"Why an old warehouse? We're not Yakuza." Nyxia had brought up an important problem, though. Kiyo tried her best to act like Nyxia's situation was normal, so she must have glossed over that detail in her half-asleep haze. Haruna had her own concerns. She meant well—she always did—but Kiyo knew it was unlikely she'd be listened to. Shuuko might be the only one who even listened to Kiyo's quack ideas about magical girls, and only Hotaru maybe kind of believed in them. Fortunately, Tsubomi dug her out of the hole with her own idea that was actually kind of brilliant. "Well, if anyone can think of a way to convince the Boss to go on her own road trip, that could be ideal..." The rest was left unsaid. It wasn't very likely they could convince Rei to do anything with her being none the wiser. In fact, Kiyo rather thought her own idea was quite unlikely to work unnoticed. Tsubomi mentioned Rei "accidentally" taking their power-ups, but she wasn't so certain of Rei's intentions in keeping them under her watch.

"The entire premise behind the one year deadline was that we need to get stronger, otherwise defeating us would not even be a challenge for her. That's what she said, isn't it? If that's actually true, then her plans shouldn't include misleading us about how to get stronger. If it's false, then she was never a threat, and she's just having fun watching us run around in a panic instead of calling her bluff." Kiyo tried not to let her frustration show, though Ember was likely going to notice anyway. It was her own fault for not being around when Ashbringer threw down the gauntlet.

Roche and Suki showing favor to her ideas put some wind back in her sails. "I can rent a company van. They'll comfortably seat seven... or eight." She glanced at the Omega Obliterator. "More importantly, if dark magical girls are black holes, then Hibusa is Rei's event horizon. Whatever 'gravity' we have doesn't really matter here. Her pull is just stronger than ours. Case in point..." She paused. She didn't really like to talk about the time she was gone—when she wasn't sure if she wanted to come back. "Suki. Last battle, you asked 'since when' could I create those stronger minions? I've been able to do it since I fought a giga miseria with another group of girls outside Hibusa town. I fought one, and that's when I came back to share my findings—though, you'd already fought the one on the beach." She tilted her head to address the others. "Unless someone else has gained a new ability they'd like to share, I'm guessing the boost from that last giga miseria Black Gate awakened didn't hit quite as hard as the one from the beach. Am I wrong?"

Nyxia listened as her club mates gave their various suggestions. Potentially growing stronger by beating up the GEMs was appealing enough to the Neon Tempest, but she still preferred cleansing Hibusa Town of the crimes against nature that were Miseria rather than some collection of mildly annoying brats. The idea of Rei leaving town only made Nyxia roll her eyes. Even if it was true that their overwhelmingly powerful, self-appointed leader’s presence was somehow syphoning off the bulk of the energy they’d normally gain by slaying Miseria, getting Rei to take a lengthy vacation seemed like the very definition of a lost cause. Talk then turned to black holes, and the possibility of Dark Girls having some similarities with them, but none of that really mattered one way or another to the Neon Tempest. Roche’s observations were of considerably more interest, and the terrifying tealette was genuinely grateful that her partner was unwilling to do anything without her. That said…

“Well, I’m not really sure how making it a school trip would solve anything,” Nyxia noted with a doubtful frown. “I mean, I’m not even enrolled at your school to begin with. And something tells me the plan here is for a trip that lasts a little longer than just one night,” she added with a condescending sneer in response to Oros’s observation. Damn, this perverted bitch is always so dense… the Neon Tempest grumbled to herself. However shortly thereafter, Suki brought up the possibility of riding motorcycles, which forced Nyxia to concede that maybe the perverted pinkette wasn’t a complete waste of space. Wait… She meant actual bikes? As in, bicycles? Okay, yeah, I take it back, she’s just as much of a dumbass as I thought.

---

Suika winced when Shuuko called her 'Tsubomi,' but she didn't think anyone noticed, given the conversation. She did her best to follow along, but a thought kept nagging at the back of her mind. The others don't know I met Regina...

It wasn't until Nyxia's point about a school trip being flimsy cover that she was finally overwhelmed by it. She hadn't even registered Evil Eye's question before it.

"I met Regina!" Suika nearly shouted her 'confession' of having kept a 'secret' from the Club as she sat upright. "Oh, er, Ashbringer, I mean. At least I'm pretty sure it was her."

A sheepish look took over her face, and she leaned back down and turned her neck so she was facing downwards, towards the dust-covered box she was once more laying against. "She went to the arcade when I was there, so I think she's watching us somehow. She also mentioned that Michi is basically on her side now..."

There was a tinge of anger in her voice as she gave her report. But it faded quickly, and soon she was back to her slightly nervous tone.

"She said that she wants to destroy everyone who was included in her challenge. It sounded like she only cared about the people who were there when it happened, but I don't think that's right..." Would Haruna be included, then?

Finally absolved of her self-imposed 'crime,' Suika started thinking about what had been said.

"I think if we leave, we're going to meet another person who'll be on her side, somehow. Maybe they're already working with her and she just... wants to make us aware of it? But I definitely think that we'll run into another member of her group if we leave town. Maybe even if we stay..."

Suika's face turned back towards the other club members. As if it had been waiting for the most dramatic time possible, more of her magic seemed to come back to her. For the first time since the aftermath of the day the dream happened, she could feel the emotions of the others again. In a split second she shot up to a full sitting position and slapped herself lightly on the cheeks as she tried to make herself feel something, anything, other than what she already was, but to no avail. It seemed she still couldn't affect her own newfound emotions with her magic.

Still, the return to being more 'normal' gave her hope, a smile breaking out on her face. "If we have to go somewhere, we might need two vehicles, in case one breaks down, right?" She tried to think back, but the memories wouldn't surface. Were there two possible drivers among the club members? "Otherwise, if we get one big one we can all fit in, odds are we'll get stranded somehow, since Regina is probably watching us. I wouldn't be surprised if she does something to it while we're there to 'force us to get stronger,' or something."

Another thought slipped by, smacking into her mind at just the right angle to spark the match of recognition. Suika's mouth spread into a wide grin, and she couldn't suppress a small laugh at the irony of it.

"Isn't it funny? Light Girls can grow however they want, but for Dark Girls... The only way to get stronger is together, as equals. If one gets too strong, they take away from the others. I'd guess they grow slower too, but the rest? We can't grow much at all."

She giggled slightly as she looked upward at the ceiling. "No choice but to 'huddle together for warmth,' I guess. Isn't that ridiculous? Your light goes out, and suddenly it pays to help each other instead of strangers."

Suika's smile slowly faded. Is that right? She wasn't sure, but she didn't want to dwell on that thought any longer. "If it's a field trip, maybe a place with a Museum? A chance to study the past... seems fitting for an excuse, doesn't it?"

It was hard to gauge how everyone felt. Fewer people were talking and most everyone seemed to be keeping to themselves. Everyone seemed to have ideas, but few had ways to actually implement them. As Evil Eye implied, it would be next to impossible to force Rei out of town.

"It definitely wasn’t." Suki agreed with Evil eye.

That was about when Nyxia looked at her weird. "Who said it had to be a school trip?" Roche had, but Nyxia wasn’t looking at Roche. She didn't think she secretly wanted to ride up and down the countryside on motorcycles as a lesbian biker gang, did she? Because that was 100% true, but Suki figured that Nyxia wouldn't be able to work that out. "I think we’re gunna have to do this at night or on the weekends, which would rule out making it a school activity." She looked at everyone else. "Even if it’s just once a week, it’s once a week more than we’ve been doing." Then she looked back over the computer. "So you can get a van? Why don’t we try that? This spot here doesn’t look too out of the way."

As soon as her finger touched the computer screen, Suika started talking. A lot. Way more than the old Tsubomi would have. Suki froze in place and allowed her companion to speak uninterrupted.

"Uhhhhh…"

That kinda came out of nowhere. If it was anyone else, Suki would have wondered why they hadn’t said something earlier. But because it was Suika, it was hard to be surprised. Or rather, it would have been hard to be surprised if it was still the old Tsubomi as Suki remembered her. But she was being shown time and time again that the girl she used to know really didn’t exist anymore. Had evil Tsubomi won? Was this how she planned on killing good Tsubomi? All of this to ponder before addressing that she had been confronted by Ashbringer, or anything else she managed to ramble out, both behind and ahead of the current point in the discussion. Suki was more or less paralyzed by the flow of revelations, not given enough time to really absorb much of what she said. So she mentally latched onto something she could understand and turned to Evil Eye with it.

"Can you rent two vans?"

It appeared Evil Eye wasn't holding back on pointed questions today. "Can we handle a giga miseria at night? The last one may have seemed like it went down almost too easily, but it wasn't that long ago that fighting the same one at night felt impossible," she reminded them. "I'm not inherently opposed to taking multiple trips out, but doing so might attract more attention, from Rei, the GEMs, and if Ashbringer's watching, her too. It's also more likely someone or something will follow us home if we keep coming back after every trip."

Suddenly, one of the other Club girls began to speak. It was Tsubomi—at least, as far as Evil Eye knew—but that was about to change. It had felt like the crisis surrounding Tsubomi's desire to 'kill Tsubomi' had been resolved, but rather suddenly, Evil Eye was forced to contend with the reality that there was no real reason why Tsubomi should suddenly just 'be okay.' Ever since Michi's betrayal, she'd been thinking of herself, Haruna, the three Shuukos, Suki, and even Roche, but the small part of Michi's stage play that she'd managed to catch before she'd run to find Rei had slipped through the gaps in her mind like a fever dream.

She said that she wants to destroy everyone who was included in her challenge. It sounded like she only cared about the people who were there when it happened, but I don't think that's right...

^{STOP TALKING.}
Barely louder than a whisper, but clear as day, Haruna heard it: a desire even Evil Eye couldn't quite manage to suppress.

Suika felt something from Evil Eye, too: a twinge of shame when she began speaking, and after her mentioning of Ashbringer's challenge, a sudden surge of anxiety that came in an instant and abated slowly over the next several minutes.

The others could only notice that Evil Eye chose not to engage with the part of Suika's commentary that waxed philosophical. If Evil Eye had a wheelhouse, that was it, and she either missed it, or chose to ignore it. "I wouldn't worry about getting stranded because of a broken down van. Even with no cell signal, two of us can fly out and get help if we really need it, and as magical girls, we really shouldn't be so helpless. I mean, I can get two vans, but who's going to drive the other one?" she asked, leaving the fact that she was pretty sure she was the only one with a license unsaid. "I wouldn't get pulled over on my bike because the normies can't see it when I'm riding it transformed, but I'm not sure that relying on magic obfuscation would work with a van."

---

What. The. Flying. Fuck?!

It wasn’t ideal that Regina was flirting with the rest of the club, but that Zassou had come out of their most recent crisis by mentally rebounding into an outgoing chatterbox. Roche was aware enough to admit she was being a massive bitch about it, but was it really too much to ask for the reluctant to volunteer Tsubomi back for just the one meeting?

She even volunteered Ashbringer’s actual name, no doubt souring the girl's plans to covertly cozy up to the rest of them and prodding her to escalate in response. Just by voicing everything that Roche had been agonizing over for months-

”Oh, that’s what it is.” Roche vocalized, wearing the expression of a pedestrian who just turned to stare straight into Truck-Kun’s high beams. Forget feeling like one, the Rule Keeper simply was a rancid bitch for feeling such strong jealousy claw its way into her heart in the face of Zassou’s honesty. Was it really a virtue when it came from lips that seemed to care nothing for the future?

It could have been an opportunity to come clean as well, but then she’d derail the entire discourse to her own mess, and why she had waited for Zassou to confess first. No, she’d have to bury it deep now and deal with the inevitable explosion later.

Following Kiyo’s example and prompting, she cut in before she could nix the prospect of a second van. There wasn’t going to be any hope of Nyxia spending multiple days afield with them if she didn’t have somewhere private to revert to Norika. ”Considering I was the one who drove a van to our beach trip, I can handle the second van if you can procure it. If nothing else it’ll let us pack more than the bare essentials so we aren’t miserable traveling.”

”We do need to face the facts, however; We are a known quantity. Even when we aren’t looking for trouble, Magical Girls find us. They follow us. They try to take us down. We can’t give up on our growth just because we fear provoking someone who’d have taken a punch at us just for existing regardless. We don’t need to go around burning cities down, but we need to take every opportunity we can.”

---

---

Haruna sat up a little straighter in response to Kiyo. She couldn't help but give the crimson-eyed girl a concerned glance. Her arm lifted halfway to give her a reassuring pat before realizing that the action would air out Kiyo's stresses to the group as a whole, something she had firmly resolved not to do to anyone without a good reason. "I still need a little more time to recover, but I can try to focus on regenerating THUNDER CRACK if we're worried about backup transportation." She felt a little more aware of being one of the only ones here untransformed, but Hizuki needed as much rest as possible. "I think I can carry everyone?" She'd never actually tried to carry that many people, but it seemed within her power.

She also took a moment to nod at Roche. "That's a good attitude. I can also try to talk to any light girls we run across and explain the situation. They might not be thrilled about who its coming from, but I doubt anyone wants a giga miseria stomping around her hometown." Haruna tried to focus on the issues they voiced; besides Kiyo, the desires of everyone in the room blended into a hazy miasma of fears and anxieties, obfuscated even further by her lack of transformation. It was honestly distracting, like trying to have a phone conversation with a loud party next door.

There was also the matter of Tsubomi. She was. . . different. She couldn't tell if this was the old, pre-fall Tsubomi, the one they'd called a weed, or some combination of the two. At the very least, this one would be less frustrating to talk to. The light girl felt a little guilty at the thought; it was mean to get mad at someone for things they couldn't control, and this might well mean the slow girl she'd met was, effectively, dead.

Maybe that's why Kiyo wanted her to shut up so badly.

"I'm not going to be able to do the trick I did against Black Gate for a while, by the way. If we bite off more than we can chew, that's it. Ideally I don't have to do that again until Ashbringer's team comes back." The mention of Michi made her shoot another glance in Earthshaker's direction. The expression on her face, at least until she smoothed it over again, was conflicted. She had a lot of sympathy for Roche. The two of them had a lot in common. Evidently, though, it wasn't enough to prevent Roche from doing something that felt more than a little bit like a betrayal. Haruna didn't want to hold it against Roche, because the Rule Keeper had plenty of reason to not fight at the time. . . but it was difficult. Her sensibilities rebelled against the decision, even if she understood it. There's the gap between light and dark again, I guess.

Nyxia was still reflecting on just how much stronger she’d become after the bone giant was killed and how that compared to the power boost she’d received from the bone galleon’s destruction, when Apathy Incarnate, of all people, suddenly blurted out that she’d run into Ashbringer at the local arcade. Just the very name of the draconic woman made the Neon Tempest’s teeth grind together. Her anger only grew when Tsubomi went on to reveal that the goat-themed, shadow monkey-manifesting girl who’d wrecked the school was now a member of Ashbringer’s little group. So I wasn’t seeing things when that dragon bitch scooped up the goat bitch and octo-girl… the terrifying tealette reflected. Which means Sink Queen’s also working with her… While Nyxia couldn’t say she liked the aquatic young woman, Sink Queen had never done anything to annoy her, let alone be openly hostile. Indeed, the tentacled girl had been rather forthcoming with helpful advice. Now, that opinion would need to be radically altered…

Even as she brooded about this, the conversation around her continued, now turning back to the topic of possible forms of transportation. None of it really mattered to Nyxia, since she was still pretty sure she wouldn’t be tagging along anyway, but the simple fact that it was Tsubomi, of all people, dominating the discussion forced the Neon Tempest to refocus her full attention on it. Damn… She’s certainly chatty today, Nyxia noted. And did she just… giggle? Yes, the normally emotionless girl who barely spoke, the girl Nyxia had always referred to as “Apathy Incarnate” was not only running off at the mouth, she was showing genuine emotion. Laughing. Smiling. At this rate, I’ll need to come up with a new name for her…

Haruna then offered to fly everybody to wherever they ultimately decided to go, prompting Nyxia to finally speak up. “Uh, those battlesuits of yours are cool and all, but even if you could use that big mech you fought goat bitch in back at the school, it still didn’t look large enough to carry the whole club. At least, not without things getting really uncomfortable…” she added with a scowl.

