first bag was empty now, and she sighed as she stuffed it into her shallow back pocket. Looking up she saw the first ring of rain clouds tumbling in from the northwest, out over the wet docks bobbing in the gentle swell. Her phone started buzzing, so she whipped it out like a gun. Message from Kaycee. Meeting soon? Sure. She made to stand and stretched, enjoying the gentle scraping and bumping of boats, a faint rumble of distant thunder.

It was about that time anyway, she supposed.

Billie took the second bag of smelly food and dumped it straight into the lake. The fish dance turned into a cyclone as the carp, in their frenzy to consume the offering, swam upwards so hard that they actually began to lift each other out of the water. Lake and foam splashed up, borne on their tails as they slapped at each other, many going unsatiated as they fought in their panic to return to the water.

Averting her eyes to avoid getting blinded by the spray, she spied the bloated carcass of a particularly fat carp which floated belly up near the closest pontoon. It was wrong in ways that defied her understanding. For being so greedy none of the fish seemed too keen to consume it, and she intentionally ignored it as she trundled to the walkway that took her back to her car.

She set course for her hometown, passing out of Blue Springs and into Lee’s Summit proper, the plentiful greenery of Lake Jacomo and the surrounding nature parks turning gradually into a collection of apartment complexes and an endless collection of strip malls. As the sky continued to darken, Colbern Road took her up to 291 North, and from there on down she eventually reached her destination.

A light mist started coming down as Lee parked her car on the shoulder of the paved road. A fenced graveyard, the Historic Cemetery, lay on the other side. 3rd Street had several entrances to drive in, but she never parked inside of it.

The engine spun down as she turned it off, cooling and ticking as she lightly shut the door behind her. She was unable to stop a small sigh, turning onto the eastmost road. Towards the graves. Her keys jangled, so she took them off her lanyard and stowed them in her tote bag. Couldn’t have any of that while here.

First rule: the living shall be quiet while in the house of the dead.

Tall and willowy, she walked in cruddy sneakers on the paved road, passing by headstones marked with all manner of mostly English names, a smattering of German, an odd sprinkling of Polish here and there. A few trees along the way rustled, their leaves full and overflowing with the falling moisture. It promised proper rain soon.

Lee glanced at a few names as she walked along. She could never remember them, European names that faded from memory as soon as she looked away. She passed by the heavily weathered McConroys, the Ashtons with their plastic flowers. She sometimes made a point of looking more closely at obelisks and the odd mausoleum, but never too close.

Second rule: the living should step not on the grass, except to visit the dead.

She did make one exception, a momentary diversion: approaching the east wall, she walked quietly to the grave of one Cole Younger and plinked an old copper penny on the headstone, joining dozens of others, festooning the mason relief of his name like rhinestones.

She moved on quickly. The northwestern corner held the prime object of her interest. A few minutes more as water began to gather in her dark hair, plodding along brought her to their graves.

Two markers. The usual names and years, and one addendum: “PAPA.” This one had passed a long while ago, so long that she couldn’t remember the last time she had brought a bouquet. It was a simple piece, a flat rectangle of concrete lacquered in black. Age had dulled the ache of missing him.

The other one not so. There were many graves in this yard which had affectations for wives and mothers. “MEMA,” “MEMAW,” ME-MA,” “MEEMA” occupied several stones the whole place over. For Lee specifically it was “MEMAH.” In all the hours she had spent here, she hadn’t seen another just like it.

This was where she knelt, muddying her knees. There were still flowers here from her last visit, brown and wilted. She collected but did not replace them. This ache was still fresh, sharp; her mom had been lost in the Unveiling, just before it ended. Just over a year now.

There was a hole in her stomach as she struggled for words and found none.

If she had any idea what she was getting into, there was a decent chance this was the last time she would see her parents. If she was lucky, she would be buried next to them.

Refusing to take up with her relatives, she had instead flitted from shelter to shelter, working odd jobs for change to buy food. Kaycee could have ignored all of it, demanding her continuing service and giving none in return. Instead, their leader had given her a new home and renewed purpose. There was meaning in her life again, even if strained.

Overland Park (or was she the new Kaycee Kay? Didn't matter, she supposed) threatened to destroy everything she had left. There could be no question of standing against her.

She stood up as anger flared bright and hot inside her. It wasn’t the feeling she wanted to depart on.

Third rule: the living should leave something pleasant behind for the dead.

Often, people left nothing except their thoughts, and many of those were far from pleasant. She had brought no more gifts for her dear parents, so she left them with her thoughts and dreams instead.

Sorry I couldn’t protect you mom. I’ll do better for my friends. I miss you. I love you. I hope to see you again soon.

She straightened her thin jacket, flecking the water off onto the headstones. The names of her parents darkened with moisture as she turned away and, lacking anywhere else to go, headed back to the city to meet with the rest of the crew.

Chapter 7: Raytown - "A Most Perfect Barrier Against Learning"

Chapter Text

While most would rather have avoided the extra attention, there were some odd magical girls who thrived off of the Unveiling in a way.

Some were openly identified as agents of the country they lived in, real-life superheroes that stirred up nationalist or cultural fervor here and there. This had already backfired in the case of Turkey: “Madame Bodrum” had gone missing after a scant month of life in the spotlight, until her butchered corpse appeared in front of the city’s municipal office a week later. The jury was out as to whether it was run of the mill violent crime or something else, and no one was keen to pry too hard.

More commonly, in (somewhat) stable cities around the globe there were girls who had become something of a sensation: the United States and various places around the globe boasted several, such as Dallas or the everpresent Calgary: the former hosted rallies across her home state, enticing the common folk to draw together and support one another. The latter worked–to all appearances–as a functionary for the government and what was left of MagNet. Alternatively, in Korea there were a staggering number of 마법 같은 아이돌, literally “magical idols” cropping up in Seoul and Busan to replenish their collapsed entertainment industry.

And so on.

The smaller places of the world had their own celebrities, too. Raytown, Missouri had the “First and Only Magical Girl ,” painted in a gentle but unforgettable red on a sign for a gentlemen's club smack dab on the intersection of Noland Road and 350. A dingy place, there was less crime than elsewhere in Raytown but it was still seedy as all get out, covered with the wreckage of old businesses in dusty strip malls that most people passed by on their way to parts more civilized.

It was here that Patti Friedman spent her time, holed up with a stage and booth all to herself. Humble and yet illustrious, there was hardly enough room to breathe between the gaudy blue curtains, a handful of ornate cloth chairs, a miniscule bar propped in the corner. Her bartender Jack was also the only bouncer, not that she really needed one. Jack just made it feel more real.

There were no other girls here to contend with her in this space; who on Earth could compete with her? Nevermind that she owned the outlet herself and would never allow them to try.

This was her palace, a temple where her followers worshiped her body and soul. She spent hours offering herself up to them, and they threw love and money and themselves at her in return. For hours Patti would undulate, gyrate, rotate, she engaged in every peculiarity of motion afforded to her by the laws of physics, and some which were not. Hoots and hollers and catcalls were her language.

It was exquisitely base and sensuous: she loved the smell of cigar smoke in her nose and tickling her eyes, licentious hands that grasped for a wisp of her silver hair to kiss, dolorous faces wanting to forget their troubles.

Occasionally these rituals were interrupted, usually by a protest of some sort. She had closed up early a few times when a mob of the religious or the feminist or whatever else had come by, demanding she censor herself or be censored by the righteous. Whenever that happened she simply left out the backdoor to visit with someone, usually Perry, and let the crowd bore itself. They always got bored with their self-validation quickly enough.

Other times, she received far more interesting visits. Today, it was a younger girl dressed in an extravagant red dress, hair done up and dyed a violent pink. She commanded little presence and yet, somehow, Raytown felt that the show must stop for her. “Five minute break,” she called out to Jack, who hopped the bar counter to start shooing the riff raff out. Jeering disappointment rang out from the cluster, quickly silenced as they were shunted back out into a more puritan world.

The girl in red eyed her naked body up and down. Patti couldn’t tell if the expression was curious or hungry. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I felt like it,” the magical show girl sat down at the edge of the stage, resting her calves and thighs. Her bare legs dangled for a second until she stretched to get the kinks out, feet and toes flexing. “I don’t get a lot of magical girls visiting,” she grunted softly through perfect teeth.

“I can imagine why. Kind of a weird place.”

“Is it? I can think of weirder,” Raytown leaned back on her hands. “I don’t recognize you, so you’re probably one of the Kansas girls.”

“Yep. Overland Park.”

“Ohh,” Raytown nodded slowly. “So you’re the one everyone’s talking about. Offed Kaycee Kay recently, didn’t you?” She started swinging her legs back and forth in the air, making her body sway slightly.

“You don’t look too bothered by that.”

“I didn’t know her all that well,” Raytown said truthfully. “I never much cared for all that stuff about territory. Too serious.”

Overland Park bobbed her head up and down, all curt-like. “Nice to hear. I don’t like it when people get in my sh*t.”

“Not sure of anyone who does. That being said, what brings you here?”

“I dunno,” Overland Park shrugged. “Don’t hear much about you. Everyone else in Kansas City got their fingers in each other’s business, sounds like, but you just… chill here?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do with my time?” Raytown lay back on the stage, relaxing more thoroughly. “When Kaycee needs help, I help like all the rest. Otherwise, my time is my own. I like it here. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Huh. Kinda thought Kaycee was the one making you do this.”

Raytown threw back her head, a full-throated laugh like bells filling the cozy space. “Kaycee wouldn’t step foot in here in a million years,” she said through crinkles around her eyes. “I call her a prude all the time. No idea if that’s true, I just enjoy seeing her get worked up about it.”

But Overland Park wasn’t smiling. There was nothing but coldness in her eyes, and something strange lurked just behind her face. “What was your wish?”

What a weird girl. Raytown kept her smile on, hoping maybe she could disarm her. “Well,” she hopped down, a pert little jiggle that shook her whole body, “there’s a reason I work here.” She took a chance and extended her right hand for Overland Park to take it. Confusion trickled slowly into her face–a small victory. “When Kyubey came to me, there was really only one thing I wanted.” Overland Park took her hand, curiosity replacing coldness.

“I wished with all my heart to be a slu*t.” She pulled on her guest’s hand as if to draw the girl close but approached instead, betraying the soft skill of her locomotion. Pale arms drifted to shoulders draped in red, the fabric parted by gracile fingers which sought the dark flesh underneath. “I wished to be a crucible, in whom the desire of men and women may be turned into pleasure.” Her living heart pulsed in her chest, and the smooth skin which covered it thudded in concert nigh imperceptibly, a quivering that accentuated ever so slightly the excited gooseflesh of her perfect neck and breasts.

“I told him I wanted to be a whor*,” she hissed into the girl’s ear. She draped herself on Overland Park, gentle but firm as she exalted in the wiles of her own physicality. No space existed between them now. “Let me be for taking, in body and soul.” They were united now, red and white with no terminus between.

There was visible excitement in the Kansas girl’s face now, a bright focus that barely worked to conceal some animal viciousness underneath. “Really? That’s what you said to him?”

“No,” Raytown smirked as she pulled limply away, hopping back to sit on the stage; Patti watched Overland Park watching the curves of her body as she did. “That’s just what I tell the lonely perverts who hire me for private shows.” Her visitor’s face fell a bit, but hey, that’s just showbiz, kid. “Might as well give them what they pay for, they love to hear that kind of thing.”

Her pink hair bobbed with a quirk of her head. “Well, what’d you really wish for then?”

“I wanted someone to love me.”

“Who?"

“Anyone.”

“... Yeah? Did it work?”

“I don’t know,” Raytown sighed, a mote of sadness in it. “Kyubey says it did, but I never noticed anything different.” She gestured loosely around her. “Maybe this is just what love is?” Overland Park had nothing to say to that. “It’s my own fault, really, I was too vague. He loves to hide in ambiguity.” Her smile had hidden away, so she found it again. “What about you, then?”

Overland Park sat down in one of the cloth chairs normally reserved for a more lustful audience. “I’m not sure you’ll want to hear it.”

“I’m in no state to judge,” she leaned back once more, unconcerned and totally exposed. The practiced lean of her body could have been openness or promiscuity, or both.

“I’m not sure I wanna explain.”

“Well,” Patti shrugged, “I’m here either way.”

The girl in red co*cked her head again and stared at her. The vicious intensity back in full.

After a full minute of consideration, she began plainly: “I got beat a lot.”

Wisely, her host said nothing.

“Everyone was beating on me. My dad, my ma, my brother, my sisters. People in my family. People at school. All of them. Everyone. They were all bigger than me or stronger than me, and I just couldn’t stop ‘em.

“I got tired of it. When Kyubey got to me, I was angry. I was angry a lot, and that was the angriest I ever was, when he found me.

“So I wished they would all die.”

Raytown breathed, in and out, the swell of her bare body low and calm. “Did it come true?”

“I made it come true.”

Patti suppressed a shiver low in the base of her spine. “You still seem angry.”

Something in the air snapped, and Overland Park was… not normal, but more so. More like when she came in. “Yeah, well. I don’t need to take it anymore. Promised myself I wouldn’t let that happen anymore.”

“You get a lot of people trying to mess with you still?”

“Yeah. I don’t take no sh*t though,” she crossed her arms, the frills of her bright dress bouncing in the half light. “Your boss keeps trying, I’m gonna make her regret it.”

“Granted,” Raytown felt a little knot in her stomach tightening, “I haven’t been super involved in the group for a while, but I think Kaycee’s got a little too much on her plate already. As far as I recall, she’s never been too interested in expanding territory, or anything like that.”

“That’s what MGs do though. I been dealing with stupid hoes from all over trying to get in my f*cking business.”

“Well, it’s not just us anymore,” Raytown lolled her head back. “I guess the military’s getting involved more often. Had a, ah, ‘recruiter’ come in last week threatening me with jail time for not signing up for the Magic Force. And just the other day, one of the girls over by Columbia got forced off her land by them.”

A couple spots of color were forming on Overland Park’s cheeks, red to match her dress. Was it hotter in here? “They’d be dead if they tried that with me.”

“Sounds like it." Something persuaded her to take a risk. "People are still talking about Wichita, y’know? What happened with that?”

Her guest was visibly embarrassed at the question. “That was… it got away from me. The angrier I am the stronger I get, but then I get too angry, like when I made my wish. Things got out of hand. I don’t even remember most of it, honestly.”

“Lenexa was pretty vague on the details, sure, but I–”

“You were talkin’ with Lenexa?”

Oh, f*ck. Mentioning that was probably not the best idea. The heat of Overland Park’s gaze felt like a laser on her face. “Not me, personally.” Deflecting would probably be a bad idea too. Better be honest. “After last year, she sometimes keeps in contact with Kaycee–”

“I knew it, that f*ckin’ c*nt! sh*t!” She was up and out of the chair now, pacing like a raging horse in its stall, ready to stampede down the derby track. Raytown hoped her heart wasn’t beating too loud. “I knew she was pulling some sh*t, god DAMN it.” It was actually, physically getting hotter in the building, the claustrophobic space rapidly turning into an oven. “I ain’t gonna let them f*ck me, no way no how. God DAMN that lying whor*, god DAMMIT, DAMMIT, DAMMIT –”

Faster than she could blink, the Kansan tore up and out through the roof of Raytown’s strip club. A sprinkle of tattered debris and fresh rain came in, falling on top of a now empty chair.

Good lord, that kid needed some counseling.

Patti took in a huge breath and let it out, closing her eyes. She should probably give Kaycee a heads up. Needed to find her phone first, though. One of the few drawbacks of her perpetual nakedness was a lack of ready communication. “Jack, I’m gonna need a few more minutes.”

Chapter 8: Chillicothe - "Communication Implies Sound"

Chapter Text

“Nah, Bob. It’s in a small nook waaay up in the ceiling. Too high for a ladder. They have those extendable poles with like the suction cups on ‘em, for grip. I checked Home Depot and they had some but they’re still super expensive. Can’t imagine why, I doubt the demand for ‘em is very high. Whiskey Delta Zero Juliett India, go ahead.”

“Yeah, that’s a toughie John. If it’s just the one bulb, I might recommend just leaving it and waiting until more go out, then you could probably call a contractor to fix it. You don’t want to, uh, mess with that kind of stuff if it’s too high up. Good way to break a limb. Kilo Delta Seven Golf Oscar, over.”

“Normally I’d agree with you, but it’s kinda distracting during service. The older folks ‘specially have been complaining a lot about it. Now I’m thinking on it though, I can probably put a plunger on a pole and call it good. I’ll let you know how it goes. Sorry to hog the air with this nonsense, bud. How’s the Mrs? Whiskey Delta Zero Juliett India, go ahead.”

Sunken eyes stared into gray steel, wandered over the knobs and meter plates of the blocky transceiver. Chillicothe had been listening to these guys for years.

“Oh, don’t worry about it John. She’s doing just fine, thanks for asking. Still a little rough after last year but picking up steam. The kids and grandkids visited last week and she perked right up, haven’t seen her that peppy in a while. How about you, any luck on your end? Kilo Delta Seven Golf Oscar over.”

For how much she had talked to them, which was literally not at all, she knew an astonishing amount about John and Bob, callsigns WD0JI and KD7GO respectively.

“Oh, you know how it is. The dating scene ain’t too good for guys our age. There’s a nice lady at work but I don’t think she’s interested, go ahead.”

She knew things like the fact that John had gone through a particularly violent divorce a couple years before the Unveiling. Bob almost did too, after he cheated on that beloved wife of his.

“That’s a shame to hear, she’s missing out. Lady Luck’ll pay you a visit soon, I’ve got a feeling. We’re praying for you over here, over.”

She couldn’t remember when she had first tuned into their favorite wavelength, but she had been pretty young. These two gentlemen hailed from hundreds of miles away from each other: John a local right out of Holden here in Missouri, and Bob from up over in bumf*ck Montana.

They used shortwave to talk on a biweekly basis. Carved out an hour or so on Saturday afternoons just to ragchew. She honestly wasn’t sure why she was still listening after so long. Just ingrained at this point, she guessed.

Listening to these conversations on her grandfather’s old HAM had gotten her interested in shortwave radio. At just twelve she had obtained her amateur license and got a wallmap going, calling CQ on high frequency whenever the air wasn’t quite so busy.

A year later she had contracted. Six months after that, the Unveiling occurred.

She had been pretty lucky: far from disrupting her hobby, it was a unique opportunity to use her skills for something good. During the DuPage administration, more conventional methods of communication were completely f*cked. Barely any phone, absolutely no internet unless you were unfortunate enough to live in the city.

Didn’t stop the radio though, and her family had a gas generator. She had been able to maintain some contact with various radio buddies, though the rural areas suffered from lots of power outages and the cities were chaotic.

About a month into all that, when she was thumbing through various HF bands, she had stumbled on a CQ from another magical girl. KW9TH, Terre Haute, just a hop skip and a jump over in Indiana.

From this, she birthed the idea of the Shortwave Magical Network.

Not as secure as MagNet had been obviously, but it was a hell of a lot more reliable in a pinch. She figured that if another emergency like the Unveiling occurred–Madoka forbid–this would be an effective way to keep girls in contact. The confusion that stemmed from the loss of communication had really messed with people in ways they were still feeling all this time later.

Like in St. Louis.

But it looked like the boys were finishing up. “... as always, nice chatting with you John. Seventy-three, this is Kilo Delta Seven Golf Oscar signing off.”

“Same to you bud. Seventy-three, seventy-three. Whiskey Delta Zero Juliett India going off air, the channel is now open for general use.”

Then the transceiver was silent.

Just as well, it was getting close to time for the net.

Without delay, she adjusted the frequency up a couple megahertz to the proper channel. She listened for a few minutes just in case anyone was already using the frequency, but no voices floated out of her radio. That was good; last week she had to chew out some assholes from Vermont who didn’t know when to pack up. No etiquette at all.

Just in case, Chillicothe decided to test the waters. Clearing her throat, she moved the microphone closer to her cracking lips. She keyed in, slowly and clearly: “CQ CQ CQ MG. Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo, this is KE0DNB,” she pronounced each letter fully and distinctly. “KE0DNB calling CQ on 40 meters. Hello CQ CQ CQ MG this is KE0DNB, standing by for a call.”

She waited five minutes, tapping patiently at the transceiver key. Breathing deeply, she looked up at the wallmap above her station. The whole world was spread out on thick paper, with pins stuck in all over. The USA was riddled with them of course, but Europe had a healthy smattering too. China was decent, but the rest of Asia and South America were in a pitiful state. Of Africa, she had only two, and both were blue.

After the Unveiling she had come up with a color system: red were just chance encounters, unchanged from before the world had turned upside down. Green were closer friends that she had managed to reestablish contact with: they were far less numerous than she would have hoped. Blue were friends she had yet to talk with again. She was slowly starting to hate the color blue more and more.

The wallmap also had a few yellow pins, slightly larger than the rest. There was one in Canada near Ontario, one in London, one in Japan, one in a town called Christiansburg in Virginia, and one of course for Terre Haute. Over the last year, this was how far she had spread the Shortwave Magical Network.

Chillicothe hoped one day to exhaust her supply of yellow pins. Wasn’t holding her breath though.

She keyed the mic again. “CQ MG, CQ MG. Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo monitoring. CQ MG, CQ MG.”

A couple breaths later, her heart fluttered as the speakers flared with the voice of another girl.

“Uh, hey there.”

Excitement evaporated instantly. God damn it, probably some idiot messing with a kit they found at a Goodwill… but the girl sounded very clear in her speakers, which was unlikely for any random monkey with a transceiver. Maybe she knew what she was doing. Chillicothe keyed back in: “Please identify yourself. Your signal is strong but we have a net scheduled soon, go ahead.”

“Oh, uh, sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.” The stranger cleared her throat. “Ah, sh*t. What was my callsign? Gonna be honest, I don’t really remember.” A few seconds went by. “Over.”

Chillicothe had both elbows on the desk, fists grabbing her tangled hair and tugging. The FCC had more important things on its plate than monitoring every single HF band, but this girl was still asking to get her f*cking door kicked down by the feds.

“... Okay,” she keyed back in after composing herself. “For the record, this is Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo, broadcasting from Chillicothe in Missouri. Just call me Chillicothe. Remember that we have a net starting very soon, go ahead.”

“Oh, wow, someone else from the area. Yeah, I heard your call Chillicothe. You can call me Boonville. Over.”

Chillicothe quirked one gray eye open. Odds were rising that this wasn’t just some brainless random wandering in. “Reading you loud and clear, Boonville. That’s pretty close, no wonder your signal’s good. You’re welcome to join the round table if you can answer my question, over.”

“I’m sure I can guess what that might be. From what I’ve been hearing, MG isn’t as subtle as it used to be. Go ahead though.”

Her heart was racing again, just a little bit. “First: who contracted you? Go ahead.”

A few seconds went by. “Oh, come on. You cribbed that from MagNet. Look, the cat’s out of the bag already, isn’t it? I can tell you what color my gem is if it’ll make you feel better. Over.”

Feeling herself deflate in real time, Chillicothe punched the mic. “That won’t be necessary. Welcome to the Shortwave Magical Network, Boonville. I’ll put a pin in for you.”

“Ah, well,” the other girl cut in, clearing her throat again (Chillicothe immediately started fuming at the impropriety). “Don’t worry about that. I don’t actually live in Boonville anymore. Oh, sorry, I didn’t wait for you to say ‘over,’ did I? Over.”

“No, you didn’t. It’s fine,” it really wasn’t, but whatever. “If I can ask, where do you live now? Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo, go ahead.”

“That’s kind of a long story, Chillicothe. I’ve been busy with a lot of stuff, and judging from what I’ve heard I’m pretty far out of the loop. Could I bother you to give me the low down? Back to you.”

