Tokiko froze mid-motion as Hikari followed up with yet another question. "Huh? Why are you asking about that?" She paused, scratching at the back of her head with one hand. "I guess I can explain, if you're curious... But it's not gonna help you fight better or anything." For a moment or two, she was silent, letting that disclaimer sink in. And then she launched into the tale.

"So, magical girls have been around for a while, right? We're talking multiple centuries. And even if the world is a pretty safe place to live nowadays, it wasn't always that way." Her head tilted backwards, her eyes looking up into the darkening sky as she delved into the horrors of the ancient past.

"In modern times it's rare to see a shade get big enough to be an actual threat. Most of them are weaker than an individual magical girl, and even the strong ones can usually be dealt with by a quick team-up. Back when there were less magical girls around, though, before the Hex Nights... they could get huge. [i]Really[/i] huge. And every hundred years, for some reason or another, one would grow completely out of control. We're talking [i]Shade-zilla[/i] here, literal end-of-the-world type stuff. Against something like that, the only thing to do was call literally every magical girl available to come and fight it. And even then, with a literal army of magical girls from around the world, it could be a close thing. The Hex Night can get rough, but... those ancient battles were something else entirely." She paused, her voice falling quiet. "Some people died."

There was a beat, a moment of silence, as if she were paying her respects to the fallen of the past. And then she carried on. "Anyway, the fairies thought it was a real pain in the ass to have to deal with a bullshit-strong final boss every time a century rolled around, so they started looking for an alternate route. A cheat, a trick, some way to stop the Shadezilla from even being born in the first place." She shrugged. "I'm not sure about the exact reasoning behind it, but supposedly that's what Hex Night is. By having a big ol' magical girl throwdown every twenty years, they get us to push past our limits, so that the fights between us end up pushing so much magical energy out into the world that the final boss gets split up into a bunch of regular enemies before it even shows up!" 

She smiled cheerfully. "Pretty sweet deal, right? We get to skip the boss battle, [i]and[/i] we all get a chance to win a wish! We still have to fight, obviously, but battles between magical girls are a lot more fun than just beating up shades, if you ask me." She frowned, suddenly unsure of her words. "Well, I guess it hasn't been fun for [i]you[/i], since you've been way outclassed so far. But once I've trained y— I mean, once you've practiced a bit more, you'll see just how cool you can really be. The Hex Night can be harsh for a newbie, but if you can rise up and compete here, then taking on shades afterwards will seem like a piece of cake!"

She jabbed one small fist up in the air, somehow managing to be motivated by her own words. "Yeah!" Then glanced over at Hikari. "How's [i]that[/i] for a tutorial?"

[@VitaVitaAR]