The others seemed certain that Ashbringer was not misleading them for some reason, but it did not make any sense. Even if the red-haired monstrosity gave them time legitimately, why would she actually want to make them stronger? The more she thought about it, the graver the picture became in Ember’s mind as she drew associations between Miseria, Negative Emotions, Dark Magical Girls and Giga Miseria, coalescing into a frightening picture. Which would be too much to share in the open.

Tsubomi’s Relevation further deepened the web of uncertainty around them. In the first place, how did Ashbringer convince Michi to side with her? And why, if she was certain of her victory, did she start to gather a team of individuals by her side? The schemer felt her revelation become muddled by those questions. She would share her concerns anyways.

”I have also been approached by Regina,” she lied without blinking or pausing, choosing to cover for Roche’s lack of admission with one of her own so they could start building a profile. She did not even know how close she was to the truth.

”But I couldn’t get a read on her or what drives her forward, nor what forces she has at her command at the moment. And as Hananami-san pointed out, we are risking something either way. So I want to propose something unusual.” She took a breath. Prepared herself.

”I have recently gained more command over the extra bodies I create. There are only twelve, however, I can send out the more magically potent of them,” in other words, the ones controlled by herself or Hotaru, if she was willing to cooperate, ”to scout the nearby cities that seem to be suitable locations for hunting grounds. If Kuroki-san is willing to lend some of her creations to aid my cause, I would be capable of a reconnaissance-in-force and gathering much-needed information without risking too much of Hibusa Town’s security.”

”And then, building on Oyama-san’s idea of only striking out for a night, or a day at most given our limitations, not to mention the situations of some of the members of the group, I propose that only a given number of members leave Hibusa Town. If worst comes to worst, one of my spares can inform the group of the situation and they can come back to us.” It was not the perfect plan. Travelling between cities, even at night, would likely take an hour at least, which was plenty of time for opportunists to dig into Hibusa Town.

”As hard it is to swallow, those who remain will likely have to hide while the others are returning,” Ember nodded towards Nyxia, acknowledging she would likely be opposed to not taking the fight head on. ”I also acknowledge that if Kana-san is right about us being monitored, this creates the worst possible situation for us, because an enemy can strike at our weakest point. However, it also means that our home is not undefended.”

”Even if I do admire Ishiko-san, she will likely not lend a hand unless it is interesting or challenging enough. We have to rely on ourselves for this one.”

She had also noted Tsubomi's strange behaviour along with Kiyo's tension, but there was precious little she could do about those out in the open.

---

Suika slouched backwards, preemptively dejected by the emotional response of the other girls. Her despondence only grew as they felt what they actually felt, rather than what she predicted they would.

Oh no. This was exactly what she had been afraid of. She'd said, done, something to make the rest of the Club upset. A precursor to whatever would happen later, and one that didn't bode well for her. Even in her natural form, her regained senses were enough to know she'd messed up.

Oros' feelings of... well, Suika couldn't quite separate them from each other, a mass of different emotions that all pointed towards the vine having said something wrong. Evil Eye's anxiety spiking when the girl was normally so in control of what she felt. Earthshaker feeling a mess of things that Suika couldn't quite figure out the reason for, but blamed herself for regardless. Haruna was easier to get a sense for, but that didn't make her feelings make more sense to the empath. At least Shatterscape didn't seem to react too poorly, and Nyxia was her usual angry self, like a rock that had stood in the same condition for a lifetime.

Part of her wanted to try to parse these things. Another part of her wanted to disappear completely. And yet a third part wanted to try to contribute something useful to the conversation, something to prove to herself and the others that she somehow belonged there.

In the end, what won out was a little of each. She slowly dragged herself backwards and slunk behind the box she had been next to. With the others mostly hidden from her sight now, she timidly responded to Shatterscape's suggestion.

"I don't think Ashbringer would let us do that... Even if she would, that could lead to another issue of some of us getting too strong for the others to grow too..."

It was odd listening to Evil Eye weigh their options. She seemed cautious about fighting a giga miseria at night or taking multiple trips out, yet did not seem as concerned about someone attacking their ride. Regardless, Oros found herself agreeing with her point about their transportation.

"It would more convenient to keep everyone together, and having two automobiles can make things weird. We could get separated and have twice as many vans to defend. I doubt we’re going to get that strong going out of town once, so we have a long term plan." Oros nodded to herself.

However, Oros was reminded of how infuriating working with others could be when Roche spoke up again. Yes, she had driven everyone to the beach. There were a lot of reasons Oros didn’t like to think about the vacation, but it did seem like they had a second driver. It wasn’t like Oros cared one way or the other. It was just so tedious how a quick discussion could get hung up on tiny details like how many cars they should drive. Were they going to discuss the color too? Not a bad idea honestly. But nobody was going to agree to her idea to do a waifu car wrap. The important part was that they did something. Though Oros could agree with Roche’s assessment of their situation.

"Yep, trouble really is everywhere. Goat Girl is proof we can just stand around and trouble finds us." She looked back to Evil Eye. "See what you can do with the vans. If you can only get one, that’ll probably be enough. If we don’t drive too far, we don’t need to pack like we’re on vacation." Holy shit did Oros hate packing. It was fortunate that all of her possessions could fit inside a small closet.

The GEMs were definitely something that needed to be addressed, and it seemed like that was something Haruna was willing to work with. Oros’s own feelings on the matter were a little complicated, but she saw the value in having a light girl vouch for them. She didn’t have anything else to add to what Haruna was talking about. That was, until Nyxia decided to be a wet blanket again. This bothered Oros, but only because she didn’t understand her behavior. It was hard to believe the foul mouthed girl who did as she pleased would hesitate to do anything over a family situation. "I think Pinocchio is capable of moving a van once she’s transformed, with or without us inside." So long as the van still had it’s wheels, it wouldn’t be hard for some of the stronger girls around them to push it. Hell, Nyxia’s cannon was about the size of a compact car. She could probably push a van for miles, with or without the wheels still on it. Did the idea of traveling together still bother her? It couldn’t be, she reassured herself.

Then Shatterscape spoke up again. She couldn’t help but sigh when she mentioned that she, like Suika, had been approached by Regina. "Oh come on…" There was no reason for Oros to suspect it was a lie, but she was inclined to disbelieve the claim. While she could see Suika holding off on mentioning something so important, Shatterscape wouldn't hide anything for any length of time from Roche. And Roche would have told the club by now . There was something about Shatterscape's mannerisms that rubbed Oros the wrong way. Her beautiful face scrunching, as her brow knit itself together and her smile turned.

Fortunately, a much cooler head spoke before she did. "Yea!" Oros’s face lit up like the sun when Suika finished speaking. "If some of us get too strong, we’ll run into the same issue we have now, where we have to gain distance from each other to hunt. Maybe." Lord this magical bullshit was hard to keep track of. "I think Eyeball has reconnaissance covered, so long as the GEMs don’t spot ‘em first. But that’s why Pinocchio is gunna contact them. If we can do something about them, then that makes a lot of stuff easier. Though if you’re offering I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the backup. Anyway, once we have a van or two and we get word about the GEMs we can start doing stuff!"

It felt like a plan had come together. Or at least, the first steps of something happening. More details needed to be resolved, but getting everyone unanimously on board with an idea was kind of a light girl thing. That and Oros was pretty tired of getting ignored by Nyxia. Though that was preferable to getting more odd looks from her. But for now it felt like everything was settled.

"I guess I’ll uh, root for your success." When Oros excused herself, she found herself power walking out of the room and down the hall. If anything important hadn’t been resolved, it could be handled later.

Surely.

To Nyxia’s relief, shortly after Oros noted how she’d assumed Hizuki could simply fly the entire van to wherever they were going, the meeting began to wind down. It might not have been as fast as the Neon Tempest would have liked, but things were concluding nonetheless, a fact made abundantly clear when Oros made her way out of the makeshift club room. With the meeting’s organizer having taken her leave, Nyxia saw no further reason to stick around.

“Well, have fun sorting out all those headache-inducing details,” she told the remaining club members as she stretched herself out before strolling over to the window. “I’m gonna go do something a bit more fun,” she added with a smirk as she slipped through the circular frame and out into the darkening night.

Maybe the others liked the feeling of power and control that came from organizing complex operations and planning intricate strategies, but Nyxia hadn’t become a magical girl to be bored out of her mind mulling over monotonous minutia. No, Norika had been reborn as the Neon Tempest with the sole purpose of cleansing the world of the abominations that murdered her beloved brother, and that was precisely what she intended to do now. Indeed, it was what she would continue to do for the entire time the rest of the club prepared for their upcoming trip, however long those preparations would take.

…

…

…

The weather was getting colder. In November, it wasn’t common for Hibusa town to get much snow. There were places in Japan at higher elevations that would be getting snow well before Hibusa did. But the northern winds had certainly arrived. If Nyxia wasn’t a magical girl and virtually immune to the natural environment, then the cold air would make her deathly ill or worse. Even on the coldest nights, she’d only need her baby to keep her warm.

It was the dead of night, and all the other detention club girls were elsewhere. Many of them had daytime rituals and needed at least a little bit of sleep to function the following day. Though Nyxia was truly free in that she could hunt for as long as she wanted. Though there was something off. There appeared to be more miseria than normal. Usually by now Nyxia would have them mopped up, but it was like she was only half done. A glaive of green light ripped through five of them on a rooftop. But as soon as they vanished, a few more scurried up and into view.

"You fuckers are persistent tonight, huh?" Nyxia muttered as she fired another blast from her beloved energy cannon. "That’s fine," she added a moment later as her scowl turned into a psychotic smirk. "That just means more fun for me!" The Neon Tempest unleashed a peal of sadistic laughter as she swept the Omega Obliterator’s neon-tinged, lightning-wreathed cylinder of annihilation across her myriad foes, while also deploying her pair of hovering octahedron drones for good measure. "And my little darling here always has room for more, right baby?!" she asked her oversized weapon before giving voice to another burst of unhinged laughter.

But while Nyxia gave into her inner anarchist, she heard an unfamiliar voice call out from the darkness. "Was zum Teufel?!?" Some grenades flew up from behind the building, which Nyxia’s beam cut into. They detonated, but rather than turning into balls of fire they exploded into bones. Whole bones like ones that once belonged to a man. They bounced harmlessly off of the roof, but a femur did fly pretty close to Nyxia’s head. Once the light and sound died down, the stranger spoke up again. "Ja." There was some shuffling, but the stranger remained out of view.

"The fuck…?!" Nyxia exclaimed, leaning her head to one side to avoid getting struck by one of the flying bones. Holding her fire for a moment, she called out, "Whoever the fuck’s down there, ya better get outta the fucking way! Otherwise, it’s not my fault if I vaporize your stupid ass!"

"Ja?" the voice called out again. "You zink I vould leave a miseria alive? Maybe if I vas really stupid." She chuckled. "Nah. I vould do no such thing. Maybe fire your veapon where there are targets to hit?"

"I’m killing these Miseria, ya fuckin’ moron!" Nyxia snarled as she furiously, yet still cautiously, made her way to the edge of the roof. "Go find your own!"

"Zat sounds like a good idea." Without firing her obliterator, Nyxia was able to pick up on the soft pop of a grenade launcher. She heard it several times, and not long afterwards many nearby roofs had one grenade shell bouncing on their roof. It didn’t take them long to detonate and eviscerate the miseria lurking nearby. Though it wasn’t just bones that ripped through the disgusting creatures. Some exploded into horseshoes, candles, clocks, keys, even pages of an old book. All were equally devastating to their intended targets. Another interesting detail was the trajectory of the shells themselves. They weren’t all being fired from the same area. It was as if this magical girl was moving between shots and firing in quick succession. Though if she was moving, she had to be pretty fast because the houses weren’t being shelled in any sort of order. "Just shoot ze ones you don’t vant me to touch."

Nyxia’s jaw clenched and her eye twitched. "That doesn’t even make any fucking sense!" she shouted, while furiously scanning the streets below in an attempt to catch sight of the mystery grenadier. Though there was nothing to be found. "Well, whatever…" the Neon Tempest grumbled before opening fire once more. "If the stupid bitch gets vaporized, it’s her own fuckin’ fault!"

And so the hunt pressed on. Miseria were getting vaporized left and right. If not by a death beam, then by whatever ordinance the other girl was using. Sometimes there were some close calls. A laser would burn through a miseria moments before a grenade got it, other times it would be Nyxia’s beam that caught a grenade, and the fragmentation would take out all the miseria in the area before she could hit even one.

Eventually, the town became quiet. The end of Nyxia’s obliterator smoked, but there were no other targets to shoot. The last grenade to explode had thrown goat horns everywhere, and one of the more rounded ones rolled towards Nyxia before falling on its side a few feet from her position.

The Neon Tempest eyed the horn as it rolled to a stop. After taking a moment to glare at this latest incongruous object to cross her path, she took a step forward and crushed it under the high heel of her boot. "Just what I need…" she muttered. "Another annoying dumbass getting in my way…"

The powdery remains of the horn were scattered to the wind. They glimmered under the moon light before finally dispersing enough to where they couldn’t be seen. For a time, it was just Nyxia and the wind. But she wasn’t fortunate enough for it to remain so quiet.

"Zat vas the last of zem." The stranger’s voice was near, possibly right over the other side of the roof. "You’re rather good at hunting miseria, ja? Not many can keep pace vith me."

"And just who the hell are you?" Nyxia inquired, her tone clearly conveying her vexation. "Ya don’t sound like anyone I know, so ya must be new in town," she added. "Were there not enough Miseria to kill where ya came from?"

"Something like zat." Came the stranger’s voice from the other side of the roof. "I heard zere was a school that vas obliterated. It sounded like a good hunting ground. I also had been curious about a demon of Hibusa town and her dark harem. I had heard zey were weak, but that does not seem to be za case with you. You kill as well as I do."

Nyxia’s eye twitched when she heard the word "harem", but she chose to ignore it. "Thanks. I’d like to think I’m the strongest magical girl around here," she said instead. "Aside from that demon you mentioned…" the Neon Tempest added with a scowl. "So, if you’re as strong as you say, mind showing yourself?" the tealette inquired, putting a hand on her hip. "Or are you shy, too?"

"You vant to see me? Hmmm." She hummed, though her voice came from yet another direction. "Or maybe you vant to shoot me? Vould a smart person show zemselves now?"

Nyxia’s eyes were drawn to some light. In the darkness of the night, she could make out a halo. It was white, but a red neon glow. Slowly it rose, and slowly the scalp of the mysterious magical girl rose into view. Her hair looked pink under the glow of her halo. Then her body turned into a blur as she shot into the air and landed on the roof. While the landing was hard, both the girl and the roof were fine. Though some chain links bounced away from her landing spot. Finally, Nyxia could look upon the person she had been talking to.

There was no doubt she was a magical girl, but her halo was the only angelic thing about her. Two ribbons tied off her twin tails, which draped down her leather trench coat. Said trenchcoat was too small for her, and was held around her waist by a tactical ammo belt. A partial leotard struggled to cover her body modestly, and employed the help of several leather straps to keep everything in place. If it wasn’t covered in tactical equipment or leather, it was covered in netting or pantyhose. Her lace up boots went half way up her thighs and had an elevated heel, though there was no arch in the shoe. Among her numerous pouches and ammo sleeves were a few choice accessories. She wore a chain around her neck and a gothic cross necklace. She had a few piercings under her eye, and may have had more that Nyxia couldn’t see. In either hand was a grenade launcher with chains wrapped around the barrels. Each one was latched onto the launchers and terminated in goat skull charms. They were both aimed into the air.

"Guten Abend. Zey call me Home Vecker."



While this was Nyxia’s first time seeing Home Wrecker, it appeared to be her first time seeing Nyxia as well. Her eyes moved over Nyxia carefully, clearly trying to get a read on the girl. Though most of her time was spent looking at the giant gun Nyxia was holding. "That makes a little more sense." Her eyes rested on the business end of the weapon. "Does it have a name?"