What?? The hell kind of rock was this girl living under? “Uhm. I’m not really sure where to begin. How much do you know already? Over.”

“I know who the President is and that sh*t went sideways for a little while, but I was pretty preoccupied while all that was happening. Safe to assume I know close to nothing about what’s happened since then.” A few seconds pause. “Over.”

“Must have been pretty involved, Boonville.”

“You can say that again.”

“Please don’t interrupt while the mic is hot.” Chillicothe ignored the obligatory ‘oh sh*t, sorry, jeez,’ and thought for a second. “Well, you’re from around here: St. Louis is pretty much gone.” She paused for an interruption, but got none. “That was kind of where it all started last year. I don’t know how you managed to avoid hearing about this, but at some point the city was attacked by those weirdos from Chicago, the girls that called themselves an Empire. Denver was asking for people to help defend, but the next thing we heard, St. Louis was swallowed up in a miasma. The girls in KC and Columbia thought it was an archon at first, but they were never able to find one. It was just… teeming with wraiths. Too many for them to get under control in a decent amount of time.

“The normies had no idea what was going on, it was reported as a city-wide blackout. Soon after that was the DuPage administration, and we got outed. This all tracking so far? Over.”

“Damn. So the Cardinals are gone? That’s some sh*t. I knew about the presidency, at least vaguely. Go on.”

“That’s the gist of it, really. St. Louis got the worst of it so far. The rest of the world is trying to recover as best as it can, although it’s a lot more difficult for us now that the government knows what’s going on. I’m less clear on other places, but after the President created the Magical Force we’ve all been trying to avoid interaction with that as much as possible. Some ugly talk about forced conscription.

“For us, St. Louis is basically a wasteland. Some people still live there, but no one else really knows how. If it weren’t for the ‘Magical Catastrophe,’ I think the rest of us across the state could have gotten it under control, especially if anyone from Little Rock or OKC were willing to help. But then those girls from Chicago f*cked everything up. And then DuPage f*cked everything up even harder.” She swallowed her spit, keeping the microphone tapped on. “Everything was an absolute mess for like four months. I got off pretty lucky up here, but the city got hit bad. Every city did. We thought it was the end of the world.” She thought for a few seconds, but neglected to continue. “Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo over,” she rushed out.

“Huh.” There was a brief cut of static over the speakers, making Chillicothe wince. “So the secret really is out, then. I’m sure the Incubator is pleased as punch about that. But things got better, yeah? Over.”

“They’re stabilizing, but it’s a mixed bag. Some places are doing okay now, but I hear plenty of others like São Paulo are hanging by a thread. Columbia has been trying to fill in St. Louis’s shoes, but it’s complicated,” she bit her lip. Should she really be talking about this on open air?

Ah, f*ck it. There were no secrets anymore. “Columbia just doesn’t have the support to handle a lot of girls. The city’s growing really quickly with refugees from the east side of the state, but that comes with problems of its own. There’s more wraiths than usual for the population. I think there’s a lot of growing pains happening. And, there’s fierce competition for the area: St. Louis left a power vacuum in the region, and there’s a lot of desperate girls out there right now looking for a place to carve out for themselves. Back to you.”

“Where’s Kaycee in all this?”

Chillicothe decided to ignore the hanging breach in etiquette. This conversation was already a mess, and if the feds were listening they were f*cked regardless of adherence to protocol. “Depends which one you mean. If you were familiar with her before you were off doing… whatever, then she’s dead. The new Kaycee has been running a very tight ship, sends away girls that are weak or temperamental. Go ahead.”

The radio crackled briefly and a new voice cut in. “Kilo Whiskey Niner Tango Hotel. Hate to cut in, but it’s time for the net. New friend, Chillicothe? Over.”

Inhaling with some relief, she smiled again. “Reading you loud and clear Terre Haute. Yeah, this is Boonville. I’m not sure how, but she needed some catching up on the last year, go ahead and introduce yourself Boonville.”

The transceiver stayed silent. Puzzled, they waited a few minutes, but their strange guest was not forthcoming. “Well, that’s odd. I guess she had something come up, maybe she’ll be back later. Just a warning, she’s rusty on the radio. Very rusty. Either way, good to hear from you. How’re things looking in the Crossroads of America? Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo, back to you.”

“Same ol’, same ol’. Running out of cubes, so I passed through Columbus to Cincinnati this week to see how they’re holding up. Got ran out of each for my trouble. They all seemed rattled about some magical girl who came through a couple days before, go ahead.”

“What was so special about her? Terminatrix?... Clownmuffle? Over.”

The radio garbled with something that sounded awfully like laughter. “I don’t think so. Doesn’t match any descriptions up on MagNet, all I got on this one was a blurry picture: white robe, a scythe. Apparently has some sort of sedative effect on people nearby. Someone insisted on calling her a Witch. Over.”

Dead air greeted Terre Haute. “Uh, Chillicothe? This is Kilo Whiskey Niner Tango Hotel, come back girl. We’ve got the net starting here. Over.”

But Chillicothe was nowhere near her transceiver. The instant she heard “scythe,” she had instead launched herself out of the sound room and was furiously punching numbers into her phone.

Columbia and Kaycee needed to know that Momo was back.

Chapter 9: Grandview - "If I Claim to be a Wise Man"

Chapter Text

Kailey Walsh turned the key and let loose a fluid string of curses as the car offered nothing more than a click.

Useless piece of rusted sh*t.

Giving it another couple twists, she knew already it would be pointless. She yanked the key with its fuzzy red Chiefs lanyard out of the ignition and tossed it onto the passenger’s seat. She didn’t know what the f*ck was going on with this thing. Mechanic told her it was a problem with the car’s security system. Common issue with these older models, it would cost more than the car’s worth to fix.

No sense getting upset over it, her languid thoughts insisted. Instead, she pried her box of ciggies out of the map pocket and lit one up with smooth, practiced motions that would have put one of the riverboat casino whor*s to shame.

This, too, was pointless; ever since contracting, the nicotine couldn’t really do much for her. Metabolism was too fast for it to make much of a dent… unless she tried really f*cking hard. Like, really hard, like sucking down a few sticks in as many seconds. Some of the other girls she talked to complained similarly about booze or pot, having to spend stupid amounts of money on their vices in order to feel them like usual. Would have been nice if she hadn’t developed this habit before becoming an MG, but no sense crying over spilled Jim Beam.

Kailey took the whole thing down in a few long, sustained drags, relishing in the taste of tar and smoke and ash that grew uncomfortably hot in her mouth and throat, sticking to her tongue and the roof of her mouth. It didn’t really help, but she felt like it did, and that was good enough really.

She expelled all of that sweet nastiness, a stream of pale blue smoke jetting out of her mouth and nose that coated the interior of the 97 Buick LeSabre. Just another layer on top, a little more yellow on that cracking plastic if you please. She leaned her head back on the rest, letting her wild black hair splay out into the back of the tarnished mess that was her bread and butter.

Whatever. She let a few minutes pass like this, soaking in the muffled silence of the overheated interior. She could have forced her windows down to let some of the air out, but she didn’t feel like it. The cigarette was exhausted by now, but rather than disposing of it she just held onto it limply, a few skeleton wisps clinging to the smoldering butt between her fingers.

For a golden moment, it was just her and the stuffy, pregnant air. Tranquility manifest, here inside of her beater.

She could almost feel her Soul Gem clearing up a tiny bit.

As if by some unseen signal, Kailey finally put the butt out on the armrest and flicked its carcass into the back, where it landed on top of approximately fourteen million others just like it. She prayed privately that the car would start this time, lest she endure yet another repetition of this nonsense. Inserting the plain steel key into the ignition, she cranked that sh*t like it owed her money and the rent was due.

The engine roared, the lights flickered unevenly. The shoddy analog radio shattered the silence.

”--101.1 THE FOX, THIS IS CHUCK NASTY THE NASTY MAN–”

God dammit, she had left it on high again. Always forgot to turn it down when she got home. Chuck Nasty howled over the speakers, literally howled like a sh*tty 70s B movie werewolf. She kinda hated this motherf*cker, had no idea who found his casual sex pervert day drinker schtick endearing.

It was one of her biggest regrets that he hadn’t died during the Unveiling. Chuck Nasty played decent music most of the time, but she had no patience for it today, toggling the radio immediately to 94.9. Mercifully, she was greeted with actual music and no hackneyed two bit radio announcer.

Plus, the car was on. Time to get going, she had sh*t to do. Put it in reverse, swivel smoothly out of her expensive parking spot at her overpriced apartment, and slap the stick into drive to get out onto the road. That's it, smooth as warm butter.

It was starting to rain outside, but she flicked the window switches to open all her windows so all the milky air swirled out, mixing with the wind that gushed in to replace it. Disco emitted from her decaying speakers, the sound a little fuzzy as always. She knocked her knee into the door to fix it, without success. Despite the roughness, her ears picked up “If I Can’t Have You” nigh instantly as Yvonne Elliman’s empyrean voice floated into her head and teased the last of the nicotine fumes out of her ear canals.

Don't know why I'm surviving every lonely day

Screaming down the twisting and turning suburban offshoots.

when there's got to be no chance for me.

God, she had to go all the way to Kearney .

What a f*cking drag, she hated going to the Northland. North 71 sucked and 435 wasn’t much better. Going through the city sucked, going over the smelly ass river sucked. The Northland wasn’t much to look at either, all the trees were clustered too tightly to the road. No nice views. Rolling the windows back up, she grimaced as she swerved between patiently waiting cars and oncoming traffic, her car f*cking screaming at her to slow down as she took the onramp onto 49 to start the hour-long peregrination proper.

Well, normally it was an hour. Kailey could probably cut that down to half, even less depending on traffic.

Her powers were fairly simple, not especially powerful, but she felt like she put them to good use: the midnight blue of her enchantment suffused her Buick, rendering it effectively invisible. Neither eyes nor sensors of any sort could detect it, or anything inside–it even befuddled magical girls, had gotten a few of them just by rolling up on the f*ckers.

It was a dangerous game, cops and other drivers couldn’t see her and she had carte blanche on the road. No delays in traffic if she could get to the shoulder, no getting pulled over. Some rudimentary experimentation had shown that wouldn’t hold up if she, say, totaled her f*cking car or hit some hapless pedestrian. She still had to be careful. This thought passed through her head as she ended up weaving between cars and trucks at 90, pushing 100.

This was actually her third car. She hadn’t actually wrecked one yet, she just ended up driving them into the ground because she pushed them so hard. Kaycee so far had wound up buying her another beater each time.

The song faded out and, she uttered a silent thank you, no ads broke the serenity as the station moved right on to Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” She bobbed her head variously with and against the rumbling of the car, awash in the easy strokes of the guitar and the trilling dance of the piano. Bobby talked to her about the summer and getting laid by some sassy chick. Yeah, whatever you say Bobby. She dragged over the rumble strip near the median and spooked herself with machine gun vibrations.

Her thoughts vibrated inside her head, too. She was kind of rushing for this job, and while Kaycee had made the details clear, she hadn’t made it sound time sensitive. No, Kailey could relax and cruise at roughly five miles over instead of 30. Marginally less stupid use of her powers today, thank you very much. She really hated getting ash on her dress whenever she had to jerk the wheel around.

She gave a little flick of her head, looking out to her left. The sun, a mass of firey red still faintly visible through the rainclouds, was just now beginning its descent towards the horizon. It would be covered by trees long before it actually sank to the ground, which gave her a mild twinge of disappointment. She loved the sunset, when she got a chance to see it.

Unfortunately, most of this area was a sort of loosely tamed forest. The second and third story buildings of suburban living sprawled out in patches which only pretended to clear the land, leaving most of it an infuriating pseudo-savannah that frustrated most attempts to get a glimpse over the next hill. You had to be lucky: certain highways rolled over peaks and valleys and you could get bare glimpses, little fragments of the sun turning orange and wine-red as it crawled under the dirt and soil.

How Kailey yearned for Kansas.

Hundreds of cars swept around and behind her, heedless as she shot up towards the city center. Every second she actually had to pay attention to the traffic around her was another second out of the zone, and every second out of the zone meant the trip was just a little worse. She didn’t have this problem out on the long, infinite stretches of highway out west, where she could just cruise endlessly in the right lane at a cool seventy.

Considering she didn’t even like driving all that much, it was something she thought about a startling amount. This was almost always stressful, though that was usually her own fault. Driving in the city especially was like having bamboo shoved under her fingertips. During rush hour? f*ckin’ forget it, dude. But she had taken a scant few trips out to the prairie, out to the Flint Hills where trees were sparse and all you had to look at was endless plots of farmland. Corn and cows. Cows and corn.

Kailey had taken 35 like that once, one day when Kaycee had asked her to take some poor girl across the state border. Got up at like… noon. Picked up the little chick, some snot nose who had stumbled in from out east somewhere. Skipped past Ottawa all the way to Emporia. Dropped off the brat, got some gas in her car (at that time some Kia model she burned out in record time), ate a burger at some sh*t shack called Spangles. Milled around town looking at all the old buildings cuz she didn’t quite feel like going home yet.

All the while the sun had dipped down low, a seraph kissing the earth and setting the sky ablaze as its radiance reached out at her from down the road.

Kailey couldn’t have told anyone why it caught her attention like that, but despite not being a SP.ED and knowing you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun, she found herself watching it sink down for like 10 minutes. She felt its heat licking at her cheeks, the smell of it rising from the old and cracked brickwork which surrounded her. Watched it transform from an orb into a half-circle into a waning crescent, a sliver.

And then it was gone, so that shadows rose all around her and made the world cold.

God damn.

So Kailey had gone back out on her next day off. Waited until like an hour before sunset, the time of which she had gone through the extravagant effort of looking up; it was an honor she did not usually bestow to most pieces of information. Took off on the same route and managed to time it just so that she was cresting over the first mound of the Flint Hills as the sun became something she could look at without instantly going blind, a mauve or violet shard which looked down at her from almost a hundred million miles away. She parked the car on the shoulder of the highway, getting out so she could drink its vermilion light.

Great, pillowy mountains festooned the sky and caught the fading sunshine as it scattered through the atmosphere. Every cavity, fold, and twist in those clouds emanated their own distinct color: pinks and oranges and reds shone bright on their own or blended together with infinite variation. An assortment she had had little cause to think about through her life was arrayed here, the awesome force of their brilliant hues striking something deep inside her.

She sat down on the asphalt emitting its absorbed heat from the day, and soaked in the air aglow.

The polite beep of a car horn next to her brought her back to the present. Yeah, she sighed, that’d all be nice to see again. Maybe in a couple weeks if Kaycee didn’t need anything. But she often did.

It was always something around here.

Forty-five minutes later–not a bad time for the distance–saw Kailey pulling into the extended lot of a McDonald’s just off the highway. She pulled her phone out and checked the last message from Kaycee: mousey girl, brown hair, small glasses, drab baggy clothes, near the dumpster at the back. Casting her eyes around she saw the dumpster in question, and then the person. Kailey wondered how long she’d been slouching there in the rain. A pitiful specimen if she’d ever seen one.

Just let me know if you wanna go
To that home out on the range
They gotta lotta nice girls

ZZ Top seemed to think the newcomer was alright.

Have mercy.

Oop, wait. There was a new message, sent while she was driving. She never looked at her phone while on the road. Arrive Alive, kids.

“ Meeting at the usual place, starts at 8. Come ASAP. ”

Well, “as soon as possible” was either going to be half an hour or two hours depending on this chick.

... And I hear it's tight most every night
But now I might be mistaken.

She turned the radio down as she coasted up next to her charge. Not her favorite of theirs anyway. “Need a ride?”

The girl nervously whipped her head up to stare, making no other move. Not a good start. “Whoa,” Kailey coaxed her, “take ‘er easy. I’m Grandview. Kaycee told you I’d be comin’, right?”

A gray gem glittered at the girl’s throat. Her voice squeaked out with an absurd little quaver. “You weren’t followed, were you?”

Weird questions, weird behavior right off the bat. “Nah, I never am. Get in.”

Without ceremony she whipped her Buick back onto the road as the girl belted in. A couple minutes later found them loping southbound on the highway again. “So, uh. What’s the story? You on the lam or something?”

“We shouldn’t waste any time,” the girl ignored her. Strike two. “Take me to Kansas City, I have important information she needs to hear.”

“Damn, alright.” Kailey gave a silent thanks for keeping things speedy. “Where’s the fire?”

“I’ve just come from Leavenworth,” the girl said. “I need to–”

The words seized in her throat as the girl fell forward and slammed her head into the dashboard. Shattered by the push dagger in Grandview’s right hand, the cloudy remnants of Leavenworth’s gem fell to the floor.

Alone again, Kailey sighed: more for the pigs. The first few had been way less obvious than this somehow.

Unconsciously she moved back into the right lane, looking for an off ramp to turn around back north. This time would be the farm near Ponderosa, she supposed. The rain thickened and the last of the sun’s warmth was swallowed up by yet more pregnant clouds. The Police were rudely telling her not to stand so close, so she snapped the radio off.

Grandview hated cleaning this sh*t up, it always took forever. She hoped the meeting wasn’t too important, she was definitely going to be late. Had to get some cigarettes first.

Chapter 10: Liberty - "The Homeliest Tasks"

Chapter Text

Ptoo!
Splat.

Ptoo!
Plop.

Pfpfpptt.
Plip.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Kaycee chided. “This place is already a disaster, the least you could do is not contribute.”

Liberty stopped just before spitting again, wiping the premature dribble off with her sleeve. “What, really?” Liberty gestured widely. “Come on Kaycee, they’re never going to reopen,” she spun around slowly. Look at this place.

The empty atrium of the Crown Center surrounded them, dwarfing them in its silent space. The hallways were littered with husks of old boutiques and stores long picked clean of every desirable item. Restaurants that once fed thousands of eager shoppers a day lay destitute. Roaches were their patrons now, and the only sustenance left was their own droppings.

They were on the third floor, a short walkway which served only to guide people to either the Halls fashion store (Winter Sale, 40% off select brands! read a sign in front of a series of completely empty racks), a small theater that had already been withering even before the Unveiling, the top level of the parking garage, or an escalator down which did not work.

Kaycee chewed her gum, working it in her mouth. She had indulged this piece for far too long; it was tough as rubber, unpalatable. Good for gnawing and working her jaw, but the muscles in her face were getting tired.

After a few seconds thought, she turned over the third floor guardrail.

Ptoo.

Liberty laughed, watching the ballistic wad and losing sight before it struck the dust on the ground floor.

“I always kind of wanted to do that,” Kaycee admitted, trying and failing to hide her little smile. “Harder when there’s people down there.”

“Yeah, my mom would have killed me if I ever spit in front of her,” Liberty smiled back. Her face fell again after a moment’s contemplation: “Do you think they’ll ever reopen?” she asked. Younger by far, there was a light in her eyes that many of the other girls didn’t have anymore. She was the first of their crew who had contracted after the crisis was over.

Kaycee forgot the question and asked one instead. “What was it like, not being a magical girl when all that was going on?”

The younger girl took it in stride anyway, pleasantly quick on her feet. “It was weird,” she said simply. Liberty leaned on the railing, looking down and out at steel and concrete fountains. Square and rectangle reservoirs adorned the outside, bone dry if not for the mist tumbling down outside. In normal times, there would have been children and animals playing in them, relishing the chill of the water during the first days of summer.

When Kaycee did not prompt her further, she felt obligated to continue. “Everything felt like I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Even if you knew what you were doing or what was happening, it felt kinda…” she wiggled her hands limply. “Blurry. Like no matter how hard you focused, you couldn’t understand what you saw.”

She rested her head on one hand, frowning. “I think it was worse for the adults, they all seemed pretty scared the entire time. Never told us why when we bothered to ask, though.”

Kaycee nodded. “They probably didn’t understand it anymore than you did. Adults get used to knowing what’s going on, and it scares them when they suddenly don’t.”

“Well, it was scary for us too,” Liberty protested. “We didn’t have electricity for a while, and a lot of our food went bad. We had to beg for some, but no one else had any either.” The light in her eyes was fading, amber sheen slowly growing dull. It hurt to see that weight on her, even if it was something she knew they all had to shoulder.

“Well,” Kaycee interceded, “it did end eventually.”

“Yeah. Everything sucks now though,” Liberty sighed. She picked up a little stone and threw it lazily at the enormous windows in the front of the atrium. The pebble plinked off and tumbled to the tile below.

“Everything sucked before, too. You just didn’t realize it.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“It’s true, though,” Kaycee stretched, accordion pops ripping through her spine and joints. She threw a fresh piece of gum in her mouth, one of those brightly colored rectangle strips. After a few chews, sweet juices ran over her tongue and down her throat–the one vice she permitted herself anymore. “People talk a lot about ‘before’ and, yeah, the world’s got a lot of problems now it didn’t before. Doesn’t change that things were already pretty bad.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that my family’s gone now, ” Liberty sniffed. Ptoo. Splat.

Kaycee put her arm around her charge. “I know. I’m sorry,” she said quietly. Should know better than to fight with the kid about this.

The Crown Center was silent for a few minutes. Cars occasionally passed by outside, between them and the fountains. A couple people knocked on the glass doors, deterred by the padlocks and the crumpled papers taped up saying “STAY OUT–RENOVATIONS IN PROGRESS.”

“I miss some stuff about before,” Kaycee admitted after a while. “Every Christmas they used to hang a wreath up right there,“ she pointed at the window wall in front of them. “It was huge , large enough that I wanted to dive through it.”

“I know.” Some of the light was back in Liberty’s eyes. “We came down to see it every year. It was always so crowded .”

“Yeah, well…” Kaycee squeezed the gum in her mouth, caressing it, “They keep saying they’ll reopen. Has to happen eventually.”

“I hope so,” the younger girl popped, brimming with energy out of nowhere. Kaycee had no idea where she got it from, wished she could bottle it and sell it. “Let’s get going, I’m tired of sitting here!”

“Fine, you’re right. We’ve got some work to do,” Kaycee grinned for a second. “You’ve been doing really well. Today, I’m going to let you hunt on your own.”

“FINALLY,” Liberty yelled, her voice echoing wildly like phantom girls shrieking at each other. “You’ve been saying that for months, I thought you’d never let me do it.”

“We did try once.”

“That doesn’t count!” Liberty yelled again, bouncing on her feet. “You didn’t let me finish it off, I was almost there.”

“You’d have lost some toes if I hadn’t stepped in,” Kaycee said softly. “Part of the reason I’ve waited so long to let you try again is because you don’t take this seriously enough sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know.” The shorter girl said a bit more quietly, clearly fuming. “I’m trying, I just get excited.”

Kaycee examined her charge closely for a few seconds. “Well, you’ve gotten a lot better anyway. You lead, I’ll follow. I won’t help you this time, unless you ask.”

“YES!” Liberty got up and ran into the Halls outlet, bedecked with naked mannequins and empty shelves. God damn this kid, she was insane. But her energy was infectious, and Kaycee huffed as she jogged to catch up.

Thus began the probing of the shopping mall. Liberty was well used to the idea at this point, she had something of a knack for it. Her canary yellow dress was an unfortunate stylistic choice but it was more than matched by the preteen’s bubbling attitude. Kaycee had viciously hated hunting when she was being trained like this… but she was older now, and the world was different.

There were several minor wraiths that littered the darker corners of the shuttered clothing store: underneath display tables, hiding in the back where the late afternoon light did not reach, or in the service hallways. It was odd to find wraiths where so few people tread now, far away from the seedy neighborhoods that demanded so much of their efforts at night.

Kaycee supposed they were left behind by the homeless and indigent after stopping to sleep for the night, or the odd group of wildling teens looking for a good place away from prying eyes. Didn’t matter much anyway, Liberty would need fatter prey soon.