"The Omega Obliterator," Nyxia replied, while taking in the appearance of the other girl. Although she probably wasn’t a GEM, the odds of her being a member of Ashbringer’s little group were considerably higher. As such, the Neon Tempest resolved to not let her guard down. "Whadaya call yours?" she inquired, pointing at Home Wrecker’s pair of grenade launchers.

She looked to either side, and turned the guns over in her hand. "Sköll and Hati." The wind wasn’t too bad right now. It was blowing, but it wasn’t so noisy that they needed to shout to hear each other. Wrecker’s trench coat flapped by her legs. "Now zat ze miseria are gone, vat shal ve do, hmmm?" She tipped her head. "You’re not ready to go to bed either, ja?"

Nyxia smirked. "When I kill all the fuckers in one place, I just go to another and hunt down some more," she replied. "Seeing as how you’re not from around here, I guess I can let ya tag along, as long as ya promise not to be a nuisance," the Neon Tempest added. "Speaking of, I guess you’re here on some kinda school trip or family vacation, huh?"

"Nein. My parents are parasites." She practically spat the words. "I come near here ven I visit my grandfather. Thought I might take a detour and come zis way." Even though Home Wrecker wasn’t the one who suggested they fight more miseria, she had picked a direction to go hunting for them. "I came here from ze east. ve von’t find any miseria that way." With a shake of her guns, the revolving cylinders swung out of the grenade launchers. She swiped them across her ammo belts in a single flourish and swung them back shut again. "I vould have thought a coven of dark girls would hunt together. Do you not?"

"We’re not a ‘coven’," Nyxia corrected as she followed after the foreign-sounding girl. "We’re a club, and sometimes we do hunt as a group. But I also like hunting alone, without anyone getting in the way," she added, putting particular emphasis on the last few words. "Sucks about your parents," the Neon Tempest said after a few moments of silence. "Mine are pretty shitty, too."

"Parents should look after zeir children, ja? Not ze other vay around." Her hands tightened around Sköll and Hati, but she eased up before her fingers curled around the trigger. "My parents never took care of me. Ven I was small, zey would feed me coffee for breakfast. I could never keep it down."

"My parents openly hate the fact I was ever born," Nyxia replied. "If they both died in a fire I wouldn’t give a single fuck." That wasn’t entirely true, of course. If both of her parents died, it would cause no small number of unpleasant complications for her, and even with as awful as her mother and father might be, she knew her other relatives were even worse… "Anyway, uh, I’ve never actually had coffee before," the Neon Tempest revealed in an attempt to slightly change the subject. "Is it really that bad?"

"It is not something you feed a growing child." Wrecker eyed Nyxia. There was anger in her eyes, but it wasn’t clear if it was from reliving old memories or that Nyxia didn’t understand how bad coffee was for a child. "It’s an acquired taste, has no nutritional value, and is only consumed for a dose of caffeine. Some mix cream and sugar into it to make it palatable, but zat never helped me." While they hopped between rooftops, something caught the grenadier’s eye. She looked over the side of the roof at a fast food chain. It was still open, and wasn’t too busy at this hour. "A moment." She hopped off the edge of the roof. Nyxia didn’t even have time to wonder how long she’d be gone before she hopped back up on the roof again. Only this time Hati was chained to her hip and she was holding a disposable coffee cup. There was an insignia of some mythical twin tailed creature with a vaguely feminine appearance on the side, and the cup’s heat escaped a small opening and turned into steam in the cold air. "Here, coffee." She held it out for Nyxia to take. "At least it smells good."

Taking the offered cup, Nyxia gave it a sniff. "You’re right," she agreed with a look of surprise. "That is rather pleasant." Slowly bringing the cup to her mouth, the Neon Tempest took a small sip. Her face contorted into a scowl as she swallowed the liquid. "Fucking disgusting…" she declared after a moment. "And people actually like drinking this shit?" she inquired, holding up the cup, before tossing it into the air and vaporizing it with a quick blast of teal energy.

Home Wrecker watched the beverage and its container vanish from existence. "It can be an addiction for some, if you can believe it." She loosened Hati and lifted her second grenade launcher up against her shoulder. "Caffeine makes it addictive. No different zan tobacco in cigarettes or alcohol in beer." She hesitated before adding. "Sugar makes zings addictive too. But at least zey taste good." Home Wrecker chuckled. "I might be addicted to killing miseria."

"And what’s so bad about that?" Nyxia asked with a smirk. "The less of those fucking things in the world, the better. Plus, killing them is so fucking fun."

"It’s bad because ve both vant to kill zem." She squinted her eyes and looked off in the distance. "But if zat isn’t a problem anymore…" Home Wrecker’s next jump caused her to fall between two buildings. The miseria at the edge of town were hiding among the trees, but scattered when a grenade detonated and threw lit candles everywhere.

"Well, there’re plenty to go around," Nyxia replied, before leaping to a higher vantage point and using the provided illumination to fire a crackling cylinder of incandescent annihilation at a cluster of Miseria lurking just beyond the nearby wood line. "Wanna have a race to see who kills the most?" the Neon Tempest inquired, her sadistic grin widening.

"Ja! Let ze slaughter commence!"

And so the night pressed on, with flashes of teal lightning and the thunderous explosion of entropic projectiles.

As much as Nyxia had initially despised the strange interloper, she was forced to concede that she was beginning to feel a sense of camaraderie with Home Wrecker. The two of them shared several similarities, not the least of which being how much they enjoyed killing Miseria, and as the Neon Tempest had begun to discover during her outings with Roche, doing so with a competent and equally enthusiastic partner was almost as fun as slaughtering them solo.

Taking aim at a particularly gruesome Miseria, Nyxia was just about to open fire when it burst apart amidst a hail of random objects, causing her to grind her teeth in frustration.

Almost…

Shortly after Rei arrived, the other girls departed. There wasn’t anything else to be done, and many of them needed a moment to recover their strength. Though Rei seemed like she was still full of energy, and so was Willow.

"What a day, huh?" The cat girl hovered by Rei’s side. "To think you’d have been sleeping past all of this if I hadn’t come to wake you up."

"Hmmm." It was a curious development. Black Gate had placed Rei and Ashbringer away from the school and not with everyone else. Had she succeeded in her plan, she’d have likely transformed into a demon and gone after the entire city next. But then why spare two powerful magical girls that could attempt to stop you? Did part of Black Gate want to be stopped, or did she want to leave a few people alive so that they could suffer as she had when she lost everything? Rei refused to believe it wasn’t a calculated move. But Rei decided that it wasn’t worth thinking about too much. It was kind of a drag to worry about people outside the club. Black Gate’s game had been interesting, but it ultimately failed. There were far more important things to think about.

But as Rei would soon discover, Black Gate had spared more than just two powerful magical girls. She knew about Ashbringer because she spotted her moving through the area, but it was only now that Rei saw the other one.

"Nocnitsa." The reaper smiled. "Enjoy your nap?"

The woman tiredly sighed, her usual smile absent. "What nap? I was wondering where my students were, then I was somehow caught up in helping this trio of pink-haired girls out in looking for one of their own, one thing leads to another and now…" Nocnitsa - Maribel - trailed off, then slumped over with a groan, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Hells below, not even I can rebuild this. Is everyone alright? Did they manage to secure no fatalities? Ugh, and I was so curious about that young miss too! But they just…part with that easily?" She slightly pouted. Black Gate. She could’ve made a fine apprentice if things turned out differently. Can’t do anything about it now.

"Oh wow! Is our leading lady going to have a cry now? I think I left my tissues with Oros after band practice, but I don’t know what she needed them for." Willow rolled in the air and hovered upside down. Maribel shot her a look in response.

"I have a plan for the club, don’t worry about the school." Rei must have, because she was smiling despite how grim it all looked. "It’s interesting they didn’t put up a fight, but I’m not worried about it. I knew Black Gate was going to be a bad fit. Now everyone else knows she was too. As for fatalities…" Her eyes shifted to the one corner of Hibusa high that managed to avoid destruction. "Why don’t we see how they did?"

It wasn’t a long walk to the only standing corner of the school. The trio maneuvered between some bent support pillars and a hallway that had cracked sheetrock along both walls. Willow seemed to take interest in one of the cracks and slipped inside, but the other two continued onward. They finally came into the cafeteria. There wasn’t a single mortal soul to be seen. By the far window were two magical girls, or rather, a magical girl and a magical boy. Morganite looked like she had been roughed up pretty good. Her armor above her collarbones had been ripped off and one side of her face was pretty swollen. Fable looked to be in much better shape, and when the duo entered the room, he raised a hand.

"It’s okay!" The boy said with all the authority of a police officer directing traffic. "I’m Fable. We’re not here to cause trouble. Black Gate captured a GEM and put her in here. I was in the area and swooped by to help eliminate the apes. We’ll be departing shortly."

Rei shrugged her shoulders. "Got em all outside in time, huh?"

"I was clearing out downtown when I heard a giga miseria was attacking the school. The report wasn’t entirely accurate, but it was a true crisis situation. I immediately left Downtown Hibusa to come here. We just finished evacuating the last of the students, and Sink Queen decided to transform. We had some disagreements with how to proceed, some stronger than others."

The nightmare witch allowed the two to talk, brows risen at the curious sight of the magical boy. A magical boy. Here? Or was this something else entirely? "You, ah, know quite a lot for someone so unfamiliar…" Maribel murmured in thought. She tilted her head, despite her words, you could swear there was a hint of recognition in her eyes. It’s probably nothing. "Do you happen to be part of the GEMs, yourself?"

"Fable’s a strange name for a GEM, isn’t it?" He chuckled. "I’m just a PI that specializes in cases involving the paranormal, which is just shorthand for magical girls. I’ll confess not everyone has the GEMs on speed dial, but I do, and I was coordinating with them. None of them entered Hibusa town aside from the ones that were kidnapped. Well, maybe some of them did, but they kept their distance. It’s hard to make a light girl stand back when danger’s afoot." Fable folded his arms. "I don’t think I caught your name though. Can’t say I’ve seen many magical women."

Ah, so this one worked freelance. Maribel’s usual smile returned. "Nocnista, dear boy! I serve as the advisor for the Detention Club." She slightly bowed in greeting. "I was also the foreign studies teacher, technically still am, but… Well…" She looked around at the debris.

"We have it handled." Rei sounded as confident as ever. "You seem less annoying than the GEMs. Take as much time as you need, but make sure to take that one with you when you leave." After Fable nodded in response, Rei looked to Nocnista. "Satisfied?"

"Well, I suppose. I still wish I had returned in time to help. You included." She shrugged. The club was as much of her responsibility as they were Rei’s.

"They had it handled." Rei turned around to leave. "Can’t be there all the time. Pretty sure they like it that way."

Fable watched Rei depart, then turned his eyes to the enigmatic woman. "If you don’t mind me asking, is there a particular reason you work with the Demon of Hibusa? You don’t seem as selfish as dark girls are usually made out to be."

"Oh, dear boy, just ‘cause one is more attuned with darkness doesn’t mean all of us are wicked. Well, not entirely~" Maribel explained with a chuckle. She crossed her arms. "Besides, someone has to help watch over these girls. They’re not evil villains in the making, they’re just…troubled kids that need support. Unconditional support."

"Interesting perspective…" Fable’s eyes followed Rei as she left the area. "...And not one shared by the demon itself it seems. I suppose you need to watch over her too, huh?" With a shrug, Fable swept up Morganite, who seemed a little startled by the gesture. "Be well, Nocnista. With any luck, we won’t be seeing each other again too soon!"

If one looked closely, they could see Maribel’s smile slightly falter. Only just. "Never make promises neither of us can keep, especially in a town like this one. Be well in your endeavors, Fable~" With a slight tilt of the head, she bid him farewell in turn.

...

_{"Couldn't help yourself, could you?"}

A couple of days passed. The warrior spent them contemplating, watching out for any signs of the schemer being home, but whatever business she had, they had always missed each other. Therefore, her plan was likely safe to execute. And even if it was not completely so, Kiyo would know what to do for sure. So she cut her time short in the city, making her way through the eerie streets.

Ever since the ‘gas leak’, she had taken to them with extreme vigor. She no longer needed to go to school, so she could raid all the arcades she liked, mess with the idiotic shopkeepers who did not let her window-watch or ransack wallets for money, then disappear into the shadows as the locals tried to give chase. She also visited her favourite ramen stand many-a-times, silently eating well into the night. But not even these routines, new or old, returned her sense of normalcy.

That died with the damned light girl, along with Michi. The girl who just had to be related to the source of Hotaru’s woes. The timing of it was too coincidental, no matter what Ember or Sylvia believed. It would be a freezing day in hell before she was convinced otherwise.

Shaking her head so it would be cleared of unimportant stuff, Hotaru marched home, where, much to her displeasure, she saw another body moving around. What was even worse, it did not quite look like the body of Takae Shuuko. Which could only mean-

”What the hell are you doing here, Ember?” Hotaru grit her teeth.

”Am I supposed to abandon my own home now that you have decided to be a petulant child?” Ember’s reply did not contain even a hint of warmth. ”That is low even for you.”

”You’re breaking your own rules!”

”If you’d talked to me in a calm and rational manner, you would have known that they are no longer valid. Many are already aware of what we are and it was only a matter of time until we were found out. I decided that it was better to rip off the gauze and change it instead of letting the wound fester.”

”And of fucking course, we always have to go along with that decision, don’t we?!” Hotaru snapped before slamming her fist into her palm. Her voice exploded into the relative silence like a whip, but she did quiet down when she continued. ”Damnit, Ember, you’re almost as bad as a light girl!”

Ember would have started to reply, however, before she could say as much as a syllable, the door only a few feet away from them creaked open, revealing what had to be a surreal sight: Takae Shuuko arguing with a Takae Shuuko who cut her hair shorter and had the tips of her hair painted a crimson red.

Kiyo appeared in the doorway, in her long and oversized maroon t-shirt, black dolphin shorts and and cat slippers, squinting as she adjusted to the light outside. "Is it that delivery driver again..?" she mumbled, recognizing the sound of Shuuko loudly arguing with someone outside. She rubbed the impotent desire for sleep out of her eyes, blinking as the two figures came into focus. Shuuko, and... "Shuu... ko." A beat of time passed.

The color drained from her face, and the hand holding the door handle trembled. This could only mean one thing. Black Gate was back. Unable to rationalize the situation, she slammed the door shut, as if Shuuko just wouldn't have a key to their shared apartment, for some reason. Hasty footsteps sounded from behind the door as she ran to the bathroom to do the only thing she knew to try in this situation—which hadn't worked last time, but there was no Michi here to snatch the mirror out of her hands this time. "Wake up, Kiyo. Snap out of it. You're asleep. This isn't real," they would find her repeating to her reflection, like a mantra.

”Kiyo!” Hotaru blitzed after her teammate, rushing through the small apartment. Without hesitation, she grabbed the other girl’s shoulder, gently pulling her away from her reflection to face her. ”I’m real! You don’t have to worry about… that damn nightmare.” She forced her words through grit teeth that tried to conceal pain. ”We got rid of that asshole together.”

”She is quite correct in her assertion. As far as I can tell, we are not in the illusion created by the black-clad girl.” Ember entered only seconds ago, stepping forward to a confident stride. ”At the same time, Kuroki-san, I believe this will be a most difficult conversation. Not just for us, but also for-”

”It wouldn’t be if you arrived two seconds later.”

”Do you really want to be this much of a disaster right in front of her?” Ember gestured towards Kuroki with a faint, superior smile on her face. ”Please, Hotaru-san. We have been through this once already and I do not want to repeat our argument. It will go nowhere.”

Hotaru balled her free hand into a fist, but she did not reply. Instead, she looked almost as though someone had insulted her mother, her eyes narrowing before she shook her head and slammed her hand into her thigh.

”Fine. Let’s get this over with. Kiyo? Will you be all right?”

Kiyo, hyperventilating in a way that reminded Hotaru of a small, cornered animal, took a moment to calm down in the warrior's firm grip. "Okay. Okay, I'm fine," she breathed, closing her dilated eyes. "Just, let me get some water."

Rather than pushing past the two of them to get to the kitchen, she took water from the sink and washed her face with it. She toweled off the dampness and the redness on her cheeks at once. She'd lost her composure. She was supposed to be the elder in this dark magic Sisterhood: the responsible one, the reliable one. Like Earthshaker, she had to be the one who couldn't be broken. Her breathing slowed, she turned back to the two Shuukos that stood beside her, bickering. That was, perhaps, the most unexpected part of this.

"Alright," she exhaled calmly. "Let me start with this. I always knew there were two of you," she explained, seeming to let go of a burden as she admitted this. "I didn't say anything about it because I wasn't sure what that would do to you. But I could always tell the difference." She nodded, sage-like and proud of herself. "The responsible and caring high priestess," she said, pointing to Ember. "And the fun-loving friend who's a little overprotective." She poked Hotaru's cheek fondly. "You always had that one thing in common. It's a little weird to see you arguing, to be honest."

The warrior’s face coloured slightly when Kiyo touched it. She also gave Kiyo a slight, worried yet happy smile that showed her teeth before she landed her eyes on Ember, causing her visage to harden. A second or two passed like this before the schemer took the initiative.

”I should have been more aware of your perceptive nature, Kuroki-san, however, I must also dispel your illusions. There are three of us you should know about.”

”Ember, what the hell! Weren’t you the one always against this?!” Hotaru’s confusion and anger was almost palpable as she yelled.

”As I have already said before, what protected us and what gave us shelter is no longer tenable. If we want to be a part of the Detention Club, if you want to live your own life, then this is the right way to proceed forward. If not even the ones we trust the most know about our fundamental nature, how are they to help us in our times of need such as this?”

Hotaru cast her gaze to the floor at the schemer's calm explanation. She wanted to yell, wanted to slap the idiocy out of Ember and make her eat her own hypocrisy, but she could not. Not with Kiyo around. Damnit! Even when she thought she had the upper hand, the schemer somehow still managed to win.

”So yes, Kuroki-san. There are three of us. Sylvia, who can not be here right now. Hotaru,” she pointed to the warrior, ”and myself, Ember.”

Kiyo stood in stunned silence for a moment. So there were three. How could I not have noticed? I couldn't even conceptualize what the third would be like. Slowly, the silence became noticeable, and she recovered, trying to smile. "I guess I'm making food for a family of four again," she remarked, her face an emotionless mask of calculations. "But you mentioned a time of need, so I assume this is about more than just dinner plans."

”Of course it is! Listen, Kiyo,” Hotaru moved in front of her, her expression almost desperate. ”She’s telling me I hurt Sylvia. I’d never hurt her! And even if I did, Ember's in the wrong, because she let that stupid light girl fester among us.” Hotaru sounded confident, assured of her conclusions, unaware of the feelings Kiyo held for Haruna. ”It’s all that vile bitch’s fault! Ember should have convinced you to just throw her out; not only is she self-righteous, she's brought in that black-haired girl that turned everything into a nightmare.” Hotaru balled her hands into fists, looking as though someone had insulted every single generation of her family.

”And then she’s surprised I started shouting at her! Not at Sylvia. At Ember. And I think Sylvia thinks that I was shouting at her instead. So it's all Ember’s fault. And that light girl's! Right?” The warrior sounded downright hopeful as she asked her question, knowing in her very bones that Kiyo would agree with her.

”And by doing so, you have hurt Sylvia. She never took it well when people shouted around her, because it reminds her of where we came from.” Ember remained calm. Her voice even had a tired edge, like she had explained this many times already. ”Even if you didn't want to harm her, you did. And now you can't even apologise for it.”

”That’s bullshit! It’s like saying you busted someone's lips without punching them!”

”So, do you claim your punches have never once went awry? That they always hit their intended target?” Seething silence answered Ember. The warrior had no argument against that, but surely… surely! Surely, Kiyo did!

Kiyo looked at her desperate partner and sighed. "Let's not have this conversation in the shitter, alright?" she replied wearily. Gently, she moved around Hotaru and passed Ember into the kitchen. What exactly was she supposed to say to keep the peace in this situation..? Always, always she was searching for them—the 'right' words—and they remained elusive, no matter how long she stalled to find them.

Ember kept careful watch from her position, maintaining a comfortable distance while Hotaru followed the Detention Club’s watchful big sister closely. The former noticed the delay in Kiyo choosing her words, of course, but she chose not to mention it given the difficulty of the situation. It would be just something she would have to talk about later, when they were alone.

"Look," she said, grabbing another energy drink from the fridge and cracking it open before the other two could protest. "Encouraging Michi to engage with the Detention club and the school was my idea. Haruna went along with it, but it was mine. The responsibility was also mine, because I didn't consult Rei or Roche as much as I could have. Now, if Haruna has done anything else worthy of disciplinary action, please say so, but this is my mess to clean." She didn't drink right away. She sat on the couch and kept the can in her lap.

Hotaru’s eyes widened. She looked at Ember as though that would change anything about the situation, except the schemer remained unreadable while she thought about these revelations. The warrior, however, took a step back, her lips opening slightly as she stared in disbelief.

"Setting that aside... I'm uninformed. I don't know anything about Sylvia. I'm not sure she's ever even talked to me. My opinion on her is irrelevant. I do know you wouldn't hurt her on purpose, just like you didn't mean to say something hurtful to me just now. I stand by what I said before... If the air isn't clear between you and someone you care about, just clear it. Life is too short to worry about whose fault something is. If you both just apologize together, we could all probably be sharing a meal tonight, you know..? I could even go with you and... apologize for not noticing her existence." She smiled wryly at the tatami floor at her feet.

”Kiyo… you… you were the one who suggested that we accept that dark girl?” Hotaru sounded like she could not believe it. ”You’ve lead the enemy straight to the club! How the hell did something like that happen? Never mind Sylvia, what did that bastard of a light girl do to you?! I’m going to punch her in the face the next time I see her!”

In the warrior’s mind, this all had to be wrong. Kiyo would never make a decision like that without some sort of outside influence. She was not infallible, but she was definitely never foolish. In fact, Kiyo sometimes thought a little bit too much. This was definitely not in character at all. So there had to be some sort of trickery in play here.

”We do not know how the new girl may have presented herself to Kuroki-san or Maedasa-san, Hotaru-san. It is entirely plausible, even for Kuroki-san to misjudge someone, even if she has eyes in the sky at all times.” Ember nodded towards Kiyo and let a small, reassuring smile take over her face as she spoke. ”Thank you for the offer to meet with Sylvia, too, Kuroki-san. I am sure she will be happy to hear it when… when she is better.”

"If Michi's been peering into all of our dreams, then I'm sure she knew exactly how to present herself to me: like a broken little girl who's never had anything go right in all her life, who's lost her sense of purpose since the darkness took her." Kiyo didn't sound angry—not at herself, not at Hotaru, not at anyone. She didn't even seem to have the energy to be disappointed. She chugged about half of the drink in her hand, as if that would help, somehow. "And Haruna..." Her voice softened, as to almost make her words about Michi seem to have had an edge to them, even though they didn’t.

There was a long silence as she contemplated her words. "Honestly? I have more in common with her than anyone else in this Club, and I'm tired of pretending that I don't. She's exactly the kind of light girl I was three years ago, Sh—Hotaru. When she embraces the dark, I'm sure she'll be just like me, too. You'd probably even like her." She smiled with the kind of amusement that a drunk would have when having a thought that no sober person could possibly share with them, like being in on a joke nobody else would 'get.' That word, "when," rang more hollow each time she assured herself of this. What if it never happened..? ...They would probably part ways, eventually. Or one of the GEMs would chase her away for being a 'bad influence.' Easy come, easy go. The thought hurt enough to wipe the smirk from her lips. "Is Sylvia... going to be okay?"

The more Kiyo spoke, the bigger Hotaru’s eyes got. By the end, the warrior looked as though she had been physically struck. She took a step back from the conversation, putting distance between herself and the Detention Club’s watchful eye. Her hands, hanging by her side, squeezed down more and more with every second before she-

”You’re lying. You… Kiyo! What! Why are you defending her? She’s…” There were no words. Only a knife stuck right between her ribs, gouging out her heart.

Ember, on the other hand, gave both Hotaru and Kiyo a sympathetic look. She nodded towards the latter, letting her know that she was on her side for this debate, but she did not want to interrupt their conversation right now. The warrior would not take it well.

Kiyo's eyes darkened, but her face still didn't show any emotion. "...She's... what, Hotaru? Self-righteous? Shit, never mind my light girl days, I'm still self-righteous. Tell me I'm not with a straight face." Kiyo didn't wait for an answer. She finished her drink and crushed the can on the side table. "A sycophantic people-pleaser? My fellow lighties called me that, too. Not with those words, but they may as well have. And now? What's changed? I care too much about the Club. Always trying so hard to keep it together. All the outside threats and infighting stressed me out so much I could die, but look! Like a lost little kitty that ran away from home and got hungry, I came back for more." There was an uncomfortable truth to her words. She pretended not to care, acting cool and above it all, emulating whatever passed for "maturity" among the immature dark magical girls, but her actions showed it to be a farce.

Her expression finally started to sour a little. Maybe she really did need a burst of energy to muster some kind of feeling behind her words. "All I ever wanted as a child was to be a 'good girl.' Fat load of good that did for me. I was just fucking useless, to everyone. I thought if I embraced the darkness, I could at least be happy, and give being 'bad' a try. And all I've done is fucking roleplay some mad scientist character—the villainess I wish I could've been, the one this rotten world deserves. But I can't even be good at being 'bad.' I'm just—mediocre." She punctuated the end of her rant by throwing the crushed can into the wall just above the trash can. Infuriatingly, a few drops of the red liquid left spots on the wall that would have to be cleaned up before they left a stain. Kiyo pretended not to notice, at first. Then, livid, she stood up and slowly walked to the kitchen to take care of it herself.

Shaking, she let out a ragged breath as she wiped the wall clean. "So, you two didn't get along," she remarked, as if she could just easily change the subject after venting like that. "Thanks for setting whatever differences you have aside to be 'Shuuko' for me, and put up with my nonsense for all this time. It means a lot." The two Shuukos could tell her words were heartfelt. They could also tell that the girl's heart felt absolutely miserable.

Normally, Hotaru would have hugged Kiyo or said something silly, violent or both to cheer up her friend. The warrior’s hand would have landed on the other dark girl’s shoulder with a comforting smile or the shit-eating grin of someone who wanted to get into trouble just so they could get away with it together. Or the reassuring smile of someone who knew what sort of snacks to get to cheer Kiyo up. Now, however? Hotaru actually had to sit down.

Her hands impacted her thighs, the sound filled with frustration, fury and betrayal. Her yellow eyes wavered as she kept her eyes on Kiyo, not knowing if she really was looking at the girl who would always watch over her? The one under whose aegis they would never be harmed?

”Even if it might be presumptuous of me to pass judgement on another, I never thought you were mediocre, Kuroki-san.” Now it was Ember who stepped closer. She offered Kiyo a genuine smile, though she did not reach out to her just yet. ”Please don’t talk about yourself as though you are supposed to be above it all. We have just lost our home along with… many precious things.” She closed her eyes. Her voice wavered and this time, she did reach out to touch Kiyo’s hand, gently bringing one to her cheeks.

”For what it is worth, I think what you wished for is admirable and it is still possible.”

"...Thanks," she replied, but her downcast eyes told all. She didn’t really believe that.

”Or it would be if we hadn’t fucked up, Ember! What the hell!” Hotaru leaned forward as she almost shouted it at the top of her lungs. ”This… what’s so good about that… that light asshole, anyways? She doesn’t belong and I don’t like her one bit! So why do you two like her so much?!” Frustrated tears were starting to appear in the corner of Hotaru’s eyes.

”It’s… it’s unfair, that’s what it is! You two never think of me!”

Kiyo's eyes narrowed somewhat sternly, in that way they did when she acted as the third-in-command (unofficial) of the Detention Club. "Enough. You know that's not true. Those nights that we got up to trouble together were the best. You made me feel like I could really have fun being 'bad.' Both of you—all three of you must have realized you were my favorite 'Shuuko,' even if I tried to hide my bias." She shot Ember a sidelong glance and a patient smile. "...No offense to this High Priestess." It was true. When Shuuko was being "good girl Shuuko," Kiyo was always egging her on to let her hair down and have more 'fun.' Conveniently, her omnipresent eyes would make themselves scarce when needed, too.

”None taken at all, Kuroki-san.” Ember meant it, too. She did not want to be the first in anyone’s heart, because such roles were reserved for the others.

"Hotaru." Kiyo spoke her name softly, approaching. "Have you noticed? The GEMs haven't made a move against us in a while. They haven't blamed us for what Michi did or used it as an excuse to attack us again." She sat on the floor next to where Hotaru was seated, so that she looked up at Hotaru instead of down, as if she were judge. "I asked Hizuki if she could get them to back off. She took on personal risk to make it happen. She cares whether we live or die, Sh—Hotaru. How long has it been since anyone outside the Club cared about us at all?" She found an interesting spot on the floor to stare at. "I'm sorry Michi didn't work out, but Hizuki has done nothing but help. Roche and Rei don't blame her for this, either. If you don't trust my judgment anymore... at least trust them. Please."

”And it’s all a lie, Kiyo!” Hotaru seized Kiyo’s hands, leaning forward. Their noses almost met, the desperation clearly visible on the warrior’s face as she tried her damndest to convince someone dear to her.

”She’s their spy! How else could they have hit our clubroom? They only agreed to back off because they’re waiting around the corner to stick their spears up our asses! They… they… None of them can be trusted, Kiyo. Both Rei, Roche and you are all wrong.” Her knuckles started to turn white. She did not even realise that her desperate, terrified hold could be hurting Kiyo.

”Please, believe me, Kiyo. You… she doesn’t care! Because every light girl is a filthy fucking two-faced liar who lies for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Please! You… you can’t do this to the club! We’ll have to be on the run again!”

”Not every light gi-”

”Shut up, Ember! This isn’t about you! You can’t be saved anyways!”

"Uh... huh." Kiyo could see the desperation on Hotaru's face. Her own desperation mostly manifested as a look of tired impatience. "I suppose that's why they're attacking us right now, while we're all weakened from fighting Michi. . . ...They aren't, though," she added, as though that would help.

Her sarcasm wasn't going to assist, though. She knew better. "Can we... unpack your unconditional hatred of light girls, or something? I know I've trauma dumped on you about one of my old comrades banging my ex while we were still supposedly going out. At least once." She said it so easily, like she was totally over it, but most people did not simply 'get over' a betrayal of such magnitude. Perhaps that was why Hotaru found it so unbelievable that she would ever show her favor to a light girl. "Something like that happen to you?"

”You… you don't understand.” Hotaru's hand dropped and she collapsed backwards, looking as though she had been struck by a whip. Her face spoke volumes about the shock, which had driven that pain even deeper inside of her. She became pale as a ghost, the colour leaving her as she realised that the one she trusted the most had a knife aimed straight at her heart. And it happened for the second time in her life. Maybe the third, if she counted before they became Takae Shuuko.

”She doesn’t understand because she doesn't know our circumstances, Hotaru-san.” Ember spoke up. Her voice remained calm, but compassionate as she stepped closer to the two other girls. ”Kuroki-san has not even the faintest clue about how much we have suffered or why your anger burns so bright.”

”You know and you still take their side!” Hotaru snapped at Ember, desperation evident in her voice. ”Why can’t either of you understand?!”

”Kuroki-san can’t even start to understand if you don’t tell her and I find myself reluctant to speak of a story that is so dear to you.”

”It doesn’t matter, does it? Listening to how shitty light girls are won’t change your mind.” By now, life had drained out of Hotaru. She felt as though the walls were closing in on her, leaving but one option: To run away like before. To break free of the Detention Club along with everyone who wanted to hurt them from behind a facade of kindness.