These were certainly small fry at this point: within milliseconds of spotting one, her winged spear would appear in a flash and skewer it, reducing each to a single cube. Wordlessly she scooped each one up into a little plastic baggie. Dutifully, every so often she would take one out and hold it up to the amber soul gem pinned on her bright felt hat. The spent cube went into another, differently colored baggie. Both of these went into a survival pouch, a little backpack at her waist. It had been a bitch to find it all, but the pouch also held other basics like an LED flashlight, a multi-tool knife, water, and so on.

Methodical and clean. Preparation and habit-forming like this was not what most mentors focused on, but it was how Kaycee had been taught. It had served her and her girls well during the DuPage administration.

She had decided to make it mandatory for any new girls she took in. Everyone who had already refused to learn discipline like this wound up dead.

They continued in this manner across the Halls store, then down the unmoving escalator to the second level. The most noteworthy shops were a Chocolate Factory and the Crayola store (the colorful stands, displays, and historical equipment inside torn to f*cking shreds somehow). The rest of the shops here were smaller, and there were less places afforded to wraiths to hide.

Moving down again, the ground floor was the slowest going: the restaurants were all spacious, kitchens being the hardest to search through so far away from natural light. They simply avoided the link to Union Station, the skyway usually held nothing and sweeping it took forever.

By the end of it all Liberty had put up a bit of a sweat, and her baggie of unspent cubes was looking decently bulky.

“Good work,” Kaycee said truthfully. She felt that this sort of routine, while not particularly flashy, was more effective than the crap some magical girls liked to get into. Clearing public places methodically was practical and if everything went right it wasn’t too dangerous either.

… If everything went right.

“You feel that too?” Liberty looked up at her, the golden spear flashing back into existence without conscious effort. There was an unusual tension in the bridge of her button nose and cheeks.

Kaycee didn’t respond immediately. There was a small pressure in her back, a negging force that demanded attention. She looked around aimlessly, and eventually both girls settled their gaze towards the back of the mall. There was an unspoken agreement, a formless synergy that told them both they needed to go towards the parking garage.

“C’mon,” Kaycee said simply. Both of them trudged up the broken escalator back to the second floor, milling towards a garish pink door set in the wall between shops that had an enormous orange “2” painted on it.

Kaycee took her cape off, putting it neatly in an abandoned trash can. “I don’t know what we’re walking into,” she told her follower. Liberty’s usual vivaciousness had been replaced by laser focus, her eyes melting a hole in the door. “Remember: bigger wraiths are more complicated to approach. They create labyrinths and pathways meant to confuse you and make you vulnerable. Take in what your eyes and ears are saying, but don’t believe what they show you. Not completely.”

Liberty nodded, gripping her winged spear in both hands like she was going to crush it. Kaycee felt a flicker of appreciation for insisting on these lessons.

She opened the door to a small foyer with stairs on their right going up and down to the other levels, another door to the garage proper right in front of them. The small window embedded in the portal produced a fuzzy semi-blackness, like a child plastered it over with multiple layers of construction paper.

“We don’t have to do this today,” she whispered.

“We should,” her student whispered back.

A good answer, if not the one she had hoped for. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest as she reached out, but before her hand touched the handle, the door opened of its own accord and trapped them in its maw, swallowing them whole.

Panic reared its head and threatened to overwhelm, blood rushing through her body like a frenzying horse trying to trample her. Every instinct of her body and mind told her that she needed to GET OUT, whatever OUT meant now, but she forced herself to continue breathing smoothly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In and out.

Her heart gradually began to slow as she worked her lungs. The air was damp and smelled heavily of mold, like the exhaust of an air conditioner left trickling over concrete. She realized she was squeezing her eyes shut and they flew open.

Liberty was nowhere to be found, setting her heart racing again. She was in the parking garage, and though it had always been a pretty sizeable walk from one end to the other, she could no longer see the boundaries of the structure around her. No door behind her either. All around were blocky cement support pillars and stairs leading up and down, interspersed at regular intervals, but she could see no walls anywhere.

Parking spaces delineated in oranges and pinks and purple lines spread out and away from her, regular rectangles that warped and shifted the farther away she looked. They simply kept going, straight to the horizon. It was an entire dimension made of cracked asphalt and paint. Silence pressed in on her, uncomfortable and heavy.

She ran over to the nearest stairwell. Peering her head in, she looked up and down: the angling was bad and she couldn’t see as far, but what little she gleaned did not inspire confidence. The parking garage for the Crown Center was, to her memory, three or four stories tall. She stopped counting at fifteen. A maleficent odor drifted over her, its source indeterminable.

This was f*cking bad. She didn’t spy any lesser wraiths in the structure, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

That part didn’t bother her so much, she was used to these encounters enough that she had confidence in herself to get out alive. Liberty getting lost here was what really made her sweat. The idea of losing another girl was stressing her out so bad it made her sick to her stomach. A familiar pain lanced through her intestines, a neediness coming with it that made her grimace.

Kaycee was pretty sure there were no bathrooms in here, so she opted to hold it in. Instead, she called out for her student.

Hailey? Are you there?

Waiting a couple seconds yielded nothing, so she vaulted the steps and went one floor up, pounding the stairs to take some of the feeling out of her belly. It only made the urge worse, her head beginning to pulsate with the echoing of her footsteps. She realized she had spit her gum out at some point, but the thought of replacing it just made her want to empty her guts even more.

On the next story she looked around: the smell of rot and decay was slightly stronger, the air thicker. The parking spaces continued their steady march out and around, but the snarling of their painted lines she had seen before was stronger. Colors were wilder, the neat boxes actually falling apart into random shapes and blotches the further away from the stairwell she looked.

Hailey, I need you to tell me where you are.

She went back down; the original level was unchanged, a baseline of eeriness. Numbers were usually painted on the support pillars of the garage, but looking revealed that they were the same glitch rot which lingered around the heads of wraiths. Could have been on level seventy million for all it told her.

The next level down was changed as above, so at least she would have a vague way to gauge where she was.

Hailey, please.

Lacking any further directions than this, she decided to continue down to the next level. The intensity of the place increased with distance from the “main level” she had started on, each parking space’s painted box becoming a confused tangle of vomit colors closer and closer to the stair.

Six levels down, it was no longer recognizable as a parking garage at any point. The haze in the air was a hellish sauna, condensation gathered on her face and got in her eyes so she couldn’t see properly without blinking every few seconds.

The sense of panic and pressure in her midriff was growing by the second. After another couple levels down she could no longer help it and relieved herself away from the stairwell. She sucked in breath that made her feel like she was drowning as she hobbled back to the stairwell, her insides squirming with discomfort.

Her head spinning like she was on a carnival tilt-a-whirl, she was forced to crawl back up the stairs to the main level. Three flights up she heard something, a glimmer:

–help me! Kaycee–

and a physical shout, far off into the structure that had no end. It bounced strangely, robbed of its substance by the labyrinth’s infinite floor and ceiling.

Kaycee’s guts were still heaving and tossing angrily: they demanded her attention and she couldn’t afford to give them any. Pushing aside her discomfort she stood up on wobbly knees and looked around, trying to gauge the source of the shout.

No dice, of course. Everything around was a nothing space, a half light that lent no perspective or visual purchase.

Hailey! Where are you?

Another shout met her in response and her spine flushed with cold. The profound upset in her belly was pushed to the side as frightful purpose entered instead.

–up the stairs, it got me–

She started sprinting up the stairwell, working her lungs like bellows to prolong the oncoming stitch as long as possible. Floor after concrete floor passed her by as she rocketed upwards, pumping her legs as fast as she could.

Five, ten, fifteen flights. The periphery of Kaycee’s vision told her the structure was becoming progressively disentangled from reality. There was nothing resembling parking spaces anymore, the neat purple and orange boxes had become a bilious splatter of red and yellow. The air itself glowed with nauseating energy, the endless black giving way to an odious brown that made her stomach roil again.

I’m almost there.

Twenty-two flights up, there was another shout, much closer. Within reach now, surely. In its wake she realized she could hear the sounds of fighting. Her body was heaving, thrumming with the effort and rhythm of upward movement. Her diaphragm ached, the muscles in her thighs and calves felt like they would explode.

At the twenty-sixth level, she felt more than perceived that she was right underneath her student and the wraith. Her legs also gave out, so that she stumbled hard on the cement. Almost cracked her skull on the guardrail going down.

Kaycee checked the sapphire on her hand: not blue anymore, but a bruised magenta. Awful. She hadn’t been careful enough with keeping pace, but then she hadn’t really had a choice. The aching in her intestines had gone away at least, thank goodness. She reached to unzip the pouch with her grief cubes on her right leg and shoved her hand into it.

A few spilled out and tumbled down the stairway. f*ck ‘em, not enough time. From the rest still in the pouch she felt relief pour into her. Exhaustion was lifted away as easily as a feather, the muscles in her legs went from feeling like murder to resting for a day, to a week, to brand new.

All far, far too slow. Above her the structure quivered with a low groan, an earthy sound that filled her bones like the Earth itself was reaching into her body to shake her.

Liberty shrieked. That at least was very loud now. Kaycee wasn’t sure if that liquid in her eyes was the moisture in the air or sweat, and she wasn’t sure if that sweat was from exertion or fear.

A brief glance around showed her that the section of the labyrinth she could identify as a parking garage was now limited to the stairwell itself. Within inches, the world around it had been transformed into something firmly alien.

There was no paint or recognizable geometry anymore. The insides of her own body had been ripped open and laid down against the floor. Rivulets of blood and something that looked (and smelled) suspiciously like piss filtered through veiny protrusions, flowing nowhere in particular. A small part of her wondered if she touched it, whether it would feel warm.

Another shout, longer and breathier this time, and almost unconsciously she vaulted her refreshed body up what she hoped was the last flight.

Sure enough, a quick look around revealed Liberty only a short way off in the haze, a forlorn figure cut against a wall of flesh that rose from floor to ceiling. It filled the space around them, making the flesh sack feel profoundly claustrophobic after the openness of the lower levels.

Kaycee blinked furiously to clear her eyes and got only fragments of its pustulent mass. Liberty was backing away, one arm hanging limply. The other held the spear up alone, a pike warding against protruding flesh. Her mouth was bared in a wild grimace as she struck out with her lance, flashes of sunlight pulsing forth from its tip. With every swipe and stab a gouge appeared in the wall and blood surged forth, but the wounds Liberty created were simply too shallow to slow it down. It would swallow her soon.

“I’M OUT OF CUBES, KAYCEE!” Blood stained down the front of her yellow dress.

That chilled purpose which had entered her before reared its head again, spurring her forward before she really knew it. With two leaps she planted herself between Liberty and the great mounds of flesh encircling in front of and around her. It quivered again, shaking the floor and making her legs feel like jelly. The thing undulated: follicle growths and fatty protrusions pulsated as it disgorged putrescence.

“Thank–” Liberty choked as she was lifted by her dress and yanked , back and away from the living charnel house. She was thrown bodily at the stairs, dumped unceremoniously in a heap onto what little ground was left which was not meat.

Kaycee was brimming with newfound energy. She had managed to keep her student safe, and now her usual work could begin.

Where her cleats dug into the flesh mat, she felt it actually recoil in pain. Little gouts of blood and clear fluid of indeterminate nature sprang up around her heels and ankles, squishing obscenely as it tried to digest her. She ignored all of these silly little details, summoning her bat in her right hand and a baseball in the left.

Liberty covered her ears, always hated how loud this could get. She still felt the thuds as they reverberated through her chest and limbs, could feel the pounding in her clenched teeth. After a few seconds the flesh near Liberty began to pull back, receding into itself. Cannonfire continued to pulse through her.

Within another minute it was done, and she chanced a look up.

The walls were torn to shreds, reduced to hanging flaps of skin and muscle festooning the pillars around. Piles of gore surrounded Kaycee which she was intent on beating to a pulp. She was no longer using baseballs, wielding her bat as a cudgel. Every strike pulverized the refuse a little more, her magic amplifying the force enough to rip the viscera apart, obliterating it with each stroke.

She was tireless. Liberty watched her lift the bat over and over again without purpose beyond destruction. Blood splashed on her, coating her legs and crawling up her midriff. Every blow crashed up into her hands, looked as if they should have torn her arms off at the shoulder.

The snarl never left her face. She was possessed by a predator’s grace.

It felt like it might go on forever, until suddenly it didn’t. With a strange snapping sensation like she was cracking every joint in her body at once, Liberty and Kaycee reappeared in the parking garage of the Crown Center. They were on the top floor, decorated in straight lines of purple on the floor and walls. They were right next to the stairwell leading down to the mid-level in orange.

Regular parking spaces, neat box shapes. Hard to see very far still, but the lonely emergency lights above offered enough to work by.

And then Kaycee was patting her down, hugging her feverishly, murmuring all sorts of ‘I’m sorry’s and ‘Are you okay’s. It was embarrassing, and Liberty mostly felt tired. She sat up, pushing her teacher off gently.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled indignantly, though exquisite pains in her face and left arm probably signaled otherwise. She tried her best not to show it.

Not fooled for a second, Kaycee moved to touch gingerly at the shoulder. “Arm’s broken.”

“Yeah,” Liberty said, not opening her eyes. “I got a little too close at the start.”

“There’s so much blood,” Kaycee continued her examination. “Was it the wraith’s or yours?”

“Both, I think.” Her tutor’s hands were feeling delicately all around, inspecting gently. Inexorably they drew up to Liberty’s face; there was much blood here, and now a few tears.

“What happened?” Kaycee asked quietly.

Liberty opened her eye, and her mentor drew in a soft breath. The amber of the left shined out at her defiant and angry. The light of the right was gone. Blood trickled from it instead, and the effort of seeing out of only one side hurt in the back of her head.

Kaycee hugged her again, tightly. Liberty allowed herself one noisy sniff and nothing else.

“That was more than I expected,” Kaycee apologized. “Probably the worst one I’ve seen since last year.”

“It was scary,” Liberty admitted. She had closed her eyes again.

“You did very well, though. I know a lot of good magical girls who wouldn’t have made it, especially as long as you did.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” Liberty protested mutely. “I just ran from it mostly. I wasn’t hurting it enough.”

“You’ll get better,” Kaycee assured her. “I wasn’t as strong when I first started out either. It comes with confidence, and you’ll get more confident with experience.”

“If you say so.” There was no energy in her little voice.

Kaycee bit her lip. “That being said, I think we’ve had enough experience for one day. We should find the cubes and get out of here. Sound good?”

Liberty nodded into Kaycee’s shirt and they stood up, tired and aching. Kaycee hid it a lot better, though she had wiped herself out in that frenzy. She could use an hour’s nap or six.

They both got their little LED flashlights out of their pouches, thankfully still working despite everything, and swept their moonbeam arcs around the parking structure. The original smell, that moldy dampness, was still rather pervasive, and unfortunately the stench of rotting flesh was stuck in their noses. It was always hard to shake the hold of the miasma.

Turning the corner, though, it became obvious why the smell was persisting: a corpse was curled in the corner, bloated beyond any hope of facial recognition. The flesh was mottled black and purple, with foul liquid seeping out from under it. Vibrating flies covered its surface in multitudes, and rats had clearly had their way with what they could reach.

Stifling her urge to vomit, Kaycee led Liberty quickly away. No argument from the young one.

After a few minutes more of searching in echoing silence, the light glittered on a couple of cubes littering the far corner of the garage, then a few more, then a trail leading to a modest pile.

It abutted the wall, hard to say but Kaycee guessed a few hundred. A good enough haul, but the cost was greater than she could stomach. Wordlessly, they scooped up entire handfuls and held them up to their gems, Kaycee cradling her hand in her left arm while Liberty poured a bunch into her beret.

Kaycee had seen her girls recover from all sorts of injuries that would have outright killed a regular human being, but she was much less sure about the loss of complex organs. Obviously if you had enough cubes it usually turned out fine, but her nervousness grew as the eye stubbornly refused to regrow itself.

Part of it was that Kansas City very rarely had access to any healers. They were in high enough demand they could go practically anywhere they wanted, and the Midwest was small potatoes.

Whatever the case, it was clear the grief cubes were not going to cut it. Liberty had been hoping too, but when she opened her right eye nothing appeared but the optical nerve and some raggedy muscle.

Kaycee pulled a crumpled bag out of her pouch and unfolded it, started scooping the unused cubes into it. “Here, we’ll take these to Perry,” she said. “There’s a couple new girls with her and one of them can heal, sorta. She isn’t very strong, but having extra cubes should give her a boost.” Tipton’s powers were dogsh*t for anything but casual use, frankly, but it was worth a shot.

There was some light back in Liberty’s remaining eye. Very good to see, though the ample helping of grief cubes helped. “Will do.”

Having gathered everything they could find, they turned to take the downward ramps leading out. There were three levels to descend and they took it slow, reaching the ground floor opposite to the entrance. Kaycee purposefully avoided a dark corner where she briefly smelled something foul.

Their surroundings were slowly etched with light, reflected from the outside. There was the exit sign, and the ticket booth with its arms down on either side. Damp warmth and fresh air spilled over them, crawling up their legs and into their chest.

And then they were out.

Kaycee sniffed to clear her nose, pleased with the relative freshness. Towers of slickened metal and glass surrounded them. They were ensconced by manmade pillars which cast water down their sides and sent it cascading around their dirty shoes. She savored their robustness.

“I’ll let Perry know we’re coming,” she told Liberty as she dug her phone out of her pouch. She loved the summer: the clock read past seven, but it was still light out. The mist had turned to a full rain, and she tucked under the concrete of the garage as she looked at her messages.

The usual check-ins, her girls were good at letting her know what was going on. A few were still out. Raytown had sent her a link to a private cam again, which she promptly deleted. A message from Chillicothe, not a very common occurrence, and another, actual message from Raytown shortly after.

Opening them, she scanned the messages. Stopped. Read them again. Again. Frowned. She turned to Liberty, glowering. “Couple things've come up. You go on alone, I need to call a meeting.”

“Aw, what?”

“You’ve done enough for today, I’ll fill you in later at the Shack, alright? You should eat something anyway, I could hear your stomach earlier.”

“Fine,” Liberty huffed. “You come straight after, got it?”

There was the fire. “Got it,” Kaycee smiled. Her protege turned without another word and leaped, taking her away from the charnel house.

Kaycee watched for a second, then allowed herself to sigh. She sent a mass text out, hoping it would reach everyone promptly:

“Meeting at the usual place, starts at 8. Come ASAP. ”

A couple minutes floated by with nothing but a passing car to answer her, until her phone started buzzing. Grandview was in the middle of business, so no response there, but everyone else seemed good. After thinking on it for a few seconds, she sent another copy of the text to Lenexa and Olathe. Might be good to give them a heads up, and if they were all going to start working together in the future, they needed to meet the team anyway.

Satisfied, she went to enter the Crown Center again–from the front, not the garage, out of which she could still smell the faintest trickles of rot.

She passed by the rectangular marble fountains towards the ground level entrance to the atrium. On her left was the street and past that the walking fountains which no longer sported water of their own.

Past them was the shuttered Ice Terrace with its massive, pointy beige canopy. It was always closed this time of year obviously, but she doubted whether anyone would use the ice rink again once December came rolling around.

No awkward and uncoordinated kids falling on top of each other, no couples hanging on each others’ arms. None of the cowards laughing from the padded sides, their ice skates dangling from their hands by the laces as they watch their friends stumble and fall.

No, come winter she was sure it would be as quiet as it was now, in the heat of summer. Kaycee still could not get used to the silence. During the summer there were usually a couple dozen kids playing around in the fountains in their swimming suits. She remembered darting between the spouts and laughing when the water got her, chilling her to the core. It hadn’t been that long ago, all things considered, but it felt like someone else’s life when she thought about it too much. Had she ever really been a child or had she just dreamed that up?

But there was the door, and she ignored the “CLOSED” signs as she yanked it open, penetrating the silence. Her eyes unconsciously scanned the ground in front of her as she closed the door to the atrium. Back inside the shopping mall, she hung a right towards the Link. The only sound now was her own footsteps, and the thrum of her blood in her temple. The silence without Liberty here was sharp, and all of a sudden she felt strangely lonely.

She unwrapped more gum. It was ash in her mouth.

She passed by shops that had been closed and long-since looted, like “The Best of Kansas City” with its bright red doors busted wide open, and the Pen Place now missing all of its beautiful stationery. Her cleats clacked on the tile as she walked up to the portal of the Best, peering into the darkness.

There had been so much bric-a-brac in here, shoddy little ornaments and fridge magnets and postcards extolling their home. She had been fond of coming here whenever her family visited the mall, always wanted this little teddy bear that wore a tiny plastic Royals helmet. There had also been a few rows of colorful bottles, sauces and dry rubs, showcasing the best and most famous barbeque joints around the city. Now the shelves sold nothing but dust.

Passing on, she ambled through a corridor leading to another atrium of sorts, a large space belonging to the Hyatt Hotel which ordinarily held banquets and parties or some nonsense. Keeping to the right, she went up some stairs to an interior balcony that hugged the wall, ringing through the upper lobby. Over the opposite wall, a man-made rock waterfall now lay silent as the fountains outside. Large plastic plants meant to make it all look like a tropical getaway had been pulled down and savaged, littering the carpet and tilework, reduced to so much leafy garbage.

She had enjoyed people watching here, spending time leaning on the guardrail and looking below: shoppers from the mall taking a break to enjoy brunch, some upper crust folks rubbing elbows, or travelers to and from parts unknown trying to navigate the space. Occasionally she had taken the glass elevators up to the top floor, to get a view of the city out through the windows.

Kaycee ignored all of it, stewing on her modern emergencies. She muscled the door to the sky walk without thinking, popping through into a glass corridor that was hoisted above the street. It diverged into two paths, one directed towards Union Station and the other towards the Hyatt Regency.

Though she took the former, the latter now lay on her mind. The one which lay claim to Missouri’s only true archon on record, back in 1981. The walkway collapsed during a party or something, left a couple hundred dead. Her mentor had once said that her mentor’s mentor’s mentor’s mentor had taken part in that. So, her great-great-great grand mentor?

Sheesh, what a sh*tty life expectancy. Kaycee’s own mom had been born in the f*cking early 70s. From one step genetically to six generations of girls throwing away their lives for this city.

And, supposedly, Momo had been around for that archon. Kaycee wondered if any of the newer girls even knew Momo existed.

She was a strange fixture of the state’s history, by all indications a Terminatrix before that word had even been coined. No one knew how old she really was, but after a certain point for magical girls that ceased to matter.

Kaycee didn’t even know if Momo was real , when she thought about it. All the older girls she had been around whispered in hushed tones about her, like a f*cking campfire ghost story. They talked a lot about “no one who ever saw her lived to tell about it.”

How the f*ck did anyone know she existed then?

She ambled through the triangle corridor, steepled windows on either side of her. They offered a speckled view of the city through dripping beads of water, rain on the outside and condensation on the inside. Usually the air was conditioned, but with all the energy cuts the only things working for the skywalk were the air pushers to make sure no one suffocated if they were dumb enough to go in. In the summer it was stiflingly hot, so hot that she was pouring sweat already. She looked down and noticed that she was still covered with splatters of blood and other bodily fluids. She stank to high heaven.

Flexing her right fist, she untransformed in the overwhelming heat back to her regular clothes. Sweatpants and a torn jersey, somehow even worse. She transformed back instantly: it exhausted her a bit further but the magical clothes came out fresh and clean. Didn’t do much for her hair, but whatever. It wouldn’t be the first time one of them had shown up looking like a dumpster.

She passed by orange construction buckets with hoses leading down into them, collecting stagnant water from the ducts in the nook overhead, not that they were doing much right now. After a few more minutes she passed the halfway mark in the tunnel, marked by a placard telling her about Kansas City’s riverside history back during the early 1900s. She wondered how many generations of magical girls ago that was, if there had been any here back then. Had to be, probably.

She got a text from Liberty, “made it.” Two little words and her stomach felt remarkably lighter. Followup: “told the two newbies about the meeting, they wanted to go. i can wait, no worries.”

Well, sh*t. She’d have to send Tipton back pronto. No idea if taking time with injuries like that made them harder to fix, but she wasn’t going to take chances.

Finally she felt the stuffy air around her move, and then it was whooshing into the relative cool of the receptacle into Union Station. She breathed a little easier as she stepped out from the harsh jungle light of the skywalk. Taking a stone stairway down to the main lobby of the station, she looked up at the vaunted ceilings with their colorful Beaux-Arts reliefs and enormous chandeliers.

Being in here always made her feel tiny. It was magnificent, probably her favorite place in the city. Despite the day, the corners of her mouth tugged up.

Looking at her clock told her there was still twenty or so minutes before the meeting, so she supposed she could take a break. Finding a bench, she ignored stares from the few people who bothered to be here and looked up, soaking it in.

Chapter 11: Lenexa - "No Idea What He’s Getting Himself Into"

Chapter Text

Cindy Hayweather was strangely calm as she stalked down the sidewalk near the City Hall of Leawood, Kansas. Her erstwhile leader had been killed nearby just a few days ago, though there was no overt sign of it left now. Not even a shred of bumblebee police tape left to mark her passing, she had been tossed into the same mass grave as the rest of their ilk.

This was all her fault, in a way. She had been the only one capable of training Overland Park in the first place, had been the only one in a position to reckon with the enormity of the strength that now stood perched to hunt them all down. Should have shattered her gem right at the start. The muscles in her wrists and hands reflexively clenched, steel cordons that wound themselves tighter in grim anticipation.

Well, ruminating was pointless now. It was time for action, something she understood well enough. She abandoned the sidewalk in favor of the asphalt, heat haze obscured and dissipating with the first smacks of rain onto the blacktop.

The instant she stepped out onto the busy street, cars declared their annoyance at the interruption. First a single lazy horn, then two, then all of them in a discordant harmony. She settled squarely on the cracked and faded yellow of the median in front of the City Hall, right where the former Kaycee Kay’s body had lain. The only part of her which moved thereafter was the violet flounce of her dress stirring in the spring breeze.

Voices joined the fracas, all permutations and cadences of “What’re you thinking, dumbass?” and “Get the f*ck out of the road!”

Lenexa didn’t hear them, or at least pretended not to, which only served to whip them into a still greater frenzy. A scowl etched the lines of her face, but all her attention was reserved for something else.

That something else landed on the hood of a black Dodge Charger a few cars away, effortlessly crumpling the engine block, destroying the car so effectively that it failed even to squeal in alarm before it died. The owner of the car in question ejected himself from the wreckage, panting and wheezing as he flailed his walrus mass to the sidewalk and beyond. Other cars which had been rendered unable to pass decided they no longer gave a solitary sh*t for the rules of the road, and a mad rush ensued back around and onto the sidewalks to avoid being struck by another ballistic missile.

The first missile, however, resolved itself in the form of a teenage girl, this one in an audacious red dress. She was covered with puffs of fabric all over so her shoulders and legs seemed like grotesque, angry clouds threatening to escape the confines of her body. Her hair was also tied up in two large puffs, dyed merely pink instead of red. Her midriff was exposed, flaunting a large ruby piercing her tanned navel.

“YO BITCH,” this girl shouted at Lenexa. “YOU LOOKIN’ FOR ME?”

The object of her focus now revealed, Bitch stayed silent. She stared down the long barrel of her ire at this walking affront to modesty, the breeze playing with her long straight hair.

“Aw, don’t act all stoic you f*ckin’ asshole,” Overland Park laughed as she stepped lightly off of the steaming junk. “You’ve come this far, what the f*ck are you waiting for?” That false smile twisted into a painful grimace, a mask unfit to hide the rage bubbling underneath.

Though no muscle in her face or body moved, Lenexa’s glare somehow intensified.

“You’re really cruel, you know that?” the red girl huffed dramatically, clacking her gaudy shoes to a sharp halt about 20 feet away. “I should have known you were helpin’ the Missouri girls this whole time,” she spit a globule which hid itself among the raindrops. “I’ll be sure to bury you along with them. Sound nice enough to you?”

The breeze finally died, and Lenexa’s dress fell still.

“Shut the hell up.”

For the merest instant the former Overland Park’s face betrayed irritation, but in that same instant a purple sledgehammer rocketed towards her. Her only way out was up, which left her vulnerable: Lenexa screamed into the sky at a thousand miles an hour, and the clash of the two magical girls reverberated through the well-to-do suburb like a cannonade.

Neither of these beings carried weapons. They fought with their bodies, which served just fine as their instruments of war. Their fists and elbows and knees ground against each other with enough strength to pulverize concrete. Every meeting of their limbs let loose a blasting that flattened the treetops below, bones impossibly refusing to shatter as blow after blow fell upon each other like typhoons crashing against a cliffside.

Gravity pulled them back to the ground, branches cracking and nearby window panes shattering with the force of every solid hit. As soon as her foot touched asphalt, Overland Park hurtled straight into and through City Hall. Lenexa was less than a yard behind, they were red and purple comets and with their inevitable collision the municipal building exploded in a dust cloud of splinters and glass shards and broken bricks.

The clatter of a ruined public work subsided around Lenexa. She refused the urge to cough and clear her lungs of the dust of civic duty.

It was a solid hit with Overland Park out of sight… until the red girl came screaming back, the air between the two magical girls boiling with her speed. Lenexa bared her teeth, raised her arm just in time to catch a strike that would have liquified her skull, suddenly forced on the defensive. Overland Park rained endlessly with fists and arms so quick that Lenexa could not help but lose ground. They dashed forward and backward among the wreckage, back toward the street, their feet gouging the bricks, rending the grassy soil in huge chunks and strips, ripping up concrete and asphalt with every titan step.

Before she realized it, Lenexa’s back was up against a brick wall and her momentum halted. Her former student’s hand held her face in a vice grip, her other hand reared back to deliver the killing blow–

–and Lenexa managed to wriggle her head out of the way, becoming a blur as she retreated from another dust plume rising into the air. A defunct T-Mobile store was wiped off of the map, reduced to smithereens.

Peering through dust-laden eyes, Lenexa managed to glimpse Olathe just on the other side of the street, back towards the ruin of city hall.

What in the everloving sh*t was she doing here? She had her bow out, a simple wooden thing with flanged tips. Her mouth was open in a round little “o” like she couldn’t believe she had just done something incredibly stupid.

That something proved to be very stupid: the reason Overland Park had let go of Lenexa’s face was, apparently, an arrow directly to the back of the head. A successful hit, with absolutely no effect except to cause the target to stare at her.

And stare. The moisture of the rain at her feet boiling away and turning to vapor.

Lenexa saw it coming a split second late. There was one edge that the student held without restriction over her teacher: a pure, concentrated sunbeam that lanced out of her furious eyes and severed Olathe clean in half, toppling down on herself in the torn grass. The smell of burning flesh joined the dust and smoke, and Lenexa realized she was screaming.

Another laser cut her left arm off at the shoulder, her screams intensifying as bright pain was added to shame.

Cindy couldn’t tell if one second passed or a minute, but the next thing she registered was the red dress filling her vision, blocking the fresh corpse of her compatriot.

“You should’ve known not to cross me. Better than anyone, you should’ve known.”

Slackjawed, she felt her face forcibly tugged up to stare into the face of hatred.

“I’ve had enough. I’ll never let anyone f*ck me over again. You should’ve known.”

“We–” the wind was forced out of her, a fist like solid rock appearing in her diaphragm. Every muscle in her body had been doused with cold water, a strange sort of shock that wasn’t even painful anymore.

“Too late for that. I don’t wanna hear it anyway.”

Struck again, and again. The fist merely tenderized at first and then pulverized, obliterating, atomizing her torso. Cindy felt strangely light as everything below the shoulders fell away, an abused mannequin shedding its lower half. The rain of blows had stopped, and everything felt farther away now. She was watching it unfold from underwater.

The last thing her glassy eyes registered was her gem, an amethyst necklace that was ripped away from what was left of her neck. She couldn’t even feel the chain break, was only dimly cognizant as she watched the precious stone of her soul enter her student’s mouth.

Crunch.

Overland Park spit out the last bits of Lenexa onto the pavement, wiping little bits of gemstone from her tongue on her dress, regretting it as she tasted blood. She couldn’t tell it apart from the hue of her dress, decided she didn’t care enough, and settled for swallowing fragments instead.

They tumbled around in her throat and caught on the sphincter leading to her stomach, stones cascading down a long well. She could feel grit in the back of her mouth, crowding around her teeth. Just one more thing to hate, more fury atop the rest.

No cars had come to interrupt her so far, though she was sure that someone or other from law enforcement was on their way. She was startled by a ringing, some generic default ditty that issued from somewhere near the legs she had disposed of.

Somewhat mollified for now, she patted the carnage down and came back up with Lenexa’s phone. There was a lock on, because of course, but hitting the home button brought a smidgen of the new text up on screen anyway.

Just enough to see the words “Kaycee” and “meeting.” That was really all she needed.

Overland Park let the device clatter to the ground and stepped on it, shattering it into a million f*cking pieces. Part of her felt tired and raw, worn down after all the excitement already, but “meeting” probably meant everyone on the other side of the state line too.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Most of her was still frothing, red hot. She used that, pushed off and away from the ground as easily as walking, leaving Kansas behind.

Chapter 12: bro. roof. now.

Chapter Text

Westport and the Country Club Plaza both screamed underneath Overland Park as she rocketed eastward into the city. She was aimed loosely at Liberty Tower. Didn’t come here too often, but she knew Union Station was right next to it. That was all her churning mind bothered to remember right now, all it really needed.

Sure enough: there it was, just past the Crossroads. The colossus which once serviced travelers the whole country over came to prominence in front of her. She blinked water out of her eyes as she neared, gritting her teeth. She could already see those sh*theads on the roof, talking, talking about her, talking about how they’d get her out of the way, f*ck them, f*ck the whole place, she’d tear it apart with her bare hands, she’d burn it to the ground.

With a crack like thunder she careened into the crest of the stone rooftop, shattering glass skylights and sending bits and pieces of the edifice flying all around her. From down near the edge of the rooftop they looked at her, and she almost wished they were already dead but for the chance to kill them now. “Having a little powwow? Talking about how else you can try to f*ck me?” the red girl called out to them, power already flowing in her screaming voice.

To her credit, their leader didn’t balk at this intrusion. “You need to leave. Go back to your side of the state line or there’ll be consequences,” Kaycee belted stonily. The words fell flat, deadened in the rain.

In response, Overland Park held up Lenexa’s severed head. An empty vessel twice over, pale and drained of life and blood. “I think we’re past that already. Getting Cindy to off me is a bit cold, wouldn’t ya say?” She threw the head as hard as she could at them; it struck the gable nearby and burst apart like a pumpkin, showering them in bits of skull and slacken flesh.

The Missouri girls suddenly had weapons gripped in their hands. God, they were posing like a big team of f*cking jacko*ffs. Seeing them all lined up to try and fight her was a sickening insult.

Kaycee alone held off, stepping forward. She was visibly shaking, her face slowly pitching red. “We had nothing to do with that. How dare you–”

“Yeah, right. Just like you don’t have anything to do with all the REST of the girls you’ve been sending my way the last month, you f*cking coward sh*thead BITCH. BITCH!”

“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“What EVER. This is all bullsh*t. I’ve had enough of you assholes chilling out over here, waiting to claim my place as your territory.”

This was going nowhere fast. Kaycee summoned her bat wordlessly in her right hand. In the left she held a plain baseball.

Overland Park coughed up a disbelieving bark. “The f*ck you gonna do with that? Do you have any idea–”

She was interrupted by a sharp crack, a solid wooden report that was followed by a strange ripple in the air near her head. She had seen it, if only for a second. Rain in the path of the ball splattered violently, not having time to get out of the way.

“You have one last chance to get the hell out of here. We’ve always stayed out of the affairs of the Kansas girls, I’m begging you not to f*ck that up for everyone.”

“YAWN.”

Kaycee grit her teeth, summoning another baseball and lobbing it up into the air. Then another, and another. Like the routine of a practiced juggler she tossed ball after ball up into the rain, and with perfect timing she followed each with a strike that slammed it with deadly accuracy straight at the girl from Overland Park at hundreds of miles per hour.

Crack, crack, crack. Water caught in the way was pounded forward too, making it harder to see. Didn’t matter much for the girl in red. Not bad she admitted, dodging each cannon shot fluidly. It was the strangest shower she had ever gotten, lithely shifting right and left and back again.

Then she caught one. It wrenched her shoulder back, just a pinch. She held up and crushed the ball in her hands, squeezing it until its innards popped out between her fingers, cork and string and leather liquifying under the sheer force.

None of the other girls had moved this entire time, an implacable line behind their leader, though a couple of them were visibly shaken… especially Raytown, in a silver negligee. Kaycee grimaced. “If that’s how you want it, fine.” She fished in her back pocket for something, muttering. “Let’s see how you handle this, asshole.”

She tossed up a lumpen mass, Overland Park couldn’t tell quite what in the rain. When it came down, the bat hammered forth yet again.

Instead of one crack there were several all at once that sounded more like a pow!, and even Overland Park was not fast enough to see any of them this time.

Flecks of glass, slivers of it shredded all over her skin at once. She gasped in genuine surprise as pain flaired all across her body, thankfully missing the ruby at her navel. What in the f*ck was that?

There was no time to investigate as another burst flew her way, imperceptibly fast as they tore into her clothes and flesh. She covered her soul gem with one hand and leaped forward at top speed.

She was forced to slow down immediately, couldn’t keep the rain out of her eyes as long as she was protecting her gem, and her movement signaled a volley from the rest of the Missouri girls too.

They didn’t exactly have much to offer: the only one of real note was wearing a duster and a hat, wielding an oversized revolver that roared over and over as it fired bullets the size of golf balls at her. That would be Lee, she supposed… still, Overland Park was too fast and the rest weren’t landing their shots.

It was sufficiently distracting that she wasn’t making much progress either. The gap between her and Kaycee wasn’t closing fast enough and the hand covering her belly was quickly being torn to shreds with each wave of shot.

This was pissing her off, badly. She changed tack, without a care for whether she could see she put on a burst of speed and reversed, throwing off their aim and dodging the last volley. Bleeding all over, turning her red like her clothes, she ducked down on the other side of the sloped gable of the Station, just barely out of view.

It took a few seconds for the sound of cannon fire to stop, which she used to focus. She was working herself up into a froth. These guys had a bit of fight in them after all, more than she expected.

She gritted her teeth as she dug into a cut on her left arm, prying the flesh apart with her fingers. She ignored the screaming of her ragged muscle and dug out a chunk of whatever she had been shot with. Holding it up to her eyes… It was glass. The fragment was round on one end.

Dime store marbles turned into grapeshot. That was a first, but if they wanted her out of the picture it’d take a hell of a lot more than that.

Overland Park bit her lip hard and the taste of copper flooded her mouth. She built up that fury, feeling it saturate her muscles and all her wounds. These stupid bitches thought they could take her on? They thought they were tough? They didn't know the meaning of the f*cking word. She heard one of them shouting at her or each other, she didn't care what was being said or by who.

She had had enough of their muscling in. She knew every f*cking magical girl was like this, but she hadn’t expected them to get Lenexa on their side. That hurt.

Finally, when she felt like she was going to explode, she stood back up to look at the other girls and that's just what she did.

Her rage splayed out in front of her like crimson lightning, bright lines like tracer rounds which with grim, satisfying precision showed where her destruction would be meted out. Red hot, these lines instantly vaporized what raindrops came in contact with them: a billowing mass of steam threatened to obscure the field of war. They were screaming neon rockets, she was the launchpad for a million f*cking nuclear missiles and they all had their targets keyed in. The Cold War would end here in the hot, boundless fury of a woman scorned, Armageddon in a red dress.

Sure enough, in the span of a second the roof of Union Station was completely covered in a hot fog, enveloping all of them and obliterating the world. The fighting crawled to a stand still, silence permeating as all motion and noise were swallowed in the white mass.

The breeze filtered it out little by little, revealing the fruits of her anger: several girls wounded, two of them fatally–she got the cowboy bitch right in her f*cking face, there was a gaping hole on the right side that oozed brains. All their gems were intact, but whatever. The farm-themed girl was the only one left unscathed, but her annoying friend had taken a pretty bad hit in the shoulder. Despite that, it looked like the one in pink was doing all the reassuring.

One of Kaycee’s legs had disappeared, not torn off but simply evaporated. Her lifeblood spilled out of a burning stump in spurts onto the divots of glass and stone.

Overland Park huffed, allowing herself to simmer down a bit. She still wasn’t sure where their nasty little assassin was, but if it was going to be a problem there was nothing she could do about it. Might as well make the most of her time.

She flounced, flecking accumulating water and her own blood off her red dress as she sauntered over. Kaycee groaned and sweated as she tried to apply pressure and staunch the flow. Maybe Overland Park would cauterize it if she asked nicely.

But Kaycee was uninterested in being nice. “You ssstupid, f*cking moron,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Why the f*ck did you do this?” Her face was growing paler by the second.

“Because you just don’t know when to quit, bitch,” Overland Park sneered. “I’ve had to play cleanup with your little saboteurs for weeks and I’m getting tired of it.”

Kaycee’s mouth gaped stupidly, but after a second she remembered she was bleeding out and started breathing heavily. “What the hell do you mean?” Huff huff. “Are you talking about the Magic Force?! We’ve already been dealing with that sh*t for months!”

Huh. “Don’t lie,” Overland Park tutted. “You’ve been forcing other magical girls to do your dirty work, sending ‘em my way cuz you’re too scared to try and get at me yourself. Why would the army bother sending girls of their own if they wanted in?” There was that little seed of doubt again, an unusual feeling of unease. She wanted to be rid of it. “If it were this easy for me, they could probably get rid of you all in less than a day.”

“This is,” huff, “the f*cking metro area. You think they’d occupy it with the military? The government doesn’t want anymore casualties, anymore unrest after last year.” Inhaling, a desperate suck for air. “Dipsh*t. They’ve been trying to infiltrate us too, they try to send a girl in to take us over from the inside every other f*cking week!”

Overland Park frowned, her temper percolating again. The seed of doubt was pushing through soil. “Why the hell did you send Lenexa after me then?”

“I didn’t, she volunteered because you’ve been slaughtering your own girls for the last month!”

Her teeth bared as she prepared to snap back, but before she had the chance a strange and cloying sense of peace stole over her. She felt the power of her fury drain from her nearly instantly, and was mysteriously fine with that.

A look of placid calm stole over Kaycee’s face too. It hardly mattered that her lower leg was gone, she might have just woken from a nap.

Idly she wondered: what on earth was this sh*t?

Almost without thinking about it, feeling as if she was in a fever, she looked back over her shoulder.

There was a woman there, on the far corner of the roof. Not a girl, but a woman–old at that. She was garbed in gray, so light it was almost white like her hair. She carried a scythe and a face bedecked with liver spots that practically shined, here eyes were so radiant. She stretched wrinkly, sagging arms out to them.

“In the name of God, I come to grant you all peace.”

Chapter 13: There’s a Lot of Ugly Things In This World

Chapter Text

Some 60 years ago, back in a relatively simple world that was only starting to be touched with the stratification of modern technology, there was a little house in a little town called Magnolia where a little girl named Mary lived with her little family.

Strictly speaking, the house wasn’t in Magnolia. It was nestled in the dusty roadside corner of a patch of farmland about three miles northwest. An hour and a half east of the city by motor carriage, there was little here to mar the gentle peace that defined each day.

Too isolated even to have anyone her age to call friends, Mary never really thought of “the unincorporated community of Magnolia” as her home. Holden was the nearest town of any respectable size, and she only went with her mama and papa for church, or a couple other times a year for farming supplies. To her, the world was an endless stretch of dirt road, and her house was a castle. Home was towering rows of sweetcorn in the humid summer, else the gently bobbing heads of winter wheat.

This was the Cornwell residence. Homely in the American sense, it was modest and had been quite affordable: at that time it was new, built from a catalog lumber kit shipped straight to the property from some business called Sears. The one bedroom and living room area were cozy during the winter, and a screened back patio saw liberal use in the summer, getting as much out of the breeze as they could.

Her papa worked hard, by all reckoning a good and honest man, and Mary loved him very much. Her mama didn’t work, but Mary loved her just as much. Practically every moment not at the schoolhouse was at home, spending time with her dear ma. They would talk about the world and read a few tattered books together, basking in the fading glow of the setting sun on the porch as life buzzed and crawled and slithered and hummed around them. Whippoorwills and jaybirds and cicadas and crickets all serenaded them as dusk deepened. When her papa came in, all dirty and sweaty from working their own fields and the fields of their neighbors, he and her mama would tuck Mary in for bed, kissing her forehead, crooning “I love you”s as they went to their own room.

This was much of her first five or six years. Naturally, her papa got angry sometimes, but almost never in a scary way. One summer she overheard him cussing at the backhoe because it was having trouble breaking through some roots in the fallow dirt. It scared her mightily so that she hid on the other side of the patio from him, but her papa saw and came up to her. His eyes full of sadness, he said sorry to her, ‘fore it’s bad to curse in front of the Lord like that. God doesn’t take kindly to people who spit and cuss and holler and all the other obscenities people can get up to.

She vaguely knew this already. Each Sunday they woke up early to go the long way by buggy to the Presbyterian church in Holden. It was one of her favorite times every week, seeing the sharply angled tile roof and the tall steeple with its lovely iron bell (she imagined it was iron, though she couldn’t know because the belfry it was housed in was totally enclosed). It was easily the biggest building she knew of, looming magnificent and sanctified above the viridian oak and maple trees strung all along the town roads.

She always prayed earnestly to God with the rest of the congregation, lifting her big curious eyes up to the arched ceiling and wondering if He was watching them at that very moment. His goodliness made her smile, her spirit was buoyed on hymns, carried on the voices of a hundred folk who all sought His grace. She believed wholeheartedly what the minister extolled to them on all manner of subjects, both sinful and righteous.

So she knew cussing was bad, and she knew her papa shouldn’t have gotten mad, but she also knew God forgave those who occasionally strayed from Him, so surely she could forgive her papa too.

Her mama never cursed, but with anyone ‘cept her husband and daughter she was a frightful woman. Even when Mary was young, her mama had always hated to be separated from either of them. There were little gestures every now and then: an occasional flicker of the eyes, standing up and sitting down repeatedly when she was excited, checking outside through the window drapes, biting her nails. These nervous habits stood out to Mary, but knowing so few people as she did, she had little to compare with.

What did stand out was mama bursting into tears one day as her father was out working. There was no reason for it, but it was different, and it was scary. By the time papa came home, her mom had calmed down, but a doctor was called just in case. There was only one who lived near enough for house calls: a bald, bespectacled runt of a man with a bushy beard as big as his head. After a couple hours of questions and examinations with fancy steel instruments that Mary had never seen before, the man proclaimed that her mama had “acute paranoid hysteria.”

Mary did not know what these words meant. She only knew her mother was nervous and scared, and that made her sad, and a little scared too. Those habits she already knew seemed to grow in intensity, with bags under her mama’s eyes and the occasional spot of blood where she chewed her fingernails a little too hard, the shaking in her arms when she gripped the drapes.