Kiyo continued to look away from Hotaru, as if she were suddenly very interested in Ember's shoes. She could easily imagine the kind of face Hotaru was making. She could just as easily imagine her bouncing back like nothing even happened, if she were just willing to concede and call Haruna a bitch, and promise some token attempt to 'relay her concerns' to Rei of whatever supposed danger she posed. It used to feel so easy, talking out of both sides of her mouth, acting as the mediator, somehow letting both of her arguing friends feel justified, yet willing to apologize. For someone so obsessed with Truth, she sure was willing to play the sole arbiter of whatever the 'Truth' was and get her friends to agree to her version of it, if it would keep the peace. Imagining herself doing that now... made her want to vomit.

"You're right. It probably won't," Kiyo replied with a chilly calmness in her voice. Ember watched as she stood up, returning Hotaru's juvenile tantrum with her own version of childish behavior. "Help yourself to the bento in the fridge. When you're ready to talk, I'll listen. Until then, I'm heading out." Having said that, she walked to her room, which had all its lights off as usual.

Hotaru remained on the chair, her collapsed posture mirroring her world-view. Everything slipped from her hands from her relationship with her comrades to her friendship with Kiyo. She had also failed to stand her ground as thewarrior within that nightmare and… was that really the light girl's fault?

She had no idea. So she kept staring in front of herself, hoping the answer would materialise.

Ember, however, waited for a moment or two before she followed after Kiyo and knocked on the door frame.

”Would it be permissible for me to come in, Kuroki-san?”

"Mm." Kiyo responded in the affirmative. She hadn't bothered to lock the door, since she didn't plan on staying there long. It wouldn't be the first time 'Shuuko' had seen her indecent, either, but she was almost fully dressed in her usual biker getup by the time Ember came inside. There was, of course, no bike to be ridden, but she relished each chance she got to wear anything other than her school uniform. Rather than push by Ember once she was finished, though, she sat on the edge of her bed and waited, as though expecting a lecture. "Is this the kind of conversation we can have outside? I'd rather walk and talk if we can." Like Roche, staying busy was something Kiyo did when she was stressed.

”If you do not want to talk about subjects which are better off unheard by the ears of bystanders, sure.” Ember allowed herself a small smile. ”Maybe we could even look for that bike I promised you, Kuroki-san, though I confess that as the responsible and caring high priestess,” her smile stretched a little wider to sell the joke, ”I will have to warn you away from committing crimes for money.” She let the joke sit for a second.

"I make my money in honest competition!" Kiyo objected, feigning offense. "The law against doing it at 'my age' is stupid," she grumbled, with a bit more honest petulance. Once she saw that no lecture was coming, she made her way to the front door to retrieve her boots. Ember followed Kiyo outside, leaving the warrior behind to sit with her demons.

The schemer let the two of them walk for a few minutes before she spoke again.

”Kuroki-san. Please be honest with me. Are you really all right?”

"No," Kiyo replied flatly. "My project deadline is crushing, my best friend is suffocating, Haruna is in the hospital—that's where I'm going—and I worry that Hotaru might get angry enough to actually kill her if she finds out I've been visiting every day." She bit her lip. "Then there's the one year deadline," she emphasized, so Ember would catch that she was talking about Ashbringer. "We handed our opponent a new team member with intel on our team comp on a silver platter, we're not strong enough, and if what that other girl said was true, we never will be, unless we get out from under the shadow of our MVP. And my mom—" She halted. Perhaps she hadn't meant to let that one slip out.

"Ember..." Her breath hitched. "I know Hotaru thinks highly of me. Sometimes, it feels like she worships me. I just... need her to understand that 'the observer of the heavens' is just another girl trying her best with her best guess. And my best... doesn't seem to be enough, these days. ...I don't know what to do." Kiyo closed her eyes, and it seemed like she might cry, but she never did—not unless there were Miseria to slay, and Sorrows that needed summoning.

Something was left unsaid. Whether Kiyo did not want to share it with the ‘high priestess’ or if it was perhaps too much to bear at once, Ember noted it along with the crushing weight that settled onto Kiyo’s shoulders. Like with Ryoba, her care both for the Detention Club and Hotaru meant she shouldered so much… that the schemer had been turning a blind eye to. She may have hidden it behind grand conspiracies or grandiose words, but Kiyo was just as vulnerable as any one of them. Her attitude just made it more convenient to forget about that.

A pang echoed in Ember's chest. Could she even extend a helping hand here, when Hotaru rebuffed both of them? What would the warrior think when she was left alone, subject only to what she faced as hatred, just like that time?

”I wish I could claim you are wrong to worry or that I have a solution in my hand. A key that would open the gateway that seals away the heart of Hotaru-san. Or one that lifts this mantle from your shoulders. However…” Ember’s voice grew heavy. She let some of her frustration with Hotaru bubble up into her voice. ”She thinks me an enemy just because I side with someone whom she believes to be one.”

”It is her story to tell, but they have not treated her kindly at all. All I can do is accompany you.” She had believed this talk would alleviate the issue, even if it did not outright fix it. Instead…

”I am sorry, Kuroki-san.”

"I suppose she'll think of me as an enemy, too?" Kiyo replied, feeling the beginnings of resentment trying to simmer in the pit of her stomach like the base of a witch's brew. Why was she being forced to choose between two people that she cared about—or perhaps three, if Ember really was an "enemy" of Hotaru—for reasons she could not know, and nobody would tell her? This was why, she reasoned, that dark magical girls had to be stronger than their base forms. Positive feelings were always frail and fleeting, and any kindness shown to others for the sake of building one's own power was no true kindness at all. A grudge was so much stronger, killing miseria was so much easier—and a true service to the public, one thanklessly done behind the veil. Sometimes it seemed that light girls only bothered to kill them so the dark girls couldn't get to them first. Truly, it wasn't as if Kiyo didn't understand Hotaru's hatred, but Haruna had proven herself to be more than Evil Eye's go-to words like "useful" and "gullible." She was earnest, caring, and just better than any other light girls she'd known. Maybe Boleite was cool too, but she was still very much an enigma.

Kiyo had seen both the light and the dark, but in the end she had only replaced one group of allies with another, and one lie with an equal but opposite farce. "I guess this is what I get for pretending to be something I'm not. I've been doing that a lot longer than three years." The words on her lips dripped with self-contempt. "I wanted to take her to see my hometown, but I guess that's off the table if Haruna is going with me. ...What a pain."

”I don't know if she will view you like that, Kuroki-san. I truly do not.” The bitterness in Ember's voice was unmistakable. Before the conflict around Haruna and Sylvia, she would have been able to predict Hotaru's actions, yet the warrior had become so hostile to her. She could understand why. She just did not understand the depth of the grudge.

”She believes that light girls are two-faced liars who are only pretending to help. She might convince herself that you are only a victim of their elaborate machinations if she wants to keep being with you.” She too, started to feel a tightness in her throat. A desire to cast off these shackles that were imposed on her by the wills of others, chief amongst them… what she really did not want to think about. Chiaki. She did not know how she could even bring that up.

”And as you said, Ashbringer is looming over us, stacking the deck higher than ever. Right now, we should stand more united than ever and yet the seeds of conflict Michi intended to sow have not even bloomed fully. You- we have lost so much.” Once again, she looked into the distance, where the ruins of the school were. Countless nights without sleep, rest or even the basest of certainties floated to the surface of her memories in response; the harsh reality of survival without a home.

A dreadful thought surfaced in Ember's mind. It would be one way of treating the problem, yet…

”Kuroki-san. How cruel do you think you can be to your best friend?”

"...About this much?" Kiyo replied weakly, referring to her walking out on their conversation, uncertain what Ember was getting at.

”Then consider anything I may have said to be null and void. Even for the High Priestess, there are threads of fate she should not pull on, not even when the Observer of the Heavens is by her side, helping her navigate the celestial realm.” Ember replied with mock cheer in her voice before she dropped her obviously fake smile.

”Kuroki-san, this really can not go on like this, can it? Hotaru-san needs to yield. And we have to face cruel reality.”

”We can not defend our home. We can not even start to realise your wish.”

"Well, something needs to change, yes. How is being mean to Hotaru supposed to help, though?" Kiyo replied, turning a corner to a nearby convenience store. "And what do you mean, my wish?" she asked, her face blank with confusion.

Ember's eyes widened slightly.

”Our haven. The home for dark girls which breaks their fall.” It looked like it was much closer before, when the threat of Ashbringer seemed a distant calamity, along with her underlings. But with Michi’s act of havoc and the attack of light girls on the club…

”It's as far as the moon right now, isn't it?”

"Oh," Kiyo replied dully, as if this wish of hers didn't really matter after all, even though it had seemed important to her before—as recently as a moment ago, in fact. She entered the convenience store without further comment on the matter. "The moon might be closer, seeing how it's at least visible most nights," she joked dryly, grabbing a bento from the wall of refrigerators.

Curiously, Ember followed her inside the store, stopping beside her.

”I am sorry to interrupt, Kuroki-san. Is there something here that Maeda-san would like? I do not want to visit her without at least a meagre offering.”

Kiyo faltered in her quick steps, taking a look around the store. It occurred to her rather suddenly that she didn't actually know much about Haruna's likes and dislikes—and that she would probably accept the latter and eat it with a smile, anyway. Much like Kiyo right before a deadline, she seemed the type to eat instant noodles, but that didn't mean she liked them, per se. A convenience store bento wasn't as good as the homemade one she left in the fridge, but it was a step up from instant noodles, at least.

"Uh," Kiyo replied haltingly. Her eyes passed over all of the 'healthy' ‘protein’ snacks that were quite indistinguishable from candy (and potato chips, for some reason?), and rested on a colorful variety pack of hard candies. Surely, there was at least one flavor in there Haruna would like. She and Ember would be out of the hospital before she'd be left with the ones she didn't like, so she wouldn't have to eat them if she didn't want to. It was a 'safe' option: her 'best guess.' It wasn't good enough, but maybe just for today... "Here." She gave Ember the bento and kept the bag of mixed sugary goodies for herself. "Problem solved."

Ember gave her a genuine smile. Like Kiyo's expression showed, it would have to be good enough and over time, they could learn more of the light girl's preferences. Especially given that Hotaru was now out of the picture, Ember would have some time to spend with their one and only light girl.

”Thank you.” Ember replied with a genuine smile.

Kiyo paid with a credit card without thinking about it, and left. It was a moment later that she spoke again. "You make that 'wish' of mine sound really noble—but really, I'm just addicted to the feeling of having others relying on me. That's why I said Haruna and I are so similar. It's amazing that Hotaru still doesn't see it, but an outsider to the Club spotted it no problem," she scoffed.

”Do you really believe she is as selfish as the rest of us, Kuroki-san? After all, she still had not started darkness in the face yet and I do remember the earliest days of being a light magical girl myself.” Ember’s comments came across as casual, though she did have a point. ”Because I… have started to believe assumptions are dangerous. And so far everything that happened only reinforced this fact.”

"N-No. I'm not saying Haruna is selfish," Kiyo quickly corrected. "But I know myself, and I know the path I went down, and if nothing changes, Haruna will probably follow in my footsteps. Someone will use her until she has nothing left to give, and she'll fall into despair. That's what—" she was afraid of? What she was hoping for? She still didn't know. "—will probably happen."

The hospital loomed at the end of the block, like a courthouse. After her argument with Hotaru, it had become the sort of building that made Kiyo feel unwelcome and watched, as if all of the people outside were casting preemptive judgment on all who had business within. Why did Hotaru's feelings have to make her feel like she was doing something wrong? Could it be that she was? Friends visited friends in the hospital, but was she doing this because it was the 'right' thing to do, or because she wanted to endear herself to someone she wanted to keep in her life, for her own selfish reasons? She realized that she was spacing out, and suddenly felt exposed, as if the High Priestess could read her mind just as well as Haruna, and this caused her to subtly pick up her pace.

”Then would it not be the job of the Detention Club’s big sister to ensure she never knows the pain of being broken and shattered?” Ember reached for Kiyo with her free hand and turned her around so they faced each other. ”You chose to forget that I have watched you for hundreds upon hundreds of hours, Kuroki-san, so I am very much aware that you are choosing to keep something for yourself regarding Maeda-san.” Blue eyes met red ones, a clear sky reflecting a murky lake of blood.

”I… will not force your hand to reveal it. Not unless you wish to, Kuroki-san. However, I do see that it pains you to no end.” Ember let go of Kiyo, then let out an explosive sigh. Her voice turned remorseful as she realised she may have overstepped. ”I am… sorry if I scared you. I should not have manhandled you like that.”

Kiyo met Ember's gaze guiltily, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "I... I don't know what I want," she replied, averting her eyes hastily. "She's... suffered more than me, yet she still clings to light. I have to know why—and how. Maybe then... I'll have my answers." She turned and began walking again.

”Then let’s try to figure out what you really wish for, Kuroki-san. Perhaps the beliefs you hold to no longer hold ground. I am very familiar with that feeling myself, for once, I have readily subjected myself to the whims of gods,” a bitter frown appeared on Ember’s face, ”only to discover the ones I have served stand against those I wish to keep away from harm at all costs.”

"How can someone... raised to serve others, know what she wants?" Kiyo asked out loud, to seemingly no one in particular. "What if what you want is for someone else to be happy, but that person doesn't want to be happy? What would you do then?" she asked, more directly to Ember, pulling her biker’s jacket tighter around herself. If her beliefs about light and dark didn’t hold true anymore… she didn’t want to think of it.

”Truthfully, it is the longest and most difficult process of them all. To know oneself is to not be in the service of others, yet can we say what we do for ourselves is not also in service of others?” Ember looked into the distance as she considered her own words and the situation of Takae Shuuko, especially Sylvia. ”I would ask such a person why they wanted to be unhappy and why they think that their own happiness is not important. And I would listen to what they say, no matter how strange it sounded to my ears. It is the only way you can even try to change their mind, if that is what you truly want to do. It is a most difficult question… Do you believe it has any relevance in our club?”

Kiyo appeared to be deep in thought for a moment before she replied. "No. Nothing to do with the Club. It was a selfish question. I thought if I asked one, it might help me understand something." With that, she approached the doors of the hospital, and entering the company of strangers typically meant she was done with these kinds of personal conversations. When she crossed that threshold, it was like a declaration that she would make no further comment regarding her elusive train of thought. If it truly had nothing to do with the Club, then perhaps it was about Kiyo's family—a topic that was usually off-limits, even for Shuuko.

Haruna's room was only on the second floor, but it was far enough down the hallway that the elevator was still faster than the stairs. Approaching the hospital had seemed an emotionally burdensome task earlier, but by the time their elevator reached its destination, the pall over Kiyo's mood seemed all but gone, save a sliver of uncertainty as she knocked quietly on the door of room 224. There was always the chance that Haruna might have been sleeping.

"Come in,” a familiar voice from within called, carefully pitched to avoid disturbing any of the other denizens of the ward. On entering, the two saw Haruna, who probably looked healthier than any other time they’d met her, if only because the bags under her eyes were blessedly absent. Her expression brightened when she laid eyes on Kiyo, then colored somewhat with a measure of uncertainty when she was followed by another. "Shuuko?” The name carried with it more than one question.

"Yeah," Kiyo replied, also looking rather pleased to see Haruna's brightened face. "She was just catching me up on some stuff, so I told her to come with. I hope that's okay." She glanced between the two, a few questions in her own eyes as well; namely, how much Ember wanted Haruna to know, and whether or not these two were going to be cool with each other.

The Takae Shuuko before Haruna resembled the two she has met, but upon a closer inspection, there were some differences. Firstly, her back was straight and she held herself with confidence, unlike Sylvia, without a trace of the playfulness Haruna saw when she first met Takae Shuuko. Secondly, this one’s hairtips had been dyed red, not to mention the blue eye colour definitely did not match. Further differences in mannerisms presented themselves as Ember approached the bed with a gentle smile.

”How are you feeling, Maeda-san?”