The next time Mary went to church, she asked God what she could do to help her mama. She waited patiently for an answer, not so naïve as to think that she would get one immediately. She turned her head towards the stained glass window that bore the face of her Savior in profile, His own hands raised in prayer of their own as a wheel of rich, beautiful colors encircled Him.

As much as she enjoyed it, church confused her often. Jesus Christ was called many things: He was both part of God and the Beloved Son of God. He was the King of Kings. He was the Light of the World, and the Redeemer… a lot of things for one person to be, she thought idly. A lot of lofty-sounding titles.

There was one she had heard only once in passing which stuck out. A reference to Him as the Lamb and the Lion.

She mulled over that name as she looked up at Him in supplication, thinking of her poor mama who, even in the safety of this holy place, Mary could tell was fearful. Fearful of what, she could not understand, but her mama was fearful nonetheless.

Her neighbors had cows and chickens and goats and sheep aplenty, among other things. She had once watched her papa help a friend deliver a newborn lamb, so still and calm after plopping onto the dry grass that she thought it must be stillborn… but after some seconds it flicked its ears still moist in its mother’s water, and it raised a tired head up to look around.

She remembered the distant thought even now: here is a creature, gentle of God.

And her mama had read to her of lions, living in a place so far away she couldn’t even conceive of the distance. Fearsome and proud, masters of their domain, the only word that could come to mind was “strong.”

Gentle, but strong. She washed herself in the light of her Lord, both of them seeking answers from someone greater than themselves.

God never did answer her directly, but that was fine. Her conviction grew after church ended and they headed home, their buggy trundling bumpily on the dirt road back.

Thereafter she took a more active role in helping her mama out, distracting her when she grew nervous or upset, getting her attention and keeping her in the moment. A silly face or noises, a reminder that they had chores to do, little tricks here and there. For a while it even worked, and whenever she saw her mama lift her face and burst with laughter and a smile to dispel the nervousness, their love grew.

Then came one evening in the fall of her tenth year. A blustery and cloudy day, her papa prepared to go to town to get his stock of seeds for the coming season.

She liked these days least of all. They would be separated all day, even more if he was caught up in town and had to spend the night with a friend. Her mama’s usual lamentations reached a fever pitch, turned into the gibbering and shaking that betrayed one of her more intense episodes.

Mama didn’t want him to go. She spoke of accidents, the horse gone mad and throwing him, breaking his leg so as to cause him to die in the roadside ditch all alone. She cried and talked of unwanted guests, intruders who might seek to harm his poor defenseless wife and daughter.

It couldn’t be helped, he said. Their welfare depended on their crops, and they could not afford delays. He consoled her longer than he should have, the sun climbing higher and becoming obscured by the autumn clouds.

Finally, after some silent consideration, he went into their room and retrieved his double-barreled shotgun.

Immaculately oiled and cared for, he told her to keep this at her side, but only to use it if she was sure she needed it. She clutched it to her chest like her own child, promised she would be okay until he came back. Mary watched her father depart with a forlorn wave. It was well past noon now; he would not be coming home that night.

Her mama cried and cried and cried, more than she had ever cried before. Tears stained her face, her blouse, the furniture she draped herself over as she heaved up and down with the force of her wails. Mary watched in increasing consternation, her usual methods for providing distraction or reprieve failing utterly. Her mood began to darken with the sky outside, despair gnarling its way into her heart. They just had to last until the morning she kept telling her mama, and herself.

It began to rain, unnaturally cold and hard for the ides of September. A fell wind started up, clattering the door and sending her mama into a fit of howling. The noise crashed in Mary’s ears and for the first time she felt something awful deep in her chest. Not simple fear nor sadness or despair, for the first time she felt the sickness of scorn.

Why was her mama so upset? Why couldn’t she be calm and wait for papa to come back? The storm was loud and frightening but it wasn’t that bad, they had weathered plenty before this one. She grappled with the deepening of her newfound loathing when

suddenly

there was a bang at the door.

Her mama screamed, a whistling screech that cut high above the wind and the rain. Before Mary could reassure her that it was just the door rattling in the gale, the banging came again, more than one, rapid and hurried. For a few seconds her mama was paralyzed, staring at the door from which this invasive noise came.

A glaze came over her eyes then, and with her hands which suddenly were deathly still she picked up the shotgun. In one swift motion she ticked the safety off, aimed… Mary felt a

BANG

In her chest as her mama fired so much shot through the door.

The country house was for an instant filled with light and smoke and sulfurous fumes. Mary saw her mama’s face lined in staccato shadows, wild and crazed madness etched in her eyes and cheeks and the grimace of her lips. The flash of light was caught in little beadlets of sweat that dotted her forehead and rolled down her cheeks, in the spittle that sprayed from between her bared teeth.

Far too late Mary clapped her hands over her ears, suddenly lanced by a pained ringing. She groped for her mother, flashblinded by the solitary discharge. They found each other, and as the wind and rain pitched up another notch they cried together in fear of what could be at the door.

Haltering, slowly, they stood up, still clinging to one another as they stumbled towards the door now bedecked with holes. Far-off lightning flashed through them, giving split-second glimpses of the pouring rain outside. Cold began to seep in.

Mary reached for the handle first, fumbling it as she realized she was shaking now too. She could barely keep a hold of the door handle she was quaking so hard, it reminded her of when she had almost died of fever. She couldn’t help shivering against the touch of the chill air which forced its way in and fondled their skin, making their flesh prickle up in goosebumps. It could only have been a few seconds but the time it took for her to turn the handle seemed to stretch as long as the road outside.

But eventually the road and the moment both end anyway, and as the door squealed on its unoiled hinges, another burst of forking lightning illuminated the porch steps so that she saw her papa on his back, his blood pouring out of his chest and mixing with the rain.

He must have raced from town to get back early, he knew how frightful mama could get. He was so still and quiet laying there. She looked at him a while, and though she was spared further glimpses of his broken form, the one was all she really needed.

Hearing a dull click behind her, she turned dreamlike just in time to watch the second shell in the barrel explode upward, taking away her beloved mama too.

A dull thud shook Mary and the house. Thunder from that far-off lightning caught up to them, gently rattling the windows and her bones.

She couldn’t really fathom what was happening in front of her. It all had to be a nightmare, right? It was too much, her heart failed even to race as she failed to reckon with the night. The perforated door clattered against the side of the house, swinging wild in the pitching wind, she did not even register that a puddle was growing on the hardwood floor. She sat there for God knows how long as numbness flowed through her, seeped from her head into her chest and limbs. There was guilt there too, sitting tight in her chest for feeling any sort of anger towards her poor mama.

Lightning flashed again, silhouetting for a brief instant the form of a cat in the doorway.

Or, it seemed like a cat to her. There were a few that roamed their property and she played with them sometimes, watched them hunt for mice and rats.

This one looked different, though, a little bigger. Had an odd shape.

Its eyes lingered even after the rest of it fell away back into darkness.

They were huge and red. Red like her father splayed out on the steps.

Miss Cornwell.

This intrusion into her mind, as small as it was, shocked her out of her stupor. She looked around dumbly, not quite sure if she had really heard it, but shortly returned to those two sanguinous orbs staring at her.

I see that a great tragedy has befallen you.

Yes… tragedy. It was a tragedy. Her mother and father were dead and it was a tragedy, that’s what it was called. Lightning flashed again, offering her another look at the not-cat. Its fur was pure white, though it faded back into the gloom before she could spy more. Not a cat… what was it, then?

“What are you?” Mary gave voice to her thoughts, though at first the words didn’t come out; she realized her entire body was taut, her throat closed so tight she could barely breathe. She struggled a moment and gasped, cold night air rushing into her lungs and forcing back a pounding that had started at the corners of her eyes. She worked her lungs for a bit, the fey creature letting her proceed in relative peace. The sound of the wind and rain beyond the portal of her ruined door consciously filled her ears again, and she raised her voice as she asked more clearly: “What are you?”

I am here to help you and ask for a favor.

“But what are you?” she repeated, utterly confounded. Its response churned in her brain, neither satisfying or particularly informative. It was peculiar enough that she did not quite think of the still-cooling corpses of her father and mother, ahead and behind her.

A moment’s thought struck her. “Are you an angel?”

The angel (she was suddenly sure that’s what it was) ignored this, answering instead: I offer you a wish, Miss Cornwell.

This was somehow the most baffling thing she had been faced with tonight. Of the stories her mama

(her bones her blood her brains on the ceiling)

had told her, few of them had mentioned wishes. They were never brought up in church either; the Lord did not grant wishes, He fulfilled the spirit of His followers in other ways.

… Didn’t he?

“I don’t understand,” she said, abruptly feeling small and very tired. The storm outside seemed to pitch greater, though no more lightning flashed. The angel’s eyes were the only thing that filled her vision now, perfect ruby spheres that captured her in their gaze. She drifted in them, let them fill her and drown her in their holy light.

Was she dreaming after all? “What can I wish for?”

That depends on you, the angel said. Before tonight I would have said your potential was completely negligible, but I did not foresee this event passing. You’re preventing yourself from feeling much at this moment, but I have not sensed an emotional strength like yours in this region for a rather long time.

Mary felt overwhelmed to dizziness, swaying slightly so that she fell hard on her knees. “Emotional strength?” The minister occasionally preached on the virtue of weathering struggles in life, but this was not how he had spoken in his sermons. “I don’t know what to do,” she finished lamely, every muscle in her body and face sore as she felt tears prickling in her eyes. She could barely hear herself over the howling wind as the storm lashed against the wooden house.

Despite the draft racing across the doorway and making a dreadful whistle, the angel was not ruffled in the slightest, not a hair on it was displaced. Mary felt that scorn bloom in her chest once more, towards herself now.

How could she show such dreadful weakness to an emissary of God Himself? She must have faith in Him and His helpers. It’s what her parents would expect from her.

But what to wish for, then? She pondered again, missing her seat on the pew under the stained glass window. She knew God would not tell her outright, but if she thought enough…

… ah. Of course.

“I wish,” she began, but a hard lump stuck painfully in her throat and she struggled to breathe again. She was all alone, despite the efforts of her parents to keep her safe and make sure she led a good life. Their future together was running out of them and into the ground, between the floorboards. It pooled around her feet and stained her clothes.

Still, she had to make sure. Clarity of purpose entered her and she dared to look into those rosy orbs which were now her entire world: “Can mama and papa go to heaven?”

The angel’s ear flicked, the first sign of motion it had offered her so far. A strange wish, though hardly unprecedented. Many have tried before you to offer their loved ones to the Law of Cycles, though to my knowledge few have succeeded.

A brief pause.

Extraordinary, I do believe that you fulfill the requisite conditions.

Mary wiped the tears forming in her eyes away. “So that means…?”

Yes, the angel confirmed, your parents, Abraham and Laura Cornwell, shall have their souls conveyed to what you may call the afterlife. In order to accomplish this, I require that you make a contract with me–

“Anything! Anything!” Mary sobbed excitedly, tears flowing from her unabated, mixing with the cold rain and blood that splashed at her knees. There was no possible way she could express the relief she felt knowing they would live on forever in His benevolence. “I’ll do anything you ask, thank you thank you, thank you, I can’t believe they’re safe…” The tension of the day and night vanished from her body, leaving her a limp mass of bones and flesh on the floor. Both she and the hardwood now sopped wet from the rain that flew in from the squall.

That is a satisfactory answer, the angel replied, and then the night vanished as Mary’s eyes were filled with heavenly light.

Overland Park watched absently as Momo strode forward–floated almost, it was as if her feet barely touched the ground under that flowing gown.

There was a distinct sense of disconnection, like her muscles had been severed.

Well, that couldn’t be it, she thought lazily. She was still breathing, still standing. Her glazed eyes twitched, watching the beneficent newcomer as she glided across the station rooftop. Words she had never had occasion to think of before entered her head, adjectives like beatific and angelic.

It was strange, but that feeling of wrongness was crumpled up and thrown into a dustbin somewhere in the back of her brain. She, Kaycee with her bleeding stump, and a third girl not six feet away from her who had appeared out of nowhere all watched the woman with loose fascination.

The rest of the girls that had been on the rooftop seemed similarly pacified. The lesbos in green and pink were closest to the angel woman, and as she approached she stooped down to speak with them directly. Her words carried on the air with the same grace of her movement: “Oh, dearest, you hurt so,” she smiled apologetically at the one in the bright pink dress. “Let me make it better, be still now,” she cooed needlessly.

The scythe came forward, its silvery arc draped down slowly towards the girl’s body. It descended towards the tiny ruby ring on her left hand, halted as the point tapped ever so gently on the surface. It hovered there, suspended in time and space.

A second later, pinky vanished into thin air.

The sense of wrongness climbed out of the dust bin and started wailing, screaming at her to move. Get up, kill this freaky hag, run, do SOMETHING. ANYTHING.

But she was listening to herself through a dozen layers of cotton. All Overland Park got in the front of her mind was a whisper, a mere suggestion of alarm. Despite the rain still pounding on her (none of which seemed to touch the stranger, weirdly), all she could feel was a deep and pleasant warmth. Made her kinda sleepy to be honest. She smacked her lips lightly, watched as the old lady flowed from one injured girl to the next. Here and then there, murmuring kind and comforting words in their ears one second and disappearing them the next.

Why just the ones that were hurt? Was this some kind of mercy killing bullsh*t?

Don’t worry dearest, the woman interrupted her thoughts. I tend to the most needy first. I will save you in due time.

Oh, f*ck. This bitch was crazy, it all made sense now. This was some cult sh*t and she was about to get Raptured.

The alarm bells intensified but still weren’t quite getting through. Overland Park sent a desperate signal to her hands and her legs, looking for even the faintest twitch of a muscle. She got nothing for her efforts, and though there was a trickle of frustration somewhere in there it was muted by the overwhelming serenity. These girls were probably being forcibly given to the Cycles, but that’s chill, y’know?

It was not chill, that raw piece of awareness continued to yell itself hoarse. It was not chill at all you retard, you dumb hoe. Do something!

Nothin’ doin’, sorry. The John Wayne-wannabe in the duster went next, now you see her now you don’t. Raytown was between the two of them and the Witch, and just like the others she went without any fanfare. Overland Park did feel a pang that time, quick and sharp. Just as quick it was dulled down again, forced away by whatever magic this f*cking Witch possessed.

The feeling of disconnection between herself and her body grew, like the pressure in a cinched hose. Still too small, too distant for her to act on. To make matters worse, she and Kaycee were the last people on the roof with any injuries to speak of.

The angelic face turned towards them and floated forth.

Kaycee was laying flat out on the stone with her head on one side, unable or unwilling to keep pressure on her leg. Her face had grown even more pale watching all this unfold. Rather than fear it was probably the blood loss: like everyone else on the slanted rooftop, she seemed remarkably unbothered. Just sleepily watching as her friends were slammed straight into the afterlife by some voodoo granny in a sh*tty robe.

That pressure was building, but far too slowly. Overland Park kind of wanted to sit down and take a nap, let God sort it out soon enough.

Unbelievably, Kaycee twitched her head and after a couple seconds managed to turn it on its other side, to look at Overland Park, who couldn’t bring herself to return the favor. The Missouri girl’s lips sagged and her lids were drooping like she was half asleep already, turning over in her drowsiness to get more comfy in bed.

Look at me.

Overland Park’s eyes twitched over. Kaycee’s face was ashen gray. She was already a corpse, cold as the grave, and there was ice in the glint of her gaze. A little bit of drool cascaded down her slacken jaw. Was that gum in her mouth?

This is your fault.

Yeah, she guessed so. Didn’t feel too bad about it… though she guessed she should. This boring fuzziness didn’t suit her.

Momo was upon them now. Whatever radiance it was that kept her untouched by the elements did not extend to either of them; the rain got in her eyes, blurring Overland Park’s vision as she stared at this woman she had tried so hard to kill a few minutes ago. The angel bent down to stroke KCMO’s cheek. “Hush now. I will see you to the Lord, and all will be well.”

If you make it out of this, I want you to do something for us.

Uh. What the f*ck? Sure, whatever.

Momo stood slowly back up. Through the sound of rain was a pronounced pop in her knees, an unexpectedly awkward sound, though her face didn’t give away any sign of discomfort. Wordlessly and with the grace of God, the scythe came down once again.

Make them pay.

Despite everything, Overland Park blinked in surprise.

The silver blade clinked as it touched Kaycee’s soul.

Kailey’ll fill you in. Good luck.

Then she was gone, leaving a slight imprint on the stone where she had caught the rain. The outline disappeared too, the world forgetting she had ever been there.

Momo offered a quick and silent prayer, one hand held up to her chest. Though festooned with wrinkles, her face did not seem to sag. Her pleasant expression of peacefulness had not moved one f*cking iota since appearing in their midst.

After a couple seconds of contemplation, she opened her angel eyes and turned to face the next baptismal candidate. “God tells me you have committed grave sins here, child. I have prayed for you, and now I shall deliver you to Him. Do not be afraid; He is merciful, after all, and I am sure he loves you still.” She said every word with the same unchanging smile, so exquisitely lovely and caring.

It f*cking terrified her. Every millisecond spent locked on Momo's visage deepened the creases of her wrinkles, highlighted every liver spot on the bags under her eyes, emphasized the small tugs and twists in her alabaster locks. She found herself looking into the elderly woman's eyes: there was the beginning of a rheuminess to them, the first clouds of heavily advanced age. Behind that developing fog, though, there was still clarity of purpose. Within this Witch, a white fire burned clean and true.

Above the surf of calm a repulsion grew in Overland Park, buoyed by a desire to get away from this holy woman. The fact that she could not do so irritated her, it sent the small part of her that was still working into a frenzy.

She felt a ray of light struggling to burst through the clouds.

“There is immense strength in you,” Momo whispered. “It is a goodly thing to be strong, but all strength falls away in the face of God. Rejoice in your weakness and you will be free.”

The scythe dipped down again, towards her navel. Her red soul glittered as water poured over it and onto the ground.

Her insides on fire, she dragged her eyes away from that gnarled face towards the silver gem that rested on a chain at the top of her chest.

The ray of light burst through the haze. A narrow beam shot out of her left eye, the greatest limit of what she could muster, piercing the gem in its exact center face.

Momo collapsed, a puppet with its strings cut. Everyone left on the rooftop followed her down, down into the swirling dark.

The last thing her unfocusing vision settled on before she lost consciousness was that little white cat.

After a few minutes or hours, she couldn’t be bothered to tell which, Overland Park sat up. Her muscles ached like she was with fever, and the chill of the rain cascading onto them filled her limbs with lead. Blinking water out of her eyes was a conscious effort. She hadn’t been this tired in a very long time.

The rooftop of Union Station had before held eight, including her. Now there were three. One of them was still collapsed on the roof, her face up towards the sky–farm girl. The other one was arguing with Kyubey.

“... idiot. Everything is f*ckED.”

Plainly.

“Oh, look! She’s awake. Good job you f*cking maniacal prick,” the girl that smelled of cigarette smoke yelled at her. Her head was pounding already, a timpani drum steadily crescendoing with every word out of this haughty slu*t’s mouth. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you in your sleep, you frothing dipsh*t.”

“Ugggghhhhhhhh,” Overland Park let herself lie back down on the rooftop, a small splash issuing from the thin sheaf of water tumbling down. “Just stop talking.”

“OH, am I being TOO LOUD?” Physically screaming now, on God. “I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T REALIZE HOW RUDE I’M BEING AFTER YOU KILLED ALL MY FRIENDS YOU SELFISH whor*!”

Miss Walsh, I don’t believe that’s entirely to your benefit.

Rubbing her temples, Overland Park sat up once more and looked over at the steaming bitch yelling herself hoarse. “You best listen to the rat. You Kailey?”

The angry girl crossed her arms, hiding her clenched fists. “If you use that name again I’ll kill you. It’s Grandview to you.”

“Only reason I ain’t left yet is cuz I heard mention of gettin’ back at someone, and that’s something I understand just fine.”

Several someones, Kyubey corrected her. I would have brought this information to you sooner, but you made that effectively impossible.

She ignored the barb. “There more freaky bitches like that one?” They looked at the corpse not six feet away, a coriaceous old woman draped over one of the glass skylights.

“That’s Momo,” Grandview explained. “That’s who we were having a meeting about before you swooped in like a brainless asshole.”

“Who the hell is Momo.”

That is, in fact, not the person you are referring to. Both girls turned to look at him again. Miss Cornwell was a rather effective agent of mine for some time. To be brief, she was part of the group I sent to the Capitol last year.

Grandview twisted her mouth and stared at the cadaver, serene even now. Water collected in the folds of the flowing white dress, whatever sterling force that kept it untouched by the elements was gone now. “Who are we looking at then?”

A homunculus with Miss Cornwell’s abilities, and some of her memories.

“... What.”

He flicked his ear, though the squeak was inaudible over the rainfall. It’s of decent make, honestly. For a species as primitive as yours, I must admit that I am impressed. The speed with which your President has maneuvered and positioned his administration for the future.

He approached, pawing over the body like common dirt. The United States government was very quick to start studying anything magical they could get their hands on. After some investigative efforts in the city of Chicago, they found a research facility previously owned by the Empire.

Flick. Considerable effort was put forth in a project dedicated to artificial human beings like this one. I doubt, however, Miss Luce and her consilium tried very hard to conceal their work; they weren’t planning to fail in their campaign towards Washington. It is only logical that the military, at the urging of the President, has been trying to accumulate and catalog as many magical abilities as possible, and it appears they have been trying to weaponize such abilities through the use of human simulacra.

“You’re saying this is some kind of clone?”

Close enough. This was, to my knowledge, one of a handful of field tests they’ve been conducting over the last several months. I believe it was intended to stop at the city of St. Louis, to help clear out the remnants of the miasma there.

“So what’s it doing here.”

I can only guess, but memory is difficult to tamper with, even for me. I doubt your military scientists have mastered it. I sent Miss Cornwell to the city often, it is not outside the realm of possibility that the homunculus felt some desire to do the same.

Overland Park had grown mysteriously quiet, lumpen in her repose under the rain. “I guess Raytown was right. Damn.”

“Oh, GEE,” Grandview turned back to her, anger flashing back to prominence. “You THINK?”

“You don’t even know what I’m talkin’ about.”

“I can f*ckin’ GUESS, dipsh*t!”

“Keep it to yourself,” Overland Park wearily cleared the water out of her eyes, a motion she was getting tired of. “At this point, all you need to tell me is where to go.”

Unfortunately, your strength alone will not be sufficient.

“Cat’s right,” Grandview said. Was that a hint of smugness? “This is a contingency I discussed with Kaycee and the others. Unlike you, we f*cking think before we act, and we were scoping out sh*t for a while. There’s a military fort just up north you might have heard about, Leavenworth ring any bells?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, that’s where you wanna go. But if you try to muscle in, you’re going to get f*cked six ways to Sunday. Even before last year, it was one of the government’s most important army bases. Now? They keep it hush hush, but if anyone on base even smells a threat, the whole place gets put on lockdown. Getting in is basically impossible unless you can literally turn invisible.”

“Isn’t that… your power?”

“Yeah, well…” Grandview crossed her arms, water pouring off of her in little angry rivulets. “You ain’t gettin’ in there without me, so maybe learn a little humility. An apology would be nice to start.”

“Nah.”

The last Kansas City girl’s mouth popped open, gawping.

“I ain’t gonna say sorry. What’s done is done.”

“OH,” Grandview threw her arms up, “MY GOD. You know I don't ACTUALLY need you for this, right? I am an ASSASSIN,” her shrill shriek bounced off the rooftop, tumbling down into the parking lot.