"Restless, mostly. I think I’m getting out soon, partially because the doctors can’t really diagnose ‘magical burnout,’ I think. But I feel better,” she adds after a moment, realizing her initial statement was less than reassuring. "I wasn’t really expecting a visit from you, honestly. You seemed like you had a lot of stuff to deal with.” She spoke a bit slowly, continuing to be unsure of how, exactly, to approach Shuuko. Evidently, after a moment, Haruna chose an approach, as she gave voice to her questions (in a way.) "You, uh, look different.”

”It seemed appropriate to signal to you that there has been a change of perspective regarding your… treatment.” Ember looked remorseful as she spoke, averting her eyes for a split second before she refocused back on Haruna. ”I must admit that I do not have the best of experiences with light girls and…” She paused. Sighed. For a moment, her shoulders seemed like she carried an entire world on them.

”I… I am sorry. I do not want to lie to you, but I also do not want to burden you.” She looked back at Kiyo for a moment, almost as though she sought the all-seeing eye’s permission. ”There is something important that I want to tell you, but I am not sure if it would be too much for you to bear. I am sorry, Maeda-san.”

"Isn't she going to find out eventually? I just didn't want to pre-empt you," Kiyo offered in reply to Ember.

"It’s probably not anything worse than what’s already going on.” Haruna gave a meaningful glance to Kiyo as she said this. "Plus, if it’s about you. . . I’ve already got a decent idea of what might be going on, but it would be nice to hear it outright. I don’t really want to pull people’s secrets out of their heads without permission.”

Filing away that notion for later, Ember broke the ‘news’ without mercy.

”There is more than one Takae Shuuko, in a manner of speaking. It is a long story that is not wholly mine to tell, but…” Her voice became sorrowful as she spoke, her eyes fluttering closed. ”There used to be a young girl who dreamed of saving the world. But alas, she wished for far too much and her tiny shoulders could no longer support the weight. So, that one girl - she chose to become three to bear the burden.” Even though she only summarised the story, it was clear to everyone that Ember struggled with her past. Her words radiated myriad emotions; hurt, confusion, pain, betrayal and more. Her voice shook as she spoke.

”Now the one that stands before you calls herself Takae Shuuko Ember. And the others are Hotaru and Sylvia. I think you have met them already.”

Shuuko wished for something pretty crazy, huh, Kiyo thought. Was that why Hotaru needed things to be so black and white? She was the hero, and light girls were bad? She decided not to comment on it, for now.

Haruna nodded. "Thank you for telling me. If you need to talk about it. . . I know people don’t always trust me, but I can do my best to be sympathetic if you get past that.” She shrugged, the gesture seeming a bit self-depreciating. "Hotaru, Sylvia, and Ember, huh. . .” Haruna paused for a moment, thinking. "So. . . you visited at me at my house, I think?” That didn’t sound right, but that was her best guess. "And either Hotaru or Sylvia is the one who tried to attack me, and the other one is who I met on my jog.” She decided not to detail that meeting, for the sake of not unveiling private information. (She also wasn’t sure if it should be private if it was technically the same person, but she erred on the side of caution.) "Is that right?”

Ember hid it well, but Haruna’s revelation struck her with the force of a freight train. It confirmed the suspicions she had been harbouring since her talk with Ryoba: that there was a fourth one who was active. But they had decided to put Chiaki to sleep a long time ago, so who could it really be? There was no activity from that part of their soul and Ember would know, for she sensed everyone at all times. The whole thing sent her reeling, yet the only thing she let show on her face was slight surprise.

”The one who attacked you is called Hotaru and the one whom you tried your best to console is Sylvia. She is really hurt at the moment, so she can not talk with you and I would rather not risk Hotaru doing anything to you.” She put on a mask of fake confidence, aiming for a reassuring tone as she spoke with Haruna.

”I am here to apologise in both of their steads and to see if I can make your day a little better.”

Haruna shook her head. "I’ll be okay, but I appreciate the apology. From Hotaru, anyway; I don’t really think Sylvia needs to be sorry. She does too much of that, as far as I can tell.” She frowned; Ember’s step around the question was jarring. "I want to try to talk to Hotaru when I’m out of here, too. I don’t know what happened to make her hate light girls, but I can at least try to work something out so she doesn’t hate me enough to disrupt the Club.” The frown remained as she spoke.

Kiyo scratched at the back of her neck sheepishly. "I uh, overslept a bit. So it's convenience store food today." She laid her offering of fruit candies on the side table. "I'm... not sure we can reason with Hotaru. I kind of... tried that. Multiple times." She frowned, not meeting Haruna or Ember's eyes directly.

After a brief moment of silence, Haruna shook her head. "Sorry, but, uh. . . you didn’t actually say that you were the one that met me. You sounded surprised.” She let the statement hang, seeing how Ember would respond.

Seeing that Haruna picked up on her deception, Ember changed her approach and shook her head to show regret.

”I am afraid that you have been deceived, Maeda-san. I have not visited you before, so it must have been someone who used my likeness to get close to you. I am sorry.” Ember held her voice steady even as in the background, she tried to figure out how it could be possible that there was another not even she could see.

"Ember, is it even... slightly possible that there may be a fourth Shuuko neither of us knew about?" Kiyo replied, her eyes begging for it to be true. "That would be far preferable to having a doppelganger running around Hibusa town, on top of everything else."

"It’d be pretty bad if that were the case, yeah.” Haruna nodded her agreement with Kiyo. "It was a little strange, since I only read one set of desires from her, but now the same thing’s happening with you, so. . .”

The schemer's eyes narrowed slightly as the two came closer to discovering the truth.

”While it may sound like the superior and less concerning solution to the problem,” she let slight displeasure colour her voice, ”it would be akin to saying that a stranger has moved into our home with Kuroki-san and neither of us have discovered any signs of their existence. Even if I were so blind, deaf and clueless, I know that Kuroki-san is far too observant to let that slip by.”

Kiyo scoffed lightly. "Right. Me, who didn't even notice Sylvia suffering in silence," she responded with a toothless sarcasm. She had picked up enough of the pieces to know that Ember was lying. The weight of Shuuko's wish had broken her—shattered—her. If Ember could brag that she had observed Evil Eye for hundreds of hours, there was something to be said for how many times Evil Eye had observed her own distorted doppelganger in that shattered mirror, reflecting upon the cold reality that her best friend had been permanently scarred and there was little to be done to make it right—except, perhaps, to become the kind of person Shuuko could show her 'true self' to, whichever personality that may have been—but she had failed to do even that much.

The three equal pieces of the mirror mocked her in hindsight with their obviousness. The fourth piece of that mirror—small and off-color, its distinction from the other three practically shouting its significance from the rooftops—stuck in her craw, like a cracked shell stuck painfully between her teeth; but no matter how much it hurt, she kept her mouth steadfastly shut. Keeping the peace with the one Shuuko that had her back was more important than dispelling the lie; maintaining order in the Club was paramount.

Haruna could hear the white noise coming from Kiyo again, drowning out her desires. It was so loud this time that it almost seemed to have a voice of its own.

^{Just do your duty.}

The light girl looked between the two, then sighed. Ember was digging her heels in far too hard for this to be incorrect. There was a fourth Shuuko, almost certainly. Kiyo was getting more stressed by the moment, and was abusing herself once more. This whole interaction almost hurt to be a part of, and it seemed that Ember wasn’t going to relent and trust the others. Trust Haruna. ". . . If there is a doppelganger running around, Kiyo will find her,” she said eventually, deciding to join Ember in dodging the issue. The deceptive Shuuko would have to come to her own conclusion on when to confront this fact, evidently.

They did not believe her. Not a single bit. She would have to talk with Kiyo about supporting her on this, but for now, there was nothing the schemer could do besides leaving it to think and address later on. If it could even be addressed.

”Please let me know if any one of you see her,” she added before she let out a breath, then retrieved the bento with a troubled smile. ”I did say that I wanted to make your day be-

Her face fell without warning. Clouds gathered on her forehead and she looked into the distance for a second or two before her gaze returned to the present.

”Hotaru-san just informed me that she wants to talk to all of us. She specifically promised not to hurt Maeda-san.” As if having to deal with the unknown Shuuko and the fallout of her existence was not enough. Not that Ember let it show in her voice. ”I leave the choice to the two of you. I do not want to bring her in if you do not feel safe.”

She meant it, too. She did not know if she could trust Hotaru's word when it came to light girls.

“I can mind myself, but if things go wrong, I can trust you and Kiyo to help.” Haruna nodded. “Having a chance to talk to her would definitely make my day better. Even if it goes poorly, that just means I don’t have to worry about smoothing things over with her any more.”

Haruna's response teased a smile from Kiyo. "If the confrontation is inevitable, why put it off, huh?" She shrugged. "I just hope she's willing to finally tell me what this is all about."

”Unfortunately, I can make no guarantees on her behavior.” Ember made sure to really sell the bitterness in her voice before she called upon her magic, which manifested as the illusion of red-hot cinders appearing around her. The air seemed to billow, yet neither Haruna, nor Kiyo could feel heat coming from the woman. At least, not the usual kind. Their magical senses could pick up on Ember reaching for something, which was followed by the sensation of two hands joining one another.

A streak of yellowish light followed, which then formed into a new Takae Shuuko by the side of Ember. This one had the normal features, save for the yellow-coloured eyes, which glared death at Haruna. The gaze of the warrior was followed by her fingers along with a teeth-shattering grimace.

”So what’s so good about her that you’re willing to throw me to the wolves, Kiyo?” Her tone all but demanded confrontation and Ember had to hold back her response. She wanted nothing more than to interrupt, to put down Hotaru for her rude tone. She held back only for the sake of everyone else in the room.

"I'm not throwing you to the wolves. I'm waiting for you to calm down and talk to me." Kiyo replied, holding back a heaviness to the sigh that followed. "I've said my piece. What I need to hear from you is a real reason for your hatred."

Ember wasn’t the only one forcing herself to stay quiet. Haruna visibly bit back her own retort, not wanting to rise to Hotaru’s provocation in any number of ways that came to mind. Instead, she took a breath, then added to Kiyo’s comment. “Nobody knows why you have it out for light girls, Hotaru. We can’t exactly do anything to address things if you won’t say anything.”

”That’s exactly what you’re doing.” Hotaru insisted through clenched teeth. ”Look at her, she’s so sparkly and pretty! Her words are pretty too! It’s too bad they’re shitty lies.” She withdrew her hand and smacked her fist into an open palm. ”She’ll just sit there, prettily, watching as we all bust our asses.” Pain, though difficult to hear, lurked beneath the anger when Hotaru spoke. She paused only for a brief moment to gather her breath, then turned to Kiyo.

”And you! I thought you cared!” Her voice grew shaky, bitter. Betrayed ”But you… why? Just because she’s…” Hotaru choked, but she did not let any tears fall. Instead, she drew herself taller and her hands balled into fists by her side.

”Hotaru-san. I have lived the very same thing you did and…” One last time, Ember told herself. She will reach out one last time before she tried to do something drastic. ”You aren’t wrong about those girls. They didn’t help.”

"God, just..." Kiyo pinched the bridge of her nose, frustrated. "I'm no stranger to useless light girls, Hotaru. I know the sort you're talking about, but Haruna's running herself more ragged than half the Club by herself. What you're saying isn't even making sense. It's like you're looking at an entirely different person." Kiyo also wasn't sure what Haruna being 'pretty' had to do with anything, either, but she wasn't going to confirm or deny the allegations when it would only add fuel to the fire regardless of her answer.

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not right here,” Haruna said, a flash of irritation slipping through. “I don’t know if you noticed, but this is a hospital. I almost killed myself fighting Black Gate to give all of you a shot at that giga miseria.” She paused for a moment, and almost seemed like that was all she was going to say, but something shifted in her expression. “I’m not going to sit here and let you talk about me like I’m garbage. I don’t know what else you need from me. I’ve done my best to reach out to the Club. I’ve helped you guys out where I could. I literally overlooked you, specifically, trying to kill me, and got over it when I had to deal with Suki doing the same thing. I get that some fucked up things have happened to you. I know that’s true of literally everyone in the club. I’m also getting the impression a lot of it was at the hands of light girls. I can apologize on their behalf, I can try to be better than them, but I can’t go to the past and undo that. More importantly, I’m not them. If you’re going to hate me, hate me for something about me, not because of something someone else did to you.” Her tone stayed firm throughout; if anything, she seemed less angry than when she’d begun.

”Bullshit. You're just saving the worst for later, when we can get utterly screwed by it.” The warrior scowled and crossed her arms. ”And stop trying to look down on me. I'm not an idiot. You've deser-”

”Do you never want to be able to go outside again, Hotaru-san?” Ember’s cold question sliced through the warrior's words like a hot knife through butter. ”Because if you continue to not listen to what Kuroki-san and Maeda-san are saying, I will find a way to stop you from surfacing ever again. Even if it means hurting Kuroki-san.” She nodded towards Kiyo in an acknowledgement of how much she did not want that to happen, but at this point, she felt like they were running out of options. Hotaru insulting everyone in the room would never end well.

”You’re sticking up for her again!” Hotaru's retort sounded like an accusation in court.

”Because you are making it exceptionally difficult to speak up on your behalf, Hotaru-san. And you have been exceptionally difficult to speak up for ever since you saw Maeda-san. You refuse to listen to anything that concerns her and more than that, you refuse to acknowledge anything that may point to her being a decent light magical girl.” Ember turned towards Haruna. ”Please tell me if she is too much for you to bear, Maeda-san.”

”You’re all acting like you don’t know that light girls are only good for stealing boyfriends and betraying you! Especially you, Kiyo. Why do you believe anything she says, damnit?! Say something that makes sense!”

"Don't shut her out, Ember," Kiyo insisted, despite her exasperation. "Just..." Just... what, though? She wasn't even sure how she wanted to end that statement. "God damn, this argument is tedious," she said coolly. "I'm pretty sure I've said everything I want to say, but you keep making me repeat myself, even though you know I hate it. Are you trying to exhaust me into submission like a fucking child?" She exhaled forcefully. "You know what? Fool me twice, shame on me. If Haruna stabs me in the back, maybe I deserve it for giving light girls a second chance. Maybe it's not your responsibility to protect me from myself! Tell me that doesn't make sense to you," she spat, trembling.

Haruna held up a hand, taking a deep breath and attempting to forestall any further vitriol. “Hotaru,” she said firmly. “What, exactly, are you accusing me of? Specifically. What do you think my plan is for the Detention Club?”

”You already did it. You sold us out to the GEMs.” Hotaru crossed her arms. ”How the hell else did they know how to find us? And what about that black-haired girl who fucked us up so bad that Sylvia’s- Her mouth suddenly clacked shut. Her voice had spiked with pain as soon as she mentioned the protector, changing tracks. ”She hates me now because of you!”

”She doesn’t hate you. You scare her.”

”Except she obviously hates me.” She sounded genuinely frustrated, sorrowful and angry about it. Her voice trembled and her head fell a little as she spoke, the storm of emotions threatening to boil over into a hurricane.

Kiyo seemed close to snapping herself. "Oh my God, Hotaru. I don't know, maybe they followed us from the beach they saw us destroy? Maybe Haruna went along with my idea, like I already fucking told you?" Kiyo interjected, unwilling to wait for the light girl to 'incriminate' herself to Hotaru under the guise of taking responsibility for 'her' mistakes. "Have you already written me off as a lost cause? Is that why nothing I say matters to you anymore?"

Haruna took a deep breath. Tensions were running high, and as much as she wanted to call Hotaru a coward who would do anything and everything to make someone else bear the weight of her own problems, that wouldn’t actually help anyone. It wouldn’t even make her feel better for more than two seconds. “I’m going to talk as if you’re actually going to listen to anything I say. Okay?” Her pause for a response was largely theoretical, and she continued. “I’ve intentionally had as little to do with the GEMs as I can. I don’t like how they do things. I think they’re self-righteous, and that makes them always assume the first thing they thought to do was the correct thing. In case you forgot, I’ve fought against them directly. “

““Since you don’t know as much about my power as Kiyo does, I’ll explain something to you. I can hear people’s desires. It’s not always very precise, and more importantly, it’s harder to tell with most other magical girls. This means that I can also find other magical girls trivially, even when neither of us is transformed. If I’d wanted to ‘sell you out,’ you would never have met me. I would have just walked past the school, listened for the dark girls, and noted down where you were before leaving and telling the heavy hitters where to go.”