“‘Scuse me,” the farm girl interrupted before Overland Park could erase the upstart from existence. Hollow jade eyes stared at them, sunken in their sockets. “You takin’ her into the fort, you said?”

“I GUESS.”

“I thought Leavenworth was a prison.”

It is principally a military base, which also holds the Department of Defense’s only maximum security prison. The United States Magic Force is subsidiary to the Department’s command, and their current largest garrison is located in Leavenworth.

There were cogs turning ponderously in the Homesteader’s head. She was half dead already, talking and moving with a corpse's gait. Once the ailing gray matter finished its work, she turned limply to Grandview. “Take me with,” was all she said. Vacant words from a vacant mind.

“Why the f*ck do YOU want to go?”

“Someone I gotta get outta there. Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Their designated driver threw her hands up again. “Sure, why not? OP here can have the suicide bombing and I’ll escort you on the f*cking NOTHING promise of a rescue mission. The more the merrier. Unless you got a f*ckin’ problem with that, psycho bitch?”

“Fine with me,” Overland Park sneered. “Why did you even bring this up if you don’t wanna go in the first place?”

“If Kaycee hadn’t asked and I didn’t have you to throw at it, I wouldn’t be going anywhere near the fort.”

“She's dead. Why bother?”

“Figures you wouldn't get it, you f*ckin’ reject.” She was intentionally pushing buttons now, Overland Park could feel her skin flushing hot. It was a welcome reprieve from the chill that saturated her, returning some of her sapped vitality. “She kept this place running and I owed her a lot. We all did. This was the last thing she asked me for, and that means I'm gonna get it done if it kills me. Which it probably will, considering I have to cart your stupid ass in too.”

Overland Park again considered this girl’s instant death.

“Any more questions from the class? No? Great, let’s get the f*ck out of here.” Without waiting to make sure they followed, Grandview whipped northeast towards the street outside of Union Station, the downpour obscuring all other buildings around them.

Kyubey was not used to being forgotten so easily, but by his assessments this group had never been all that attentive. He twitched his head to the side before leaving himself, quite unbothered.

Easterly thunder rumbled, echoing on the gabled roof and from the Liberty Memorial nearby. Its false fire persisted in the rain, a beacon to honor the heroic dead. Sacrifice did not halt her eternal vigil over the city, even for the tears running down her face.

Chapter 14: Abashed the Devil Stood

Chapter Text

The towers of the city and its unburied dead sank out of view behind them.

“There’s a visitor center, but it’s been closed since last year,” Grandview said, turning down the radio. She seemed to have cooled down after inhaling some cigarettes, filling the interior of her old car with noxious fumes. “I visited once when I was a kid, back before I contracted. There’s actually a lot of cool stuff there, some historical sites, a cemetery—”

“Don’t care,” Overland Park shut her down. “We’re not going to sightsee.”

“What’s this sh*t?” Overland Park sneered. “Put on something good,” she reached for the dial.

I said, "Hey, Carmen. C'mon, let's go downtown."
She said, "I gotta go, but my friend can stick around."

Grandview’s dagger materialized right in front of the brat’s soul gem, like it’d been there all along. “After everything else, the least you could do is not touch the f*cking radio,” she said calmly.

Take a load off, Fanny.
Take a load for free.
Take a load off, Fanny.

The car jostled roughly over a pothole and the knife actually tapped her gem, the only result a little clink . Overland Park laughed. “Well, you still got some spit in you. Alright, it’s your car,” she shrugged and went back to watching out the window. “Better get there soon, s’all I can say.”

And you put the load right on me.

It ended up being soon enough. Coasting up 73 highway, light woodland gave way to the sleepy town of Lansing, and a token few minutes after that they were on the outskirts of Leavenworth.

The town outside the fort was a place like many others in this part of the country, with old brickwork buildings from the last couple centuries lazily squatting around. Chopped streets all converged around a central square, with the county courthouse situated neatly in the middle. Odd bits of purposeful graffiti were littered here and there, a couple tight alleyways had sprawling murals.

In the midst of her stupor, Syracuse felt oddly attracted to a pair of spray painted butterfly wings shiny in the fresh rain. They were sized up for a human being to pose with, but before she could get a closer look, Grandview’s car rounded the corner and they were gone. She sank further into her seat and closed her eyes, wondering why the Cycles had refused to take her yet.

Trundling up the main artery of the town, the Missouri River swelled with the torrent. It was just obscured on their right by an occasional building and the levee. For a hefty enough town, it was eerily quiet. Even at this time of night, with this weather, you expected to see at least one person staggering into a bar or getting pulled over for a rolling stop. There was just nothing here, an undeserved destitution that begged for inspection.

Turning left, Grandview pointed at an upcoming one way. “The visitor control center is right up this road,” she remarked with certainty that reminded Syracuse oddly of a tour guide.

“Wake up country girl,” Overland Park snapped her fingers. It’d be so simple to shrink her heart down to the size of an acorn. “We comin’ up.” Maybe the magical expenditure would finally let her die, too.

The road in question had a couple signs indicating the visitor center was indeed just ahead, plastered over with tenfold more that said no one was permitted to enter at this time. Grandview swiveled on without pausing, ignoring the myriad of signs on the shoulder claiming “NO ENTRY,” “TURN BACK,” “US GOVERNMENT PERSONNEL ONLY,” and so on.

Turning down the radio to a whisper, Grandview finally did slow down as they came up on a huge brickwork building that towered over anything in the town proper. The visitor center, she assumed, with a sloped green roof and a conspicuous rectangular fade against the brickwork where a sign once hung.

The road they were on continued to a couple gates with booths next to them, almost like a toll center. The road in this area was enclosed by a thick stand of trees on each side, nature’s bollards. Closer inspection revealed a couple of soldiers within, pretending to be bored and inattentive. They slouched at their desks but their eyes scanned the road without pause. It was almost mechanical, certainly unnatural.

“It was like this the last time I took a peek,” Grandview whispered unnecessarily. “I parked in the visitor lot and watched for a while. Neither of those guards moved for like six hours.” She squinted her eyes. “I’m pretty sure those are the same guys as before, too. Who knows how long they’ve been sitting there.”

All three of them watched for a few minutes, peering at the stalwart soldiers in their booths. Aside from their eyes and the rise and fall of their chests, neither moved a muscle. Over the radio, King Harvest’s Dancing in the Moonlight faded out, only to be replaced by Chuck Nasty’s grotesque wailing and gnashing. Before he could even finish saying his name, Grandview literally punched the dial and silence consumed them.

A few more minutes passed by with no change. “It’s always like this,” Grandview said quietly. “They can’t see the car, but they’ll notice if we move the gate and there’s too many trees to go around. I’ve always had to go in on foot at this point, but I can’t enchant people.”

“So just f*cking kill the guards,” Overland Park shrugged. She was tapping her fingers on the armrest, clearly agitated.

“Idiot, the guards have alarms placed on them. The whole base’ll be in an uproar if they get hurt. I’m sure you could muscle in if you really wanted, but even for someone like you, once the perimeter defenses are up it’ll be hard to get through it all. We want to be inside first, then the fun can start.” Grandview mouthed the word ‘dipsh*t’ to herself.

Turning around awkwardly in her seat to look at Syracuse she continued, “It’s actually good you came with. I know you’ve got one foot in Madoka’s ass already but we could use you for a bit longer if we want to get in there. You got size powers or some sh*t, yeah?” She nodded weakly. “I need you to change the car so we can pass through the gate without touching anything. Think you can manage that?”

Syracuse’s eyes swiveled around to look at Grandview, dried but still puffy. Without saying anything, she breathed in and focused, drawing on some of the last reserves of strength she had left. The dark blue patina covering the car was slowly suffused with a gentle green, and the world around them expanded as the Buick LeSabre shrank down.

It wasn’t as big as her Shed had been but she wasn’t used to reducing things, especially not things as complicated as a car. With special attention to the engine and the fuel line, she clenched her eyes shut and fed more of her soul into the vehicle. Sweat began pouring down her face, but within the span of a minute they were inside something roughly the size of a Tonka truck.

“Not bad,” Grandview appraised. “Let’s give it a shot.” Overland Park continued fidgeting as she put the car back in drive and swiveled it out onto the road, towards the gate booths. The light coming in through the windows was skewed, hurting their eyes if they stared. They approached the gate arm, painted in chipped yellow and white. The roof of the car was very close, seemed like it would tap the arm.

Grandview stopped a few feet away, peering nervously up through the front window. The booths on either side of them were blocky skyscrapers now, making her dizzy. “Can you put a little more juice into it?”

Syracuse grit her teeth and looked at her cloudy soul gem, growing darker practically by the second. “If you need more from me later, I don’t think so.”

“God damn it. Here,” the driver pulled a few grief cubes out of the glove box and fed them to her, like her soul gem was some kind of f*cking petting zoo goat. “Hold on, let’s see if we can finagle this.” She backed the car up and moved it over as close as it could go to where the bar was being held up by the lifter; it was scratched and warped here, offering a tiny bit more space. Enough, she surmised, and inched the car forward. The arm passed over the roof and they felt nothing scrape the top of the car.

But the antenna was poking up behind them, and all three tensed involuntarily as they felt a tap when it snagged and pulled through. Grandview gripped the wheel, staring at the long arm on either side of them to see if it had jostled enough to draw attention.

If the soldiers had noticed anything they gave no sign of it, continuing their creepy vigil without interruption.

Grandview sped away from the gatehouse, and after a hundred feet or so she told Syracuse to drop the enchantment. The bending of the light disappeared as they snapped back to their proper size, and the country girl’s head lolled back in her exhaustion.

“Can I pretty please get out now?” Overland Park joked through a false smile. Her left arm was twitching furiously, and her breath was labored like she was compressing her lungs somehow. She looked on the verge of cracking.

Grandview frowned. “They added some new buildings last year that they’ve been steadily expanding. One of them’s the barracks for all the girls that enlisted in the Magic Force, over here.” They swerved through various rigid streets, past the commissary and—strangely enough—a Holiday Inn that was obviously deserted.

I've been in my mind,
It’s such a fine line.

They rolled steadily northwest towards some large housing on the outskirts of the complex. Emblazoned in plain gray stone on an archway in the front were the initials U.S.M.F., unadorned besides.

That keeps me searching for a heart of gold.

“When you open the door, the effect will be broken and people’ll be able to see in here. Close the door quickly—” with a whoosh that sucked the air out of her mouth for a second, the door of her Buick ripped right off its hinges. There was no accompanying bang or clatter, it simply disappeared. Overland Park was gone with it, a matching hole exposing the inside of the barracks.

And I'm gettin’ old.

She clapped her mouth shut. “God damn that stupid slu*t. Change of plans,” she threw the gear back into drive. “Stealth is a bust. We need to be quick.”

Not letting herself relish in finally getting out of the smoke-stained car (so gross so gross she could still feel the nicotine and tar on her fingers), Overland Park pushed all of her rage and irritation into her legs, speeding through the corridors past adjutants and various late night personnel, too quick for their eyes to register what was happening. Nonetheless, she saw a few of them immediately spur to action at the speed of cold honey. She had to figure most of the girls would be in bed, which should make things easy to start.

Sure enough, a mote of effort over the span of three or four seconds was enough for her to find the dormitories, a long series of doorless rooms with bunk beds inside of them, all plain sheets, most filled with girls snoozing.

There was no real goal in her mind. Somewhere in there, she dimly registered that this sort of impulsiveness was why she had ended up here in the first place. She touched at her dress with a gentleness reserved for no human being, really examining it for the first time in months. Lenexa’s blood was there, had dried and darkened so that she could finally tell it apart from the brighter hue of her outfit.

Regret was pointless.

There could be no further consideration, the past and future both fell away into the extremes of her simmering rage. Reason melted in the face of offense, it demanded a response of decidedly disproportionate size.

Physically vibrating so hard she was barely able to contain it, she reoriented herself so the dorm rooms all lay in a straight line ahead of her. The first alarmed shouts from the soldiers she'd passed began to penetrate her ears, she dimly registered a vague force that attempted to stop her entry. Probably one of the myriad of enchantments they had put on the place for security reasons.

It didn’t possess anything like the strength it needed to actually restrict her entry, that stuff was probably reserved for the outer perimeter of the base. She didn’t particularly care either way. To their credit, a siren started up immediately outside. It was practically automatic, maybe even actually was somehow. Fast response time, but not fast enough for her.

She allowed herself another second to think on the injustices of the day. Reflecting her anger in on itself, a flamewas being fed more and more fuel until it swelled into a bonfire, a raging conflagration that was booming out of control.

You know, when she thought enough, maybe she did feel a little bad though.

She had already been on the brink, her strength threatening to overwhelm without an outlet, and just when she thought she would physically burst with it, she let herself loose.

She had refused to apologize, but a minuscule part of her deep down knew that was just her pride talking. It was just too hard to say she had been wrong. She hated to lose face.

The barracks exploded, cinder blocks and drywall disintegrating as she launched herself through every room in front of her. She felt concrete and wood and fabric and flesh and bone smash against her chest and face and limbs, she was consecrated in the blood of a couple dozen magical girls who had no idea they had gone to sleep for the last time a couple hours ago.

Man, she basically f*cked up the entire city. It would be one thing if it had just been a girl or two, but she doubted there was much room for them to come back at this point. End of an era.

The entire dormitory collapsed as its support beams and walls were obliterated in a fraction of a second. She stood outside in the night air for a second, where sirens had reached the peak of their clarion call. Lights were flickering on in buildings all around, a few people had somehow already run outside. Just for good measure, she turned around and ran back through the rubble that was still falling in on itself. Got a few more girls on the way into the barracks, probably a mercy compared to suffocating or slowly getting crushed.

Underneath all that boundless fury, a little hole had been growing for quite some time. As limitless as her strength seemed to be, now she could feel all that energy and willpower being drawn into it.

She could feel the slight sting of bullets on her back, of the non-magical variety. Man, they were quick. She spied a few girls transformed into their outfits, pounding through the hallway towards her. Thirty milliseconds later the crumbling fragments of their soul gems slipped through her fingers, onto the ground at her feet as their bodies crumpled behind her like so much common trash.

She was doing what had been asked of her, and yet the hole beckoned. None of that satisfaction she reveled in was forthcoming. As quickly as it came, she could feel the vast reserves of her strength depleting. Distantly she felt small arms fire actually begin to have some effect on her, shredding through her legs and arms and upper torso. Dried blood was obscured by fresh, the lace of her dress was joined by stringy bits of her own body.

She felt her heart explode in her chest as a bullet or two ripped through the striated muscle, blood immediately filling her chest cavity and beginning to pour out of her in crimson streams. The exhaustion was somehow worse.

Maybe she was done. She tugged at her soul gem and lifted it away from her navel, cradling it in her left palm. Couldn’t see it properly, needed to wipe some game out of the corner of her eye.

Yeah, that looked pretty bad. She had never been very good at actually collecting cubes and using them, didn’t have enough patience for the routine, but she had usually managed to keep her head above water.

She looked into her ruby egg and idly watched the torrent of black that pitched and rolled around inside it. That pleasant hue she took so much pride in was all but gone.

Nyla Aaron had used so much magic and energy today, she bet she had minutes at most. If she wanted , minutes was all she needed to fix it back up like new. Problem was, she was going through her mental calculus and, wouldn’t you know it, it didn’t feel like that’s what she wanted to do. Goodness knew she never did what she didn’t want to.

Her tongue rolled around in her mouth unpleasantly just as another projectile passed through her cheeks and obliterated it. She felt the last flecks of gem shards stuck in the back of her throat.

Yeah. She was done. Not one to mull things over, Nyla raised her right hand, formed it into a fist, and brought it down on her own soul like a sledgehammer.

For an instant she barely felt the silver casing deforming, twisting, snapping and melting at the tips from the raw energy of hand meeting hand. Another instant passed and her life bled from between her fingers.

“Jesus f*ck,” Grandview screamed. They had pulled away from the barracks not ten seconds ago and already it was reduced to a smoldering ruin. She was supposed to draw attention away from them, not level the entire f*cking base. Grandview hurled every obscenity in the world at Overland Park for her lack of control and at herself for thinking this would go even remotely according to plan.

Whatever. She tried not to wince as dust and the occasional bit of brick showered her through the gaping hole in her car. She steered her injured steed up the blacktop towards another building in the complex, squat and unadorned with anything which might give its purpose away. If she remembered correctly, this was in fact the prison. The door was no doubt firmly locked; Overland Park’s rampage had conveniently launched some debris through the wall next to it, large enough for her to squeeze through.

“You need to get the hell out now, ” Grandview yelled over the cacophony surrounding them. Sirens and the crashing, breaking of brick and wood threatened to overwhelm. “I’m leaving in ten minutes with or without you or anyone else, you got that? If I don’t get f*cking crushed first.” The brick and mortar buildings around them were starting to stretch and contort unpleasantly, the telltale warping of miasma fog curling around them. “Make it five.”

Syracuse didn’t even look as she bounded out of the Buick, worming her way through the hole. Even as she left the car, it faded from her vision, but for a couple glints in the air where the door had been ripped away.

The sounds of fighting and gunshots muffled as she fell into the hallway. Half-expecting to get shot on sight, her eyesight adjusted and revealed a conspicuous lack of guards. Probably ran outside when Overland Park had tripped the alarm, no sense in worrying about it now. She looked back and forth, taking in a lengthy row of prison cells on either side of her. Plain cinder block housing with stereotypical steel bars, it looked about as cramped and miserable as she expected.

In front of her was, in fact, a little girl who couldn’t have been older than 10. She was absolutely terrified, her eyes big and round, showing entirely too much white. Her little chest heaved with panic, and she had long black hair which was stained with white dust from the debris crashing in. A quick scan to either side revealed others too, one sleeping on her cot like it was business as usual and another actively pulling at her bars.

There were so many of them, portioned out one or two to a cell. The building was huge, and looking everywhere would take too long. Cathy might not even be here. She wanted to wail, it was all such a horrible waste of time, a risk which could accomplish nothing but put her literal soul in mortal f*cking peril.

Her feet were frozen to the ground for a precious few seconds, and then something inside her slid into place. Things had quieted down near them aside from the occasional rumble, and with shaking fingers she laid her hands on the bars, preparing to shrink them down.

If I were you, I would leave immediately. The facility is in sufficient disarray that you might even escape unnoticed, if you manage to avoid the archon’s path.

“f*ck off, cat.” Something was wrong; the bars weren’t changing. Probably enchanted; even as the concrete around them began to twist and take on a bit of that sickening wraight-light, the bars themselves remained unmolested. She bent to look closer.

I don’t see why you’re trying so hard to help these girls, frankly. Most of them will get captured again if you do succeed in freeing them. Some of them are even quite dangerous!

There was a thin patina on top of the gray steel, like someone had brushed oil on them. Definitely some sort of protection here, but the question was how strong. Could she overcome it, as weak as she was now? Syracuse squeezed her eyes shut for a second, a sense of panic rising in her throat like she would vomit it up all over herself. She just needed to ignore him, this was senseless.

I agree, it is senseless. I don’t understand why you would put yourself in a position of harm to free others you don’t already know.

“I’m already dead, Kyubey,” she sighed and leaned her aching head to rest between two bars. The girl inside regarded her with suspicion. “I lost everything in less than three days. If Aimee were still here then it’d be fine. All I want is to see her again.”

Then why bother with this course? If you simply allow your grief to overcome you, then you’ll inevitably be with Miss Townsend again by virtue of the Law of Cycles. Engaging in this behavior jeopardizes that chance significantly.

She KNEW that. This was absurd. And yet there she was, fiddling with the door’s mechanisms again. Once she figured out the first one, the rest would be easier. “I don’t know. I don’t know, okay?” That wasn’t quite true. This was the dumbest f*cking sh*t she had ever done, aside from contracting in the first place, but she couldn’t get that girl’s scrawny, acne-ridden face out of her mind. Just thinking about how stupid it was made her angry, converted some of that raw shame and sadness into anger, filled the emptiness of her belly a little bit.

“One of the girls staying at my place got taken away. It’s a long shot, but I thought she might have been brought here.”

Yes, young Miss Brenshaw. Syracuse whipped her head around to glare at him. Figures that the little asshole had known all along. But you can see inside the cell, that is clearly not her.

“Well, I don’t know where she is, and I’m already here.” Her hands were steadying as purpose clarified inside her, crystallizing into some calm. “Doesn’t feel right to leave the rest behind and just take her.”

A noble goal, though foolish.

Something was weird here, something maneuverable, but she couldn’t figure it out while he was taking up her f*cking attention like this. “If you don’t want to help, just let me get this done. Everything we do is foolish, Kyubey.”

An astute observation. The Incubator studied her for a few seconds, a scientist examining a bacterium under a microscope. It made her skin crawl but she forced her eyes to lock with his, verdancy clashing with blood.

The Cycles will take you if you try to open more than a couple of these. Try the cell block four to your left, containing one Miss Garnill. She is more than amenable to your cause and will be far quicker than you.

She didn’t even question it, sprinting to the specified block. Inside was an older girl, maybe older than Syracuse. Easily over six feet tall and brawny in a way that would cow most gym rats, she was pacing back and forth in her mean little cell, getting about three steps in before having to turn around again. Miss Garnill looked ready to rip her guts out as soon as help.

Ignore the bars themselves, they and the walls inside the cell are magically inert. The walls around the frame are unfortified.

He was being unusually helpful, but Syracuse had no time to ponder that oddity. Grandview could already have left for all she knew, which would obviate the point. Focusing on the cinder blocks containing the pins which held up the frame of the cell door, she shrank them each down until with a powdery crack they separated from the cinder blocks around them. A round dozen later and the entire door fell to the ground, scattering dust in a limp puff.

“FINALLY,” the towering girl bellowed, as if she had been waiting for this exact thing for days. Without wasting even a second on thank yous, Miss Garnill transformed into her outfit–a brawler’s uniform, loose shorts and a wifebeater that would have made Syracuse blush to look closely–she started sprinting down the hallway away from her, pulverizing the walls with her meaty fists. The sound of collapsing walls swiftly rose to a thundering din and the foundation itself seemed to shake with the girl’s passing. Each cell door was open in a handful of seconds. Smaller girls with a fine coat of dust on them were poking their frightened heads out, rabbits scanning for passing predators.

You’re wasting time, Kyubey admonished her. Miss Renshaw is in another block. Follow me.

Syracuse’s heart leaped into her mouth at the faint taste of hope. Kyubey proved quick and he had to stop for her to catch up a few times. The prison continued for several hallways–only one or two guards remained in the building, laggards or cowards who didn’t want to be outside, heedless of the wraiths that would soon prey upon them inside. They paid her no mind as she raced along, passing one, two, three cell blocks in a labyrinth layout that made her head spin trying to keep track of it. She wanted to ask him why, but had no time for it. It didn’t really matter anyway, as long as they made it in time.

Finally, the cat blurred into cell block E (the miasma giving it another six trailing Es), another dismal row of cells just like the rest.

Seven down on the left.

A stitch had formed in her side and jabbed at her angrily as she sprinted down the hallway. She dared not entertain the thought that Kyubey was leading her astray in some sick prank, other nameless girls blurred around her as she dashed and her face edged around to peer in–

–and there was Cathy in the same ratty Mickey Mouse shirt, even dirtier now than when Syracuse had last seen her. Syracuse didn’t allow herself the pleasure of a hello before starting at the frame. She didn’t have to glance to know her soul gem was teetering on the brink, the swirling dark encroaching fast.

As the cinder blocks snapped away from their neighbors, Cathy looked up first in confusion and then shock. Syracuse resisted the urge to reach through the bars as she continued working at each pin. Inside her, exhaustion and excitement were fighting as each pin separated. Her damsel gawped openly at her for a few seconds before getting up and battering stupidly at the bars, presumably trying to help.