“Because I can hear people’s desires, I can also tell you what’s going on with Sylvia. It’s pretty simple what she wants. She wants all of you to stop hurting her.” Her gaze flicked over Ember as she spoke, indicating that the schemer was far from clear in this regard as well. “She thinks she’s a bad girl, and that’s why she deserves to get hurt, but I don’t think I need to explain everything wrong with that.” She took another, shorter breath. “What I want out of this conversation is for you to look at things reasonably so I don’t have to watch my back while I keep trying to help the club. That’s my goal. So, Hotaru, what exactly do you want out of this?”

The warrior looked genuinely hurt, confused when Kiyo snapped back at her, the confusion further intensifying as Haruna continued to talk regardless of what she did. She opened her mouth a couple of times to interrupt, to dispel the trap she felt closing in on all of them, yet Haruna did not let her and for the first time in the conversation, she looked off-balance. Her gaze kept hopping between Kiyo, Ember and Haruna. Her body stiffened. Almost like she had been struck.

What Haruna said was surely impossible. They were not the ones who hurt Sylvia. That dubious ‘honour’ belonged to the old bitch and the old bastard. Sylvia just hated Hotaru. Right? Except, she did remember Sylvia’s tone when she shouted at them begged them to stop. She remembered the protector’s voice trembling not with anger, but with fear.

Perhaps it was the relentless barrage of opposition. Perhaps it was the fact Haruna brought up Sylvia as well. Whatever the case, everyone could see that Hotaru was starting to waver.

”Why do you think I hurt Sylvia?” She forced those words through clenched teeth.

”She has told you and I countless times, Hotaru-san.” Ember spoke up with her usual, calm tone. ”She wanted us to stop shouting, which would not have happened in the first place if you actually listened to what I had to say instead of looking at an illusion in front of you.” She moved closer to Haruna, regarding the light girl with an appreciative eye.

”Look at her, Hotaru. Truly feast your eyes upon her visage. She has risked magic, limbs, heart and soul to save your Detention Club. Our Detention Club. The home that Sylvia bled for and suffered on the altar of for years without end. If you choose to still distrust her because of what we lived through back then when we were still within chains… I don’t know what to say to you.”

”But she’s a light girl. Light girls vomit lies and betrayal for breakfast.” The objection was nearly the same as before, but much weaker. Hotaru was clearly grasping at straws. ”Hey… Kiyo… am I really, really in the wrong here? I… I don’t understand.” She truly did not. Confusion had replaced anger. After all, how could she be wrong on something this important? Reality warred with the truth in her heart, fighting about the nature of this one light magical girl in front of her.

”You are right and wrong at the same time, Hotaru-san. The light girls we have encountered really have been the worst of the worst.” Ember did not really think so, but she lied smoothly and poured sympathy into her voice to make Hotaru feel as though she had someone on her side. ”But Maeda-san is not one of them. That is what I have been trying to tell you for a long time.”

Kiyo took a deep breath. She couldn't decide if she'd said too much and caused irreparable damage just now, or had minced her words far too much until then. Regardless, she regained her cool tone of voice. "What's more likely, Hotaru? You're wrong on this, or the entire club and Rei are all wrong and you're right? Two people who happen to know each other both had really shitty light girl experiences in the past, or all light girls everywhere in the world are just like that? You need to learn some chill, or Sylvia won't want to see you again. Then you'll just be wondering if she hates you forever, when you could just talk to her instead—and that would be even dumber than fighting with your best friend." She tried not to sound guilty of the same. "I made a mistake with Michi. I got ahead of myself because we needed more fighters and Haruna worked out really well for us—but I always had good feelings about Haruna. With Michi... there were signs she was... unstable. I just... ignored them. Because I wanted to help her. Just like I try to help the rest of the Club, which includes you—and now it includes Haruna, whether you like her or not."

Hotaru flinched as something Kiyo said hit the mark, the warrior shaking her head without intending to dismiss anything. If anything, it looked like she was trying to shake something loose or perhaps get rid of a thought stuck in it. A shiver followed suit, of a revulsive kind.

”You really do think that. You all think that. I…” She grit her teeth. She seemed like a lost lamb; almost like she was Sylvia at her lowest. The resemblance caused Ember to let out a barely audible gasp before the illusion shattered when Hotaru smashed a fist into her palm, all the while sucking on her teeth.

”I won’t hurt the light girl. Just as I never hurt Sylvia. Damnit.” Another shiver ran through her. ”I don’t get any of you. And if I’m right, I’ll be dragged into a mess I can’t even escape because of her,” Hotaru gestured aggressively towards Ember, her other hand dropping beside her. ”I can’t leave. I can’t even disagree! Are you guys happy now?” Her lips turned into a thin line as she shook her head once again. ”Damnit, damnit, damnit…”

A deep breath.

”And you!” Her finger turned from Ember to Haruna. ”I swear that if you betray us, I’ll gut you like a fish.” The thunder in her eyes showed she took her promise seriously.

“Pretty sure you’d have to get in line for it,” Haruna said with a nod, “but I understand. I know my word isn’t worth much, but I’d hope my actions would continue to earn your trust.” She took another even breath. “I’m not going to try to change your mind about light girls, either. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about my part in Michi wrecking everything the way she did. I thought. . .” She seemed to deflate, the resolve and calm Haruna had been maintaining leaving her frame all at once. “I thought we were friends.”

"We shouldn't have been enemies," Kiyo agreed, slowly approaching Hotaru and burying her face in her shoulder. "My predictions have never been perfect, Hotaru. Just trust me on this one thing. And please don't tell me I don't care. That hurts." She squeezed. "I won't ask for anything else."

For a moment, Hotaru looked as though she were about to rebuke Kiyo, her accusing finger still pointing at Haruna, then her shoulders loosened and her gaze softened. Not quite enough to get rid of the tension in her frame, nor enough to reach out towards the black-haired girl, but enough to let the heightened emotions dissipate. Her hand dropped a second or two later, becoming a fist by her side as she closed her eyes.

”You owe me all the icecream in the world after this,” muttered the warrior, barely audible to everyone else. Unfortunately for her, Ember happened to have sharp hearing.

”That is perhaps the best idea I have heard from you in a while and though I am sure the staff would be rather upset if we brought some in…” The schemer showed a deliberately sly grin as she gathered her magic, ”I’m sure the town can deal with one more ghost story. Isn’t that right, Maeda-san?”

A part of Haruna wanted to admonish Ember for immediately resorting to theft, but. . . “A little missing ice cream isn’t going to hurt anyone,” she agreed, before shifting her gaze to the warrior. “I promise you won’t regret this, Hotaru.”

---

Suika had, after the others had left the meeting with their own problems in mind, done the same, slowly, and made her way back 'home.' Her mind was in conflict, a battlefield of emotions she'd only recently come to know holding their ground against her wishes. It wasn't until she was standing in front of the door that she realized how her pace had been slowed to its old normal. The sun had already set, its light seeming to mirror the weed's disposition.

It wasn't as if her aunt and uncle were unused to their niece returning home late, but after the past few weeks... well, it certainly felt like months to Suika, the duo had begun paying more attention to her actions. And so when her hand made contact with the doorknob, absentmindedly twisting it, she felt a surge on her magical radar from beyond it.

A melody of feelings with the theme of 'concern' made the girl stop before actually opening the door. Great, that had to be Tsubomi's aunt. Which meant she was waiting for her, and had heard the doorknob move. Was it worth it to continue just to get into bed? Maybe it would be better to go back out into the night.

As if it were a whisper on the edge of her hearing, Suika knew what Tsubomi would say to her. While the bud hadn't reappeared since she gained functional emotions, the invader had, against her will, obtained Tsubomi's memories. Ironic, given that Tsubomi would have had a field day if she saw it happen to someone else. 'Do memories make the person' was a question the girl had been intimately familiar with, months of thought poured into its mold with no real result.

To answer the question from her point of view, Suika would give a resounding 'kind of.' It really was like hearing one's child self speaking to their current incarnation, but it was likely nothing more than the brain spawning garbage data in the shape of a statement. A thought in and of itself from the current 'person,' masquerading as one from the past 'self.' A new thing, built in the image of what one's memories claimed the thinker used to be, regardless of accuracy. Perhaps the introduction of literal magic changed that paradigm?

... Great, even her thinking was becoming like Tsubomi's, the newfound speed those thoughts moved at only making the realization even more worrying in its rejection of what Suika had known for most of her existence.

This flew through her mind, loud enough that she missed what she believed to be the old Tsubomi's words, needing to take a moment to remember them. She'd already let go of the doorknob.

It was something about 'shadows,' right? Mm, yeah, something Tsubomi would have said after becoming a Magical Girl, not before.

'If you're conflicted, do something obvious. For a Magical Girl, that's easy. Go and purge the shadows. Save someone, now or later on. It's your job.' That's what she'd say to Suika now, if she was someone other than the weed that choked her out, right?

Yeah, it was. It didn't matter if the words were actually an echo of Tsubomi or just Suika's mind constructing something out of the memories she'd stolen, because those very memories were enough for her to confirm their accuracy.

With the empty coldness of fear in her chest, Suika slouched her shoulders and turned away to walk into the night.

---

---

Acid Drop had been too late, it seemed, because there were no Miseria to be found. She idly wondered if this was due to the Club's resident hunting-obsessed lightning bolt, but she couldn't bring herself to care about the reason. If there were no Miseria to sort out, how was she going to sort out her own feelings?

Once more, she knew what Tsubomi would say in response. 'Figure them out yourself. It's not like Miseria are literally your inner demons or anything, not like you were to me.'

Acid Drop felt a single laugh escape her. Even with Tsubomi gone, regressed, and/or missing, she still could verbally abuse the vine. But that was fitting, wasn't it? A haunting from the person she may have killed, a perfect punishment for her. 'Never forget I was here, because I won't let you.'

"Man, that's great! What kind of face should I be making right now, then!? C'mon director, give some direction! Bad actors need more of it, you know!?" She could almost taste the bitterness of her own words.

The world around her gave no response. After a few seconds of wasted time, silence filled only with her anger, she could just hear what her victim would have said.

'What does that matter? Doing what you're told is boring; shows that follow the script and never deviate are boring. Obediently following orders will kill you.'

Okay, but that's the goal, isn't it? Acid Drop mindlessly kicked the rock that was unfortunate enough to be in her path. You wanted me dead, but you stopped that. Was that because you would have gone with me, or because it was what you wanted to do?

There was no reply. Despite absorbing Tsubomi's memories, the answer eluded her, as if they had been locked away as a parting shot.

Acid Drop was unable to continue her train of thought, not for lack of desire, but because there was a rustling from the bush the rock had landed in.

She paused, glaring at the foliage as it continued its shaking. Maybe she'd hit a stray animal? The thought instantly made her eyes soften. If she had, she'd only feel even worse.

But what walked out from the leaves wasn't a cat or a dog. Instead, a Miseria showed itself to the rainbow-haired Magical Girl.

Weird. Had it been hiding from whoever had swept the streets already? Were the monsters that intelligent? Maybe a Giga was, or their minions, but a random one? No way.

And she was correct. This Miseria hadn't been hiding, nor had it been doing anything. But now, now it would do something. It lunged at Acid Drop only to find its mouth wrapped around her arm. Somehow, this felt familiar to the girl.

The pain brought a new rush of emotion to her mind, something she expected would affect her much more than it was. Dealing with classmates? Difficult. Interacting with Regina? Hellish. Participating in a club meeting? Sisyphean. But getting her arm nearly bitten through was the easy one to ignore? How did that work!?

Acid Drop merely stood there, the Miseria continuing to gnaw at her at an increasingly slower pace, for what felt like hours.

'Now you just have to figure out how to replicate that and you'll be fine.'

... So it seemed. In spite of her nerves sending their panicking signals to her brain, emotionally Suika felt fine. Better than fine, actually. Maybe the best she'd felt since Tsubomi disappeared.

But there was no way that this was healthy. No, Suika knew from Tsubomi's interest in psychology that replacing emotional pain with physical wasn't something even worth considering. And yet, she couldn't help but consider it for a moment. That was about when the Miseria stopped moving completely, and the painful payload of stimuli overwhelmed the numbness she'd grown from her past battles. This shit really hurt.

The Miseria found itself pierced by the girl's Devil Arm, and the girl found herself staring at a rather gruesome wound. At least Magical Girls didn't retain damage between forms. Healing pretty quickly was an added bonus.

---

---

When Suika returned to 'her home,' she once more felt the deep discomfort in her chest that sneaked its way in with her fears. She'd already discarded her rainbow wig shortly after the Miseria's death, but her empathic senses were still going strong. Similarly, so too were the emotions her aunt was feeling.

The tune had changed, the 'concern' becoming much deeper and fuller, now accented with notes of real fear and undertones of depression. It seemed that the vine had hurt yet another person with her existence.

Suika sighed and stood up straighter, trying to force into being the feeling she'd had when she was being chewed on. She failed.

She felt her fingernails digging into her palm; apparently she had balled her free hand into a fist without noticing. Maybe if...

No, she couldn't, or at least shouldn't, do that. If for no other reason than Tsubomi deserving better than a scarred or mangled body when it was finally returned to her. Suika couldn't accept the idea of being the type to damage lent property. So with far more effort than it should have taken she managed to pry her fingers into a straightened position, and turned the doorknob.

The door opened slowly, as if the girl was trying to hide the noise as she returned home from a late night arcade trip. A decent cover story, if she desired one, but the pace was more due to not wanting to see the concerned face that was no doubt watching on the other side.

The door wasn't even halfway open when Suika's shoulder fell alongside her gaze, staring at the tiny bit of the floor she could see as if it would tell her the day she'd die.

Surely, Tsubomi's aunt deserved to be greeted with something better. Instead, what she saw was a preemptively dejected, overwhelmed face that was toeing the line of panic. This was not the too calm, unbothered by anything niece that she had come to know over the past year. This may as well have been a stranger, a skin-walker taking a familiar form to cause the most disturbance possible. Perhaps that wasn't too far off the mark.

The young girl went from moving her arm at a glacial pace to shooting down the entryway like a cannonball launched with too much gunpowder, even tripping over her own feet and going off-course like one. In an instant Suika had gone from just barely fully visible standing in the doorway to collapsed on the floor just past where her shoes were meant to lay.

Of course she had tripped and fallen. Why would she deserve anything else? She couldn't even get relief from the pain in her palms, the sting only adding to her emotional concoction. A shot of cinnamon with her disgusting mixture of lettuce and peanut. Feelings that only made one sick to even think about, and now anger was shoving its way in as well.

For her part, her aunt only felt even more worried, but unlike the weed she had years of experience dealing with her own thoughts and feelings, with other people. "Tsubomi, dear, are you alright?" The question was as much rhetorical as it was genuine, given the state of her niece even before her fall.

The anger in Suika grew at the question, her still hurting hands curling into fists. She knew that the older woman genuinely wanted what was best, to help, but those desires were for Tsubomi, not her, and rightfully so. If she knew the reality of Tsubomi's existence, she'd be mortified.

"I'm fine," she managed to force out through gritted teeth. Not waiting for a response, Suika took a shaky, deep breath and pushed herself up. Her forearms screamed at her, having done such an action less than a dozen times in Hibusa, but they still did their job to bring her from her prone position enough to get her feet under her. Without looking at the face of the older woman she turned around to face the still open door and closed it, then took her shoes off in a doomed attempt to act like nothing had happened.

The elder of the two sat quietly, watching her niece with tired, sad eyes. She didn't know what had happened to the poor child, so she didn't know how to try to alleviate her problems. She was in her home because she'd begun to act differently, starkly so, and now she was doing so again. Was she to ship her off to yet another relative, claiming that she could no longer care for her? She understood her sister's genuine inability to continue, but being in a financial position to do so would make the decision even worse. She wasn't going to abandon even a single member of her family if there was any way she could avoid doing so.