Three left.

Two.

One.

None, and the bars fell.

Before they reached the ground, the Homesteader was gone.

Cathy blinked, too confused to really register what had happened. She clapped her hands over her ears as a sharp bang sounded from somewhere outside the prison.

“What is that?” she asked no one in particular.

The fort has grown very dangerous, Kyubey startled her. He twitched an ear, as calm here as in someone’s lap. Miss Wilds has freed you. I recommend you follow me if you want to avoid wasting her effort.

“So that was actually her? Where did she go?”

We should avoid wasting time, Kyubey insisted. There’s transportation just outside: Miss Walsh will leave in mere seconds, if you’re not in the car with her you will certainly die here.

Cathy stifled her questions and followed Kyubey back to the hole in the wall that Syracuse had entered from, rent wider at some point by Miss Garnill’s efforts.

An assortment of magical girls was wandering the road, some clearly confused what to do now. Others sprinted as hard as possible in every direction, clearing out as quickly as possible. A couple lifted into the air or disappeared in subtle flashes of light, graced by the magic of whatever wish they had been lucky enough to request. They would survive, probably; the rest took off on foot, several with supernatural speed that took them out on the road or into the woods around the fort. Their fate was not quite as certain.

Cathy was even less assured, pumping her legs as quickly as her lungs could sustain them in this maelstrom. The sounds of destruction were more pronounced now, echoing booms and crashes clashing with the rapid pops of gunfire spreading around them. Rain splattered Cathy’s face, and she wiped grime out of her eyes as lightning flashed overhead.

Miss Walsh is parked a few meters down this way. You may rest soon Miss Renshaw.

Dutifully jogging behind, Kyubey led her south down the road which was now littered with large chunks of twisted iron and splintered wood. Screams started to join the din around them, battering her ears. Before Kyubey could warn her, she stumbled into something clearly not there and tumbled back into the ground, gasping for breath.

Miss Walsh, please open the rear driver door. This is the young girl that Miss Wilds was trying to find. I urge you to leave immediately.

A hole in the air opened and the sickening smell of nicotine smoke poured out, making her gag. A mountain of cigarette butts spilled out onto the asphalt from the back seat. “Don’t gotta tell me twice. Get in kid,” she shouted like a f*cking New York taxi cab driver. She had a smoke in her hand, was puffing on it like she wanted to eat it and the only thing stopping her was God.

Cathy fell in awkwardly, kneeling on the seat as she tried to worm into the invisible car. The door in the front passenger side had been blown out, probably would have been easier if she had just gone around, she thought to herself.

As soon as her feet left the ground, the girl in the driver’s seat stomped on the gas and the door swung shut from the momentum alone, slapping the soles of her feet painfully. Squealing tires added their own voice to everything else, and lightning flashed again to promise thunder on top. Her head and legs and lungs ached. Above all she was petrified.

“Just in time, I was two f*cking seconds away from punching it. I take it Syracuse is gone?” she asked without taking her eyes off the road. The girl formerly known as Winterset didn’t know how to answer, either from being uncertain or being distracted.

They were too late to avoid the miasma’s effects taking root, and the road ahead of them stretched interminably. Wavering buildings lined the road to the southward horizon, forming a nauseating Droste effect that made her want to be sick all over the back seat. Lightning struck again, shuttering Cathy’s eyes in the dark like a polaroid. A gale was encroaching from the east. Lightning flashed so much now, it was a strobe light going off inside her own eyeballs.

Light spread across the sky, illuminating them not much less than if it were day. To their right, it revealed something strange and unearthly, so strange that Cathy had no idea what to make of it.

A lumpen mass of crimson had risen above the blocky housing of the fort, crushing anything unlucky enough to fall beneath its girth. It writhed and pulsed like a living thing. The surface swirled, vaporous protrusions whorling and twisting in the approaching storm. It reached far above, a swelling cyst ready to burst and disgorge foulness.

Cathy had never been taught the word “archon,” but her flesh rippled into goosebumps like it already knew the meaning.

“We probably should have thought this through a little more,” the girl in the front seat said to no one in particular. She glanced up at the massive thing periodically, despite her attention to the road. Without showing any outward signs of it, she reeked of nervousness.

An odd screeching noise pierced the night around them, louder by far than everything else that already assaulted their ears. Cathy’s heart pounded in her chest, an overwound clock whose springs threatened to snap. The screeching resolved itself, attempting to form words which failed to coalesce and settled for a grinding that she could feel directly in the folds of her brain.

What in the actual f*ck was going on? She had her head bent awkwardly to watch as warehouses, penitentiaries, housing all crumbled around them. People were crushed by falling debris or shooting at the maroon specter which reared above them now. Even if the screeching didn’t cover it up, the radio no longer emitted anything but a horrid electric crackle. The driver didn't bother shutting it off.

Her heart somehow beat even faster, a hammer threatening to fracture her ribcage. The driver swerved to narrowly avoid hitting anyone or anything still on the road even as the rain plastered the windshield and splashed through the gaping hole in the side of the stinking car.

There was an exquisite feeling of panic that was suffusing her whole body, looking up at this thing. Somewhere in her brain she registered that it was responsible for the violence and the sounds that vibrated in her bones. Even as she watched it reach skyward, amorphous and mountainous, a rupture in the mass formed. A slit widened in the red, cleaving it in two.

The gap convulsed, giving form to a gargantuan eye that shone like freshly oxygenated blood. It looked out towards the east, absorbing the flashes of the lightning, unwavering. A slick of rain cascaded down its glossy surface, and a mouth began forming underneath to match. Granite teeth the size of people gnashed and crushed each other, doing little to dampen the issuance of a small whining which built inside.

The eye blinked once, way too quick for how big it was, offering a wet smack that thudded in her chest. Lightning was so quick now that the light had no time to fade, saturating them in a sharp glow. Without warning, that light began to churn from white to a sickening, fiery red. They were suffused with it, everything outside and inside the car turning to a rosy shimmer. The whine turned into a throaty scream, rattling the bricks and window panes of every building on the base.

The cyclopean concretion gathered energy in its bloody pupil until it was almost blinding to look at. A cyclone shriek surrounded them, rocking the car and deafening them. The ground underneath was shaking so hard that she was afraid they would turn over, and for a wonder the driver let up on the gas just a hair.

Ozone suddenly filled her nostrils: in a microsecond burst all of that energy launched out eastward into the sky, a ruby pillar that split the storm, piercing it like a spear delivered by a god. Cathy hid her face from the heat and the light, lest death take her just for daring to steal a glance.

It disappeared just as quickly, and she rubbed at her eyes to try and get the imprint of the beam to fade from her battered retinas.

The lightning abated, drowning them all in blackness… but only for a few precious seconds. As if offended at the interruption it returned to fill the gap, to double in intensity. It spread, blanketed the sky. It was a shimmering net threatening to ensnare them in its folds.

The mammoth beast shivered and its awful mouth gaped. Another shriek rocked them, a terrible mewling like a colicky baby clamoring for mother’s milk. Infant rage was magnified a billion times into the engined whine of untethered rage.

Cathy felt her ears pop in protest. Her hair was standing up on the back of her neck, and she could feel static building in her fingertips. She was going to die here, she just knew it. She should never have left Iowa, this place was f*cking mad.

“ALMOST OUT,” her chauffeur screamed over the furor. Crimson light began to gather again, but the lightning was so thick that the brightness and sound of it rolled over them like water, deafening everything.

As she watched through blurry eyes, heaven’s fury collected together in one giant fork. In one instant it lanced from miles away down towards the base, skewering the monster, spilling its crimson gore and drowning those unlucky enough to be near. A wicked screaming even worse than before rose around them as it began to pulsate and flail, the earth beneath them was shaking like it was going to rip itself apart.

Cathy rocked violently as the wretched Buick slammed right through the same gate it had crept under not ten minutes ago. The storm grew behind them, the wind howling as a falling star collided with the towering creature, thrashing it over and over with light and rainbows. Themis clashed with Phoebe and rent the world in their rage.

The trees of the road leading in and out of the fort surrounded them, and she did not dare look back at the destruction of the miasma as they fled into the night.

An hour later saw them pulling up in front of The Shack. The front passenger seat was soaked through, and both Kailey and the new kid shivered with unseasonable cold. Instinctively she popped open her box of ciggies, only to find it empty. She really needed to cut back, she thought as she parked randomly in the lot. The Doobie Brothers were just finishing up a song, telling her it was better than nothing. She told them to f*cking stuff it and shut the car off, hoping the water hadn’t damaged it too badly. She might need to dip into the coffers and get another beater after tonight.

She gestured to the chick in the back to come on in with her, and to be honest she was just too damn tired to try and keep the rain off her. She walked to the door dripping like she was fresh out of the shower and muscled it open into the overly warm joint, stumbling in on Liberty and Perry. The former’s sunshiny dress was stained all over with drying blood, and Perry was kneeling down to tend to the younger girl’s missing eye.

More nonsense. She just wanted to go home to her crappy apartment and die. She was so tired of this bullsh*t.

“Good f*ckin’ Lord, Kailey!” Perry gave a low shout, clambering to her feet. “Where you been? We ain’t been gettin’ a hold of anyone all night, what happened? ” A man’s dulcet tones warbled out over an antenna radio on the countertop, formless words failing to grip any of them.

“Everyone is dead, Perry.” Both the girl and the woman gasped, but she didn’t want to get peppered with questions and preempted them: “I almost got killed rescuing this one,” she nodded limply to the pimply newcomer, “and I am dead tired. I’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay? Just let me go home.”

“Hell, you’re lucky I don’t beat you raw this second,” Perry’s screams filled the room. “You come in like that and expect me to jus’ let it go? You’re out of your damn mind ,” she summoned her spatula, its gleaming edge jabbing forth violently. “What the everlovin’ sh*t you talkin’ about, everyone’s dead? ”

“I mean,” Kailey tried and failed not to grit her teeth together, “everyone’s dead. Kaycee is dead, Blue Springs, Lee, Raytown, the country chicks that came in yesterday. Even the Kansas chicks are all dead now. They’re DEAD, ALRIGHT?” Her blood was pounding in her temples and it was taking all of her effort not to stab the f*ck out of her friend. She was dangerously close to busting out in tears and she would rather kill something than do that in front of anyone.

Before it could actually come to blows, Liberty was suddenly between them, her golden spear in hand. The yellow and red mixed violently on her outfit, sunshine and coagulated blood fighting each other for dominance. It gave her a weird feeling of menace that hadn’t been there before. What had happened to her , anyway?

“The last thing we need is both of you fighting too,” she said, her knuckles whitening as she tightened her grip. “Kaycee is really dead?”

“... Yeah. Yes,” Grandview backed down. The voice on the radio became sharper to her, something about the freak storm coming through. She tuned it out. “The rest are gone too. It’s complicated,” she bitched out, exhaustion consuming her again. “Just… I don’t have it in me right now.”

Liberty’s gaze hardened, the arch of her brows coming down as she considered. There was a new hardness there, something refined which had not been there the last time Grandview saw her. There was no light in her remaining eye. “Fine. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Perry planted her fists on her hips, pursed her lips, but said nothing.

“Um,” Cathy peeped. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know who any of you are. What is this place?”

Perry squawked, having forgotten all about their awkward guest. “Oh, sh*t. I’m sorry dear,” the tension evaporated from her prodigious body. “You came with Grandview here?”

“Yeah,” she scratched the back of her head, not knowing what else to say.

“Well, let’s get you put up. We have some beds in the back…” Perry gripped her softly but firmly at the arm and guided the hapless girl into the back, towards the cots. She sent one venomous glance back at Grandview, who pretended to ignore it.

Liberty’s spear vanished, and the younger girl seemed suddenly very tired. That ragged hole in her face... “You were out hunting?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

Both of them stood in relative silence for a bit. The reality of the situation would soak in eventually, but for now they both wanted merely to sleep. The evening did not feel real, and so reality would have to catch up with them in the morning.

“So, what now?” Liberty said almost to herself. She had always known that her mentor would be gone someday, but she had been with her a scant few hours ago. Dead? Really? She didn’t really want to process it, or couldn’t. The words just didn’t coalesce properly.

“I don’t know,” Grandview sighed. “I doubt this kind of sh*t came up while you both did your thing.”

“Well… sort of. We talked about Kansas,” Liberty offered limply. “What happened after DuPage.”

“Well? What should we do now, Kaycee?”

Liberty visibly startled. “Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry,” Grandview fell more than sat at the picnic table. “I’m just nervous is all.”

Liberty didn’t have anything to say to that. She didn’t need to, as the nameless radio announcer increased his volume and snagged their attention at the same time: “This is a KCUR special news bulletin, coming to you live,” the formless voice crooned. “The President is expected to deliver remarks on a presumed magical attack which occurred at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas roughly one hour ago.” Liberty turned wordlessly, staring daggers at the older girl, who merely shrugged. “Please standby while we wait for clarification. Again, this is a special news bulletin…” the man continued his spiel for a bit. Perry emerged from the back of the shop, her new guest no doubt chowing down on some leftovers.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, a mellifluous voice ushered forth from the speakers.

“Hm-hm.”

The snapping sounds of camera shutters intensified somewhere in the background.

“My fellow Americans,” the President began, “Today is a grave day for our beautiful nation. There has been a terror attack, which has been confirmed to me to be magical in nature, in the very heart of our country.

“Fort Leavenworth, a critical military and intelligence center in eastern Kansas, was assaulted by a rogue Magical Girl of unknown origin. Though we do not know her motives, what I can tell you with certainty, now, is that the threat has been neutralized.”

Well, at least that rotten bitch was gone. Had to hand it to her: Grandview could only have dreamed of causing this kind of damage.

“Thanks to the brave men and women stationed at the fort, and my own daughter Malia, the attack was ended before it could spread beyond the confines of the fort and affect civilians. I repeat: you are safe once more.

“But,” he asterisked, “the destruction we did suffer is far too great. My associate Miss Hong and her taskforce are investigating and will provide an estimate of the damages, the loss of life, as soon as possible. In the meantime, I have taken steps to bolster our defenses against anything of this nature happening on United States soil again.

“Following the crisis in Georgia last year, I announced plans to establish a garrison for the United States Magic Force in every major city across the country. I want to emphasize that despite their proximity to this attack, no such garrison exists in Lincoln, Des Moines, or Kansas City. If the Magic Force had developed a presence in these areas, this tragedy may have been stopped before it ever had a chance to begin.

“In the coming weeks, I will be working directly with Miss Hong and senior members of the military to quicken this process, to be more aggressive in our approach to threat assessment, and ensure the safety of our home from the possibility of further threats like this one.”

There was a brief pause, punctuated only by the staccato of clicking cameras.

“We have clawed our way back from the senseless horrors of 2014, making great strides in the last year. Many of you still lack the stability and comforts from before the Magical Catastrophe, but I promise you this, all of you, here and now: we shall never return to that darkness. I will not allow this nation to stumble again.

“I ask of you only this: be strong. Stand tall and proud. America shall never fall as long as we remain together, united.

“I will provide further updates as my administration collects information and makes decisions. I will not be taking any questions at this time.”

An incredible clamor rose up as reporters vied for his attention, but they were quickly quieted, artificially muted as the news reporter returned to the fore to begin his deep dive.

“Well,” Grandview said after a moment’s lazy contemplation, “that was a big load of nothing.”

“What?” Liberty whipped her head around, wincing as the movement caused a blossoming sting in her eye hole. “They’re going to start moving troops into the city. You heard him, right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Grandview leaned back on the picnic table, working a little too hard to look like she was breathing softly. “I heard. They’ve already been trying to do that for ages. No sense in worrying about it, genie’s out of the bottle and all that.”

“Grandview’s got a point,” Perry piped up. She leaned on her countertop, worry more plainly written on her face. “For better or worse, this is what we’ve got to deal with now. Only God and time’ll tell how it shakes out.”

“I admit,” Grandview grunted, “it’s looking rough. We didn’t lose this many people even back during the Unveiling. We’ve got some work ahead of us.”

Liberty started rubbing at one temple. Grandview couldn’t imagine what she was feeling right now. The young girl’s shoulders sagged with the weight now on top of them, like bricks stacking higher and higher. Eventually she would be forced to strike her plans and lay them down. “I don’t want any of this,” she said quickly. “Kaycee had a lot more to show me.” Liberty’s face twisted into a grimace. She was going to f*cking blow chunks at this rate.

Perry clucked her tongue, a weirdly sharp sound in the gloom. “That’s what all the rest before you said too. Nothing ever happens when it should, and no one has all the answers. That’s why you got us, baby.”

“Don’t worry too much,” Grandview reassured her. The words rang hollow even in her own ears. “We’ll try to find if anyone from Kansas is left, and you’ve still got me and Perry after all. We saw Kaycee through before you, and she saw us through too. She chose you for a reason, and we trust that.” Fine words, yet it did nothing to set herself at ease.

Their new leader couldn’t stop herself from frowning. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going through her head: the world was turned upside down, and her cohorts told her everything was fine even as they dangled over the void. She opened her mouth to argue some more.

Grandview didn’t give her the chance to squeak anything out. “Nah, don’t say anything else right now,” she yawned, exhaustion flooding her every muscle. She reached forward, offering a limp touch on the shoulder and a tiny smile. “Trust me. You’ll be fine, kid.”

If only she knew that to be true.

Chapter 15: Epilogue - "Neither Angels Nor God"

Chapter Text

THREE MONTHS LATER

“CQ CQ CQ MG, this is Kilo Echo Zero Delta November Bravo, monitoring.”

Five minutes of silence passed.

“CQ MG, CQ MG…” Chillicothe turned the mic off to pause for a second, then closed her eyes. She felt a rawness in the tips of her fingers, exhaustion creeping in like a parasite.

Why was she even bothering to do this anymore? She hadn’t hunted for grief cubes in days, was subsisting off the small tin box filled with them in her depression nest room. Every time she went outside she was afraid she’d end up in the back of a military van, or even just a regular van.

If it were just the public threats of conscription, it’d be fine. She was used to that by now. The growing silence on all sides of her, on the other hand, was terrifying. Terre Haute had missed the last couple of nets. Columbia--the city, not the girl--was already setting aside office space for a squad of military MGs to move in. What little information she could squeeze out of the place suggested they had plans to scale up to an entire platoon over the span of six months. Seemed the government was planning to make good on its promises to retake St. Louis. The public craved a morale boost, it wanted a little more justification for this particular dispensation of its taxes.

And no one from Kansas City had responded to her or anyone else in weeks. There was no outward sign of it (not that she had been outside recently to witness any such thing), but she had to assume the government had her written down in a spreadsheet somewhere and was closing in.

She started to cry a little bit, affording herself a couple whuffing sniffles. God, she was f*cking pathetic. They’d had a good thing and it was all over now. Maybe she should just get it over with, stop using the cubes. Fade away with the rest of the ghosts at the touch of dawn.

Chillicothe had no energy for this, she decided. Right as she went to thumb off the transceiver for the night, a voice crackled in.

“Sounds like things have gone down the sh*tter. I’m sorry to hear it, over.”

She wiped the snot with her grimy sleeve and sucked in a quick breath, keying in the mic. “Hey Boonville, reading you loud and clear. You could say that again. I thought you were out of the loop? Over.”

“Well, it doesn’t take me long to get back up to speed. I figured I’d check in and see how you’re doing.” A couple seconds floated by. “Oh, yeah. Kilo Alpha Zero, uh, Romeo Tango Alpha, go ahead.”

Chillicothe smiled in spite of things. “That’s more like it.” She sighed openly. “I don’t want to talk about all that right now, it’s been awful here. Can I ask you something instead? Over.”

“Shoot, dear.”

“When did you get your license to broadcast? You’re kind of bad at this,” Chillicothe laughed, an airy, shaky sound that surprised herself. “Sounds like it’s been a while.”

“You’re right on both counts. I told you before, I’ve been preoccupied. I first tested in ‘94 and just barely passed in ‘96. Not really my calling if we’re being honest, over.”

Chillicothe frowned at her radio assembly. “I’m sorry, I could have sworn I just heard you say 1996.”

“I said ‘96, not 1996. Close enough. Whoops, sh*t, sorry for interrupting, over.”

“So you’re, what, in your forties? Go ahead.” It was hard to keep the skepticism out of her voice, as polite as she was trying to be. This was a dumb joke.

“Oh, not nearly that bad. I’m in my late 20s, if I remember right. Time gets kind of weird out here. I got certified when I was eight and haven’t seriously used a HAM since I was fifteen, so sue me if I’m a bit rusty, over.”

“... Sure. That must be quite a story, over.”

“Like I said, it’s a long one. I don’t feel like telling it all, certainly not on air. Over.”

“Well,” Chillicothe searched for the words to humor this nonsense. “That’s understandable. It’s not exactly safe for us anymore. Less even than usual, I mean.”

“I could always just tell you in person.”

She boggled vacantly at her speakers. So Boonville was just crazy, then. This girl must be f*cking cracked if she expected Chillicothe to broadcast her home address for the entire upper band to hear. “Yeah, I mean… sure? You got a phone number I can text or something? Go ahead.”

“Oh for f*ck’s sake, hold on.”

Nothing happened for several minutes. Respectfully, she refused to break in until the other girl signaled she was done talking… but with each passing minute she felt the pit of annoyance in her belly growing. She almost wished that Boonville hadn’t said anything, she felt like such a fool for indulging this crap. Let her wallow in her misery in peace.

Just when she was about to give up, suddenly all her innards were scooped out with a spoon, forcibly turning her inside out. It wasn’t even painful and lasted only a brief second, not even long enough for her to scream, and then her vision whited out, overloaded by a fearsome glow.

After a bit, she squeezed her eyes open a tiny fraction of an inch, realizing she had unconsciously thrown her hands up in front of her. To protect herself from what, she had no f*cking clue.

Opening her eyes further, she realized that she was now somewhere else entirely.

“Hello, Chillicothe.” The voice belonging to Boonville issued out of a healthy looking adult–definitely not a teenager, a fully developed adult standing in front of her. She was dressed in a tight fitting gray coverall, not even proper shoes. Was that her magical girl costume??

“Wh–” Chillicothe coughed hard, spitting up some bloody mucus onto the steel panel floor. “What the f*ck was that? Over.”

“We’re not on the radio anymore, silly billy. Sorry for not warning you, I didn’t want to give anything away on the high band.” She turned around, dirty blonde hair cropped at the shoulders and swishing airily as she walked over to a dark window. “Come here a sec.”

Chillicothe felt at herself to make sure nothing was missing, on the outside at least. Reassured that all her limbs were in place, she followed the weirding woman and looked out the window.

Her jaw promptly fell open, and the asshole actually had the temerity to lift it back shut for her.

“You’re aboard my ship, the Concord, ” she beamed as they looked down upon the Earth. Clouds like ripped cotton swirled over America, sweeping across the land from Washington to Florida.

Her first thoughts, weirdly, were that it was a lot grayer than she had imagined it would look. Try as she might, though, no words came forth.

Boonville chuckled, turning back to her guest. “Yeah, I felt that way too, when I first got up here. You never quite get used to a view like this.”

Her mouth was bone dry, and she had to suck some moisture back before she could speak, smacking her tongue and lips. “Was this… did you wish for a spaceship? ”

“Not in so many words,” Boonville grinned. “I’ll tell you the full story later. For now, I want you to look over there,” she pointed off into space just to the left of their marbled home. “See anything?”

Chillicothe wasn’t quite sure her eyes were working properly yet, but she peered close anyway. There was something like a smudge on the glass, a blurry fuzzy shape that seemed almost to glitter against the void.

“... Is that another ship?” No telling how far away it was, or how big.

“Got it in one. Next, I’ll give you a hint for free,” the captain turned to look at her passenger. “It’s carrying a very important person. The most important person, maybe.”

“What, you gonna tell me the President is there?”

“Ooh, good,” she tittered. “As it happens, that is exactly who is on that ship.”

Chillicothe openly stared now. “... Why?” There was a pronounced sense of dizziness infiltrating her brain. None of this made any sense. The world had already turned upside down and now it was threatening to turn again, to invert itself into a living nightmare. Could she catch a f*cking break already, god damn.

“Hard to say, though it sounds like he’s keeping to himself for some reason. Anyone who’s gotten close gets shot to pieces in seconds.”

“There’s more of you out here?”

“Oh, dear.” Boonville turned back away from her, tutting. Actually saying the word “tut,” who even does that? “Sorry, I’m used to all this by now. It’s easy to forget what people don’t know, down there.”

Gesturing to a couple plain metal chairs set in the unadorned wall, a rather spartan viewing deck, Boonville strode away from the window. Her hair bounced maddeningly with every light step. “You’re looking a little green, you might want to sit down for a spell while I fill you in.”

Indeed, Chillicothe felt that she might hurl her f*cking guts out onto the viewport. Her stomach roiled like the ocean as she took the offered seat, breathing deeply to try and keep herself from spewing. A glass of water appeared in front of her. Magic or the ship? Who cared, she decided as she started sipping at it. Surprisingly, she started to feel better almost immediately.

“We’ve got plenty of vertigo meds,” Boonville explained. “You need them a lot up here for reasons I’m sure you can imagine.”

She could imagine, sure, but there were some questions she had which were far more pressing. “It’s not just you, then?”

“For a while, it was just me.” Boonville took the seat right next to her guest, crossing her legs and arms comfortably. “I wasn’t the first, apparently back during the Space Race you had a lot of wishes for sh*t like this. Pretty sure they’re all dead though, I’ve been up here for fifteen years now and I never saw anyone else up here in that time.

“This ship isn’t the best, anything Kyubey’s got makes it look like a child’s toy, but I specifically made part of my wish to be able to go and explore other star systems. I was smart enough to make sure it didn’t take forever, either, so I’ve been going back and forth out there for a while now. Studying the odd planet that looks interesting, making friends with the neighbors, so on.”

Chillicothe decided this wasn’t too shocking. Somewhere in that jolted brain was the knowledge that Kyubey was technically an alien, it only made sense there would be others. She would have to do the hard work of processing that casual information another time. “So why come back here?”

“I visit any time I start running low on cubes. Sure, I can hunt anywhere I find sentient life, but wraiths get weird depending on their culture. Familiar territory makes a big difference. I last left almost two years ago, so imagine my surprise when I came back this spring, went downstairs, and everything is on f*cking fire.

“Not only that, but when I got back up here I noticed other ships in orbit. Not just the President over there, some of the major cities have peeps up here too. The girls in New York have a station of their own, there’s a group from Germany, and a couple others I haven’t talked to yet. I imagine there’ll be even more before the year’s out.”

Chillicothe had closed her eyes, soaking this in as she sipped the tonic slowly. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.”

“Well, in fairness to you, things were simpler until very recently.” Boonville leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her face somber. “Some of the places I visited out there, they’ve been at this longer than we have. My ship is the only one I know of that can go between star systems very easily, but there’s plenty of people on the cusp of that. Space-faring races that are taking their first steps into the wider galaxy.

“I think whatever the Empire of Chicago did last year catalyzed our development as a species. When you f*ck things up like that, you get a lot of desperate people doing unprecedented things, and certain ideas tend to catch on. I’m honestly surprised there’s not more of us up here already.”

The spacefarer leaned back again, sighing gustily. “Which brings me to you. You seem capable enough, a bit stiff but technologically minded enough. Competent. Desolate.” Unnecessary, but accurate, Chillicothe guessed. “That’s a potent combination. I want you to come with me and become my first crew member, working comms. You’d have to pick up some other stations too, until we find some more people to fill them out.”

Chillicothe choked on her water, forcing blood into her face and making her eyeballs pound painfully. Once she had managed to start breathing properly again, she got up and walked back over to the window.

“Sheesh, you can just stick to comms if it makes you feel better.”

“No, that’s not it.” She looked down on the slowly tilting orb floating aimlessly in front of them. A strange levity filled her at the prospect of not having to go home. “You want me to stay here with you?”

“Is it that awful of a prospect?”

“No, actually. I was actually afraid you’d force me to go back.” She had been outright terrified, now that she thought on it. The constant fear of being kidnapped or killed somehow had draped itself over her like a blanket, and for the first time in weeks she felt that she had some breathing room.

“Man,” Boonville snorted, “I’m not about to bring you up here, show you all this, and then pat you on the ass and say goodbye. What kind of sh*t head would I have to be?” She laughed, a rich and hearty sound, more than welcome after the pervasive loneliness and fear of the last few months.

“Besides,” she shrugged, “there’s no way in hell I’d want to be down there right now.”

Chapter 16: Credits

Chapter Text

1. L. Frank Baum, La Reine est Mort — Vive La Reine, 1895
2. Herodotus, The Histories, c. 430 BC
3. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, 1962
4. Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, King James Bible
5. Calvin Trillin, Playboy, 1974
6. Wild Bill Hickock, personal correspondence, 1876
7. Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune, 1981
8. Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door, 1973
9. Kansas, Carry On My Wayward Son, 1976
10. Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, 1868
11. Akira Toriyama, Dragon Ball Z Kai Episode 39, 2010
12. Andrew Hussie, Homestuck, 2009
13. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960
14. John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
15. Gherman Titov, interview, 1962

Chapter 17: Random tidbits and throwaway

Chapter Text

The city zoo just to the south, too, was in a state of decrepitude and had gotten that way shortly after the start of the catastrophe. As normal humans suffered merely to walk about in a fog, animals went unfed and their cages grew dirty, and most of them passed away hungry in the deadly cold.

When the wraith haze lifted four months later, a colossal wreck awaited the keepers. Strangely, it seemed the elephants had gone the quickest: where other corpses often lay rotting or even still fresh, nothing remained of the proud, towering creatures but piles of gray bones, picked clean down to the nooks and crannies of their spinal column.

“My life is worth it again,” Sedalia beamed.

“What,” Warrensburg co*cked an eyebrow, “are you talking about.”

“Well, I met a boy today~” the rotund magical girl belted like a songbird as she pranced about in the dorm room. “Sensitive and kind, thoughtful and wise beyond his years, this is the one that I’ll turn into my beaux, my man, my husband, my little prisoner d'amour~,” she continued prattling, exhibiting an expert, supernatural elegance as she tottered on top of the bed and the dresser and even the desk.

Warrensburg felt her muscles sagging, a casual self-defense mechanism. “I thought you were done with men,” she probed almost against her own will. “That doesn’t answer my question anyway.”

“Oh, can you hardly blame me for swearing off the male species after last time? He was such a boor,” Sedalia expounded. “As for my life, think about it. Our Soul Gems serve as an irrefutable proof that our emotions have raw, physical value.” She danced feverishly, a whirlwind that pranced through the room. “When every human is born, their emotional state is net zero. As they progress through life, they undergo a series of disappointments or pleasures, worsening or bettering the overall quality of their existence.” The whirlwind turned into a hurricane, pictures and other fixtures on the wall steadily being ripped away by the gale of her animation. “If your net emotional state is negative, then you would have been better off not being born! But if the net quality of your life is positive, then your birth was justified, and one can say that all has gone well for you! I admit I’ve suffered a string of profound disappointments in the last year or two, but this one is different, I promise you. He fills me with this… this… effusive delight that I have not experienced in AGES. AGES, I tell you. It’s simply divine~ and so my life is officially worthwhile once more and let me tell you it is going nowhere but up!” she finished, the category 5 winds gradually winding down alongside her rant.

As the last of the maelstrom passed, Warrensburg let her hand drop from one eye, a beam of pure condescension extending forth in her best effort to pierce Sedalia’s bubble of joy. “That is the most retarded sh*t I have ever heard. You’re going to dump him in a week.”

In that fabled ground of the Johnson County courthouse in Warrensburg was a statue to Old Drum, that most famous of dogs who–in reality, a rapscallion of the highest order–had intruded on the land of another. This maladaptive behavior had not prevented him from achieving honor of the highest degree: Man’s Best Friend, a title he forever shared with all others of his species.

Or, friend to some, anyway. To others, he was merely a pest. Let him not be disconnected from Argos, who similarly routed in the dung of cows and sheep, yet who cried out in joy at the sight of his master Odysseus.

“Yeah, well,” Perry continued, “needless to say, I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”

“But he’s quite small, I’m sure you could throw him pretty far,” Tipton smiled.

“You a funny one, aint ya? Nah, I think his whole ‘society is from wishes’ schtick is just dead wrong. I ain’t the smartest woman on Earth but I believe in the goodness of people. I think all the good things humans have done in the last so many thousands of years is a more natural thing; it woulda happened sooner or later. His wishes just made it happen faster, if you take my meanin’.” She shoveled a heap of sauce-soaked brisket down her gaping maw, licking her chops. “Think about it: if humanity were more bad than good, wouldn’t us girls end up wishin’ for more bad than good too?”

“I think plenty of us do end up wishing for bad things,” Syracuse raised an eyebrow.

“Bad things, or selfish things?”

“Bad.” She chewed on that thought for a second. “Both. I don’t know.”

Once Chuck’s hooting and scratchy yelling subsided, the radio transitioned smoothly into one of George Thorogood’s lamentations on life. Finally she thought, passing three cars in the span of half a second. She squirmed in the cheap, old cloth seat to get a bit more comfortable, soaking in the intro and first few bars.

… So I go down the streets.

An amber guitar thrummed to a simple beat, tapping into her skull as her tires scraped along the highway.

Down to my good friend's house. I said, “Look man… I'm outdoors, y’know.”

Everything settled into its groove.

“Can I stay wit’ you, maybe a couple days?”

She was Queen of the Highway, soaking in the vapors of a nicotine bath.

He said, “Uh, lemme go ‘n ask my wife.”

Rain splattered the windshield, picking up slowly as she zoomed northward steadily.

He come outta the house. I could see it in his face.

A thrumming settled in her throat, a pulse that hit her heart and brain as sure as her own blood.

I knowed it was ‘no.’ He said “Oh, I dunno man, she kinda funny, y'know.”

The road bounced and jostled her just like the throaty guitar, and she felt a familiar tickle in her belly.

I said, “I know. Everybody funny.”

A heat spread through her chest and arms and the fingers that tapped on the wheel in rhythm with the high hat and the slap of the rhythm guitar.

“Now you funny too.”

George started demanding bourbon, scotch, and beer. Sounded pretty nice right now actually. Almost unconsciously she kicked one leg up, the one reserved for the brake pedal. She only needed one hand to drive anyway; screaming up 71 was child’s play.

[musical short list?

For Grandview specifically on the drive over to Kearney, especially w/r to getting heated:

“One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” - definite choice unless something changes, good blend of rambling and loose and it’s got good driving energy

“Hot For Teacher” - Van Halen, maybe a bit too intense, good synergy with material? very good driving song

“Life’s Been Good” - Joe Walsh, too mellow, would be perfect for a slower reflective scene, maybe too obvious though

“Frankenstein” - Edgar Winter, excellent choice but not quite the right tone, a little too stocky and strong, demanding of the attention

More general purposes:

Anything by Chicago, especially “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” and “Hard to Say I’m Sorry.” Probably avoid using, the name is too on the nose and their music is a little too gentle, would be dope to get 25 or 6 to 4 in there somehow but not likely

Silver, Wham Bam Shang-A-Lang (why did I not use this? Absolutely perfect)

AC/DC, but avoid anything except the best picks like Thunderstruck or Hell’s Bells.

Pink Floyd - most radio picks are fine, but probably something from The Wall. would be better if we could get some Animals in there but they don’t play that album on the radio, ever. Most of Dark Side just doesn’t work here

Earth Wind and Fire - only has a couple songs that get LOTS of air time on the radio, Shining Star would be great though

Hall and Oates - too bad they’re fighting each other, Man Eater would be the go-to but is too obvious

Doobie Brothers - generally high quality, fit Listen to the Music or something in there

The Bee Gees - probably not, unfortunately. Stay away from Stayin’ Alive

Electric Light Orchestra - the only ones they play on the radio are like Don’t Bring Me Down, way too overdone. If they ever played the more instrumental sh*t it would work. Mr. Blue Sky good song but unfortunately does not fit tone and does not see as much radio play

King Harvest - Dancin’ in the Moonlight NEVER gets played on the radio but too good to pass up

Looking Glass - Brandy is a veritable classic but also not the right tone

Steely Dan - excellent choice but hard to fit in, probably not

More stuff by the Police, god damn

John Mellencamp

Black Sabbath? Welcome to the jungle possible, probably nah. War Pigs is goated but overly long, lyrics could probably fit somewhere but heavyhanded probably

f*cking The Doors

Johnny Cash

Elton John’s just too peppy, even his sad songs are peppy. Somebody saved my life tonight could be a fun Dark Tower reference but nah

Billy Joel has a couple bangers but no

ZZ Top: AC/DC but way better, as much as I love La Grange it’ll probably be sharp dressed man or legs though

Dire Straits: shame i can’t fit this in really, solid stuff all around

Avoid using at all costs:

Anything by Aerosmith

Anything by John Lennon (the rest of the Beatles are fine, especially anything by Ringo and most of Paul’s stuff. George is just okay, would be too stereotypical to use in any context his music is appropriate for)

Anything by f*ckING Aerosmith

Anything by Bon Jovi, nice guy but absolutely f*ck those songs]

The short-turf green was ripped and patchy, obviously uncared for in years. Apparently the new owners of the mini-golf course had quickly cut their losses and left the place to rot.

“Cool Crest isn’t really what it used to be,” Blue Springs apologized, sheepish. “It actually used to be kinda nice to look at.” She pointedly looked at a horrible little animatronic: a dwarfish jester holding a putter, blocking the way over a tiny mound between them and the hole. His pants had been pulled down around his ankles and were tangled with the putter, truncating its swings back and forth. Blue Springs couldn’t remember when the poor fellow hadn’t been depantsed in this manner.

“I’ve seen worse,” Warrensburg smiled. “I used to come here when I was younger and it was already pretty bad. I admit, though, the greens are in even worse shape than I remember.”

This section of Independence hadn’t been a great place to live in for quite some time, but last year had done little to improve the situation. Cool Crest was a combination mini-golf course and arcade which served as a palace for the excited young mind. The experience was somewhat marred for adults by the surrounding presence of a litany of used car lots and other run-down businesses, failing restaurants and corner gas stations. Often a disgruntled vagrant or two could be sighted walking on the shoulder of the highway, disruptions to the enchantment which were easily ignored by children still enthralled by the promise of swinging a putter like a lunatic.

Often enough, though, even adults found themselves lost as they wandered around in the grounds. An evergreen sign right out of the sixties thrust proudly above mini-golf courses which delineated themselves at the entrance: signs labeled Kings, Queens, Jokers, and Camelot all beckoned to visitors along fenced pathways to four different 18 hole courses strewn about the property.

It hardly mattered that the Jokers and Camelot were n fatal disrepair, terminally closed to the public, with several of the structures in Kings and Queens not far behind. The fountains failing to throw water and the anachronistic course obstacles–a rusty, penile rocket ship here, an amateur replication of the Eiffel Tower there–did little but to stir nostalgic wanderings in the minds of Olds who visited once a year, if that.

For most adults who had come here in their youth, there was mostly a vanishing, sad smile flitting across their face as they putted two over par on a hole with thickly layered, chipping burgundy paint and no clear markings for the gimmick hole-in-one. There was still less of a smile when they shot their brightly colored golf ball out of bounds, usually followed by a quiet curse. More were deadly utterings towards the business owners when their customers had to fish the ball out of the broken wires leading straight to the water hazard moat of Queens hole 14.

All of it was worth it for the children who visited and screamed with delight as their ball caromed into and out of corners, banging loudly, disturbing the other visitors. They had little to live for, after all. Let them have this if nothing else.

Or, they might have said that this time two years ago. As it was, no one else inhabited the course besides Ella in a plain blue tee and black shorts, and Warrensburg–Brenda Hast–dressed as always in a delicate, elegant dress. Their putters were red and blue respectively, short and tall.

“Aren’t you hot in that thing?” Ella pointed at her companion’s getup, a calming night black accented in blue, patterns of kittens and books strewn about the skirt.

“A little bit,” Brenda admitted, though the older girl’s smile didn’t falter. She tapped her golf ball, performing an adequate approach to the hole between two sets of uneven slats. One under par if all went well. She clacked smartly on the uneven stone walkway set on the perimeter of the hole, standing off the green next to her ball.

“Is that even your outfit?” Ella followed suit, tapping the ball deftly so that it beelined for the dirty cup set into the ground. Missing it by inches, she swung her putter up to rest like a club on her sweaty shoulder.

“If you mean when I transform, then no.” Swing, tap… just a little too hard, with a plink as the ball smacked the cup and bounced back out. Brenda finished with a smart third swing for a neat par.

“So, what, you just dress like that all the time?” Tap, followed by the dink of the ball sinking right in and clattering around noisily. Birdie. Didn’t even have to use her telekinesis to guide it in.

“Not in this one specifically, but yeah. I just enjoy the fashion.” Brenda leaned over the hole to fish the two balls out, handing Ella’s over.

“Don’t you get stared at?” They ambled slowly over to the next course, the first of the hole-in-one gimmicks that was an awful slope with a point of no return and three large holes near the top of the hill. They would have one shot to get it right, or else suffer the unbridled shame of having to finish on a second green over on the other side.

“Not much, anymore. Back when things were normal, absolutely. I got approached a lot by randoms asking if I was in a play, or rude people demanding to take a picture with them,” she chuckled as she set her purple ball down on the tee mat. “Nowadays though, I find people keep to themselves more. I’m not sure if that’s because they manage to draw some kind of visual connection or if it’s just people being generally nervous. I’ve been hassled by strangers a lot less lately.” Tap. The ball rolled up the hill, but too softly to cross the line of no return. It rolled ignominiously back to the starting mat, coming to a sad stop just behind where Brenda had put it down.

“I always hate this one,” Ella commiserated. She in turn overcompensated and hit the back, bouncing it into the wrong hole. The ball sunk into a pipe and spit out on the left side of the course, rolling awkwardly just to nestle in right up against a wall. “You don’t ever worry people will… y’know, report you, even if they’re not sure?”

“Well, sure. But I don’t care to hide who I am because of that.” Line up the shot. “I always did this, even before I contracted. You should have seen some of the outfits I put together, it was really bad at the start.” Tap with more force this time, the ball on a beeline for the middle hole on the hill. “In my mind, it would defeat the purpose if I sacrificed that part of myself just to avoid some undeserved attention.” The ball gracefully glided into the middle hole, disappearing from sight. “There’s always been assholes who stick their nose in others’ business. I’m not about to change for them.” The ball spit out into a little metal cup above the ground, labeled in sh*tty cursive: “Hole-In-One!” Technically, though, it was just one under par. Oh well.

“I think there’s no other way to look at it besides in terms of good and bad,” Jesse lay back on the cot, bored. The walls around them were bare and boring. She was almost always bored now.

“That’s kind of difficult though, wouldn’t you say?” Her roommate Sierra was on the toilet, taking a fat piss. The sound of it filled their little cell and rattled in their ears. Someone was always pissing around here.

“Sort of, not really. Nothing is fully one or the other, but usually people are more good or bad.”

“So you think people are a summation of all their goodness and badness.” The sound of tinkling diminished and eventually ceased completely.

“Well, I don’t know about that. It’s complicated. Look at art, for instance: someone might put out something that was low effort and the intent is just to make quick money off of it, but if it really resonates with someone regardless then it's not really bad.”

Sierra stood up and pulled her prison-issue pants up. They were offered prison uniforms but not required to take them, for whatever reason. “I am less interested in what I got out of something than what the creator intended with it. You can have infinite variations in what people get out of a single piece of art.”

With a modicum of decency restored, Jesse sat up and looked at her cell mate. “I only care what the creator intends if it's a creator I care about, haha.”

“As the inverse of what you said, you can have a piece that had the creator's utmost good intentions put into it as an expression of their worldview or beliefs, but then it can be written off by someone else as being a piece of sh*t or low quality garbage even if it has lots of effort and care put into it.”

“I don’t feel like putting in too much effort into figuring out those details. It’s not my problem to sort out what one person or another feels.” Jesse applied a minimum of her magic and formed a strange hollow bubble in front of her, floating between her hands.

The enchantments of the Magic Force prevented any from exerting their powers on the walls or gates around them, and there had been ample if hushed discussion at night between the prisoners to push the edges of these restrictions. Occasionally the guards would essentially force feed them grief cubes to avoid being taken by the Cycles, so they had little to fear from overuse of their magic. Following this, experimentation had told them that transporting anything in or out was also restricted, which just made sense. Excessive physical damage was not possible, including to the occupants–some poor girl from Chesterfield had gone mad and tried to off herself by exploding, only to find that she simply could not do it. Guards had manifested to take her away soon after, and no one was quite sure where you went after this.

Within a dumb blind spot between all of these rules dwelled an ability to manifest harmless objects from thin air, a fact that Jesse now greatly enjoyed. A vermillion sheen obscured the inside of the floating orb from anyone but herself, and to her it was a window into whatever pleased her to witness. She mostly used it to watch her cat Grimsby back home, or to get a look at any new prisoners, or to spy on the TV in the barracks. She was getting rather tired of M.A.S.H. reruns, though.

“I think that there’s no ‘real’ meaning to it and that all of this is pointless, in a cosmic sense. I think there’s a field of philosophy about that called ‘ontology,’ but I also kind of think philosophers are full of sh*t.”

“My cat’s discovered the joys of my old rabbit fur coat,” Jesse scried. “Oh, I kinda like philosophers. They just sit around and think about some bullsh*t and write it down,” she tittered. “That’s basically all writers ever do, too.”

“I think creative endeavors are fundamentally different from straight up bullsh*tting, but you have a point.”

“They’re both the same, it’s just one is about ‘this is what we think… this is how morals work.’ ”

“I find that more frustrating because it makes assertions on the nature of being. It’s one thing to bullsh*t about stuff you openly admit is not real, it’s entirely another to bullsh*t about stuff which you’re claiming to understand deeply without real basis and which affects people significantly.” Sierra took the chance to lay down on the cot now, exhausted despite doing nothing for the fifth straight day in a row. “I guess I understand what you mean because I can appreciate all the ancient philosophers for trying to determine some sort of truth out of the universe even without having, like, meaningful tools for actually studying the natural world. That’s some impressive sh*t. But they also came up with braindead answers half the time.”

“Well, hardly anyone even does it as a career in the modern age, haha.”

Your species is not forward-thinking enough for that.

“Ah,” Jesse said, vanishing her bubble with a flick of her wrist. Hello again! Any word on getting us out of here?

Until one and a half hours ago I would have said the chances were slim, the Incubator spoke at her from far away. Things have changed; it’s by no means definite, but the odds of escape for you and the rest of the prisoners has increased from approximately 0.60448% to 47.92216%. Those chances will no doubt change further as the situation develops.

That’s quite a difference already!

Less than even odds are not something I would bet on in all but the most dire of circ*mstances, I assure you. I may be able to increase them in your favor if you can provide me with some more information, however. Do you have any insights to provide on new inmates, especially anyone with more physically destructive abilities?

Well, there’s a girl they brought in a week ago from somewhere up northwest, I think near Atchison. She’s really big, kind of scary.

I know the girl of whom you speak. That will do.