"Tsubomi," she began, "can we talk for a bit?"

Talking was perhaps the last thing that Suika wanted to do. With her shoes thrown haphazardly on the floor near the entryway, she shakily stood and turned around with her head still bowed to stare at the ground.

"Maybe some other time, Oba-san." An empty platitude, an attempt to parry the older woman's concerned attempt to probe into Suika's mind and feelings.

As the girl tried to make her way upstairs, she noticed a shift in her aunt's emotions. That was the absolute last straw, she had decided. Tsubomi had not once in the time she'd been in their home referred to anyone with any honorific that she had heard. Things were worse than she had thought.

"I'm sorry, Tsubomi, but I insist. Come sit with me."

Suika sighed inwardly, knowing both that she had no way to escape now, short of running somewhere else outside, and that she had once more messed things up somehow. With the pace of her old self, she turned and walked over to take a seat across from Tsubomi's aunt.

"Alright then, I guess..."

Where to begin? In her fifty years of life, the woman couldn't think of a single time that she'd heard how to help a struggling teenager. With it being so long ago, she couldn't remember her own experiences as one either. What could she say to the girl who sat staring at the floor as if it would show her the secrets of the universe? She cleared her throat.

"Tsubomi... What happened?" May as well cut to the chase, she supposed. "You've been acting strangely recently." Well, strangely in a different way, at least. She wouldn't be sitting there now if she hadn't been acting strangely already.

Ah, yes, the 'Old Days.' The days where she couldn't feel so shitty, the days were she at least appeared to get along with the Club, with those who she passed by in the flow of her life. It seemed so silly to segregate that time from the present when they were still so recent, but she couldn't justify lumping them all together as if nothing had changed.

"Ah... nothing happened. I've just... not felt right. I think I might not be getting enough sleep."

"..." An obvious lie, yet another sign that things were worse than she knew. She couldn't say that Tsubomi probably never lied in her home, but at least until recently it was much harder to tell! "If you can't tell me, I think... I think we need to take you to a psychiatrist."

Right, that thing that Tsubomi had dreamed of becoming one day. The long away days she'd believed she knew the details of but would now never come true. Suika felt tears well in Tsubomi's eyes.

"I know it's not ideal, Dear, but I can't just watch you suffer like this without trying to help."

Well why not?

"So if I can't do it, I'll do whatever it takes to find you someone who can."

How wonderful.

"But just know that I'm here for you. If you need anything, if you want to talk, just let me know, okay?"

Moments passed, Suika hearing no sound but Tsubomi's heartbeat. Finally, she nodded slightly, once, and spoke. "Okay."

The weed stood and began once more toward the stairs.

"Tsubomi."

'Tsubomi' stopped, standing in place.

"I love you, dear. Are you safe?"

Suika blinked. Huh? Was she... safe? What a question. She knew what Tsubomi's aunt meant, but could she really answer honestly given that she'd nearly had an arm bitten off an hour earlier?

"... Yeah. Don't worry." Having said all she could, Suika began up the stairs.

When she arrived in Tsubomi's bedroom, Suika noticed something amiss. There was a note on the desk, and given the handwriting it was from Tsubomi's uncle. Hopefully he hadn't read the letter she'd written to Suki... No, it was still in between the same pages in the unread textbook in the drawer.

Still, it was odd for Tsubomi's uncle to do something like this. She hadn't felt his concern with her magical sense, but as she read the note, she could feel it through the words. It seemed that, in his own way, he cared about Tsubomi too.

'I don't know what happened a few weeks ago, but there's only one thing you can do regardless. You mustn't allow yourself to go astray. Find the road you want to walk and see it through to the end. That's all we humans can do.'

Ha. Pretentious bastard. That was all Suika thought as she felt tears begin to stream down Tsubomi's cheeks.

Conflict often lead to a new, better state of affairs. When a deity grew old, their power waned and as such, their miracles no longer had enough strength to support their worshippers. And as time went on, those worshippers would become fewer and fewer until there were not enough to support the deity’s existence, which would lead to a tragic demise of the divine and the mortal alike. Or if conflict reared its ugly, yet sometimes necessary head, a new god would challenge the ailing deity, then unite their powers into something stronger. Because it was always the better one who won. The more skilled, the more resourceful, the more worthy of worship. There could be no other way.

Still, some people paid homage to the forgotten. To the powerless. They crafted small statues in the image of the long-gone or the barely alive. Fragments of divinity remained in their heart and if enough were gathered in one spot or under one banner, perhaps even the dead may be revived. For once something existed, that never vanished - at least it was so in the world of the gods. Its existence never quite vanished, even if forgotten.

What did that say about the nature of Takae Shuuko? She certainly did not contemplate anything along these lines as she prayed at the tiny shrine at the side of the road, in one of Hibusa Town’s suburban regions. Here, nature along with the faith that made gods strong still existed. And while it was no mountain temple in all of its grandiosity, the statuette of this shrine had been carved lovingly a long time ago. No doubt it had survived many a storm given the small indents on the monkey statue’s surface.

However, Take Shuuko did not pray to the statue directly. Instead, she tried to convey her best wishes to those who did not even know she existed, but still relied on her at the end of the day along with those who seemed to be close by. Her ears perked up as she heard someone approach her, which should have been nigh impossible this time of the day, as she had deliberately picked a time when the neighborhood was practically empty. Yet the deliberate nature of the steps could not be mistaken, so she finished her prayer and turned backwards to see who wanted to talk to… well… someone.

A woman with blood red hair approached, though Shuuko doubted her initial assessment when she simply walked beside her and kneeled. Her hands came together in prayer. Though there was something off. She didn’t look very relaxed. Her shoulders were squared up, and her knees weren’t touching the ground. It looked more like an attempt at meditation than prayer. Reaching inside the self instead of reaching outward towards the divine.

"Hmmmm, monkey." One of her eyes opened. "A strangely fitting idol to pray to, hmmm?" The woman turned her head completely to Shuuko. "So which one are you supposed to be?"

In response, First Shuuko hid her left hand behind her body and clenched it, the movement betraying her true feelings even as a bright smile appeared on her face. She turned fully towards Ashbringer, her body language seemingly open, welcoming.

"I don't know what you're referring to, but I’m Takae Shuuko. It's nice to meet you!" At least her voice did not shake.

"You have ‘multiple personality disorder’ do you not?" Regina rose to her feet. Slowly. Then she stretched. "It doesn’t matter I suppose. I’ve always believed such things were a farce for attention. Most creative people have multiple personalities. It’s just a gambit to appear more interesting than one actually is. But really, all magical girls have at least two personalities, no?"

"Did you know that you're being really rude?" Takae Shuuko put her hand on her hips, projecting more courage than she really felt in the presence of their arch-enemy. Her heart raced, threatening to burst from her chest as she contemplated reaching for the ever-present strings that lead to her other bodies. "You’re talking like you know me when you haven't even met me."

"Yes, Japanese people are rather big on their manners, aren’t they? Harkens back to the feudal era, where misspoken words could get your head cut off." She rocked her head side to side, causing her neck to crack before turning towards Shuuko. "So I guess this personality cares about etiquette? That narrows it down a bit. Black Gate was a bit easier to figure out. She had hundreds of personalities, but they were all the same. It’s too bad you didn’t get to meet her."

"What’s even a Black Gate? Can you eat it?"

"It’s hard to tell if you’re playing dumb or being sincere right now." Her eyes narrowed a bit, but a wicked smile was crossing her lips. "Oh? I see now. Could it be that you don’t know who I am?" She moved her hand over her mouth, as if to conceal a laugh, and then folded her arms again. "My name is Regina. Though some people in these parts call me Ashbringer."

Takae Shuuko already knew, of course, but recoiled all the same. Her eyes widened as though she just realised the situation, then the frown on her brows returned.

"So what are you doing here, trying to talk with your enemy? Shouldn't you be beating me into a pulp right now?"

"I have principles, my dear. I promised you weak and pathetic friends that I’d let them train for a year. The hope is that they won’t be so weak and pathetic when that time comes." Her hands moved down to her hips, and she looked Shuuko up and down. Like a sculptor examining their handiwork. "But not knowing which one you are is a little concerning. Maybe I don’t have to be an enemy of all of you? I probably do in all honesty, but you haven’t thrown yourself at me in a fit of rage. So I can count on you not being Ember, right?"

"You’re talking like there’s more than one of me." The frown on Shuuko's face got slightly deeper. "And you’re being silly, too. If you really wanted Hibusa Town or anything in it, you would have just taken it anyways. That's the rule of Dark Magical Girl's, isn't it?"]

"The rule of dark magical girls is they don’t have any rules." Regina’s eyes shifted to her nails. She began to run her thumb along her fingers. "Alright. Can’t draw blood from a stone after all. You want to know why I’m here? I wanted you to relay a message to Roche for me." Her smile became just a bit sweeter, but in a not so nice way. "You see, we had a bit of a shared, how shall I say, experience the other day. I won’t bore you with specifics, but… Oh maybe I will anyway. So we were kind of set up and put in some rather compromising positions. But they were acting so sweet, and I may have lead them on a little bit." She giggled. "I know she wants to talk to me. I know that deep down she thinks she wants to be my friend. Maybe, maybe a little more than just friends." She shook her head. "But it can’t happen. And she’ll understand that eventually, but I really don’t want to involve myself with her again. She’s all the worst aspects of the club merged into one. Annoying, needy brat that she is. I’d show up and she’d start nagging me about how she just wants to be friends, or some other trite ploy to cover up how lazy she is." Regina tipped her head and made a pained face. "Sylvia? Ember? I forget who her girlfriend’s name is, but it’s clear she’s just using her because she can’t have what she really wants. And what she really wants is a happy ending where the fight she foolishly picked with me ends in a romance, because that’s just how delusional she is. But as I’ve said, I guess it’s a lot easier to pretend that you can beg things to be a particular way. You must hold that belief too, right?" Regina waved her hand at the shrine. "You pretend that talking to false idols can improve your life? That’s the whole point of prayer, I think. Just weak willed people putting their burdens on those they perceive as being stronger than themselves. That’s what makes love so dangerous, right? We think our lovers, our parents, we want them to protect us from everything. But then you grow up and learn to protect yourself, because you aren’t weak anymore. Or maybe you stay weak? Maybe you never grow up, and you stick around a club that makes you feel strong in number." After tapping her chin a bit, Regina scoffed. "Sorry, I rambled a bit. Do you think you can convince Roche I’m a lost cause?"

The frown on Takae Shuuko's face grew deeper the more she listened to Regina, eventually turning into a scowl. Her hands crossed in front of her, the disciple once again hiding that slight tremor by hiding her fingers behind her arms.

"First of all, that's really rude to my friend. Ryoba isn't perfect, but she's much better than that! Second of all, you don't make much sense, do you?" A smile showed on her face as though she found a weak spot. She levied her finger against Regina - Ashbringer, the one who incinerates - willing it to become steady no matter how it wanted to be anything but.

"You say we’re weak and only have strength in numbers, but you're doing the same. You're only using a different method. You're saying that prayer is the weak putting the burden on the strong. Well, aren't you praying that we get stronger, in a sense?" A smug smile showed on her face as though she were a cat that caught the canary.

"If you really wanted to make us stronger, you wouldn't incinerate the whole of Hibusa Town."

"Last I checked, Hibusa town was still standing. I’m more interested in the Detention club." Regina ran her finger along a pillar of the shrine. "And the difference between us, Miss Takae, is that my life doesn’t depend on whether your lot gets stronger or not. I can call everything off whenever I want. I can attack now or at our agreed upon time. There is no incentive for me to do anything other than my own whims." She drove her fingernail into the surface of the pillar and started to carve. "But the Detention club doesn’t have that luxury. A single sentence spoken at the end of spring has shifted the course of your lives. A declaration I made half a year ago has changed how the lot of you operate. Prayer is performed by worshipers, but the Detention club has turned me into its god." Her hand came off the shrine sharply, but rather than colliding with the side of Shuuko’s head, it rested on her shoulder. Regina’s smile vanished. "And what need does a god have for prayer when they are so lovingly worshipped?" Regina patted Shuuko’s shoulder, then stepped past her to leave. "Ween her off of me, or don’t. It does not matter in this grand scheme of mine."

"You claim it’s your whims, but I bet there’s more to it, isn’t there?" Takae Shuuko’s heart kept trying to jump out of her ribcage, yet she still chose to ask the question. She turned after Regina, keeping the smile on her face and dropping her hands. "Because if you’re a god, then you need worship. Admit it - you exist only because of us."

Perhaps it was foolish of her to attempt to provoke Ashbringer. But amongst the Detention Club, it was only the one with the multiple bodies who could safely do so and so she steadied herself, hoping to find a chink in the armour. A slip that would let her grasp something, besides the fact Regina thought herself a god.

Regina stopped in her tracks. She looked over her shoulder Shuuko, brow lowered. The corner of her lips pointed didn’t reveal a smile or a frown. She turned around to face Shuuko. "What’s this? Are you attempting to evoke my wrath?" She reached out her hand and placed it over Shuuko’s heart. Then her lips curled up into a wicked smile. "Ahhh, it’s not enough to preach for me, you wish to be my prophet as well? Your heart is beating so fast…" She pulled back her hand. "I really feel that the Detention Club should focus on getting stronger, but if you desire me so I can understand your frustration. You wanted Roche, but it would appear you want me just as much as she does now. I suppose it can’t be helped." She brushed her hair, and her curls bounced into place. "Get Roche off of me and I will make time for you."

When Regina reached out to Takae Shuuko, cold sweat broke out all over her skin. A part of her, the one so attuned to magic, could feel the raging power beneath the skin even when Ashbringer remained in hiding. Truthfully, she wanted to do nothing more than hide, but then something very strange occurred.

Regina had completely mistaken her reaction.

How the narcissistic girl came to the conclusion that Takae Shuuko’s heart burned for her, the object of Regina’s… affection…? Did not know. What she did know is that her heart picked up even further as she wet her suddenly dry lips, throwing caution to the wind as she prepared to stick her head into the lion’s mouth for the sake of her own survival.

"So you won’t make time for Roche, but you will make time for me?" Hopefully, her terror came across as excited nerves. She did make an effort to twist her voice that way, but the clammy feeling on her skin gave no reassurances.

"You seem like you’re more in control of your emotions, and you’re not giving me much choice." Regina tipped her head. "Am I mistaken?"

"You could always say no. It’s not like I can force you to indulge me. You’d break me in half!" Shuuko tried to shoot for a nervous joke, even going as far as to force uncomfortable laughter at the end.

"Ah, well that’s certainly true." Regina grinned. Though it did not take the smile long to run from her face. "But, there is another reason of course." Regina’s eyelids fluttered to half mast, and her hand moved under the girl’s chin. "I find you a lot more interesting than her." Regina’s breath, as warm as a dragon’s, rolled off of Shuuko’s face. Then her ruby red lips closed over Shuuko’s, and she could taste Regina swimming in her mouth. Her other hand reached around her waist and pulled her worshiper in close. Not like a lover, but like a dragon pulling its treasure closer to itself. When Regina released Shuuko, she staggered backwards, and Regina wore an amused smile. "Settle things with Roche, and I’ll see you again in a few weeks…" Regina did not wait around. She transformed into Ashbringer right in front of her and blasted into the sky. She was only there for a moment, but no doubt at least one of the other club members had witnessed a burning meteor rise out of Hibusa town.

The violation she felt could not be put into words. She felt as though a volcano had invaded her mouth. No, rather, it was a salamander with volcanoes on its back that wriggled past her lips, bringing a truly revolting taste with it. But Takae Shuuko was no stranger to such things, so she forced herself to return the gesture, even going as far as to close her eyes so it would seem she enjoyed it. Then she put what she hoped was a goofy smile on her face when Regina stepped back, watching with a fake gaze of worship when Ashbringer took to the skies.

Then she collapsed and started to retch, trying her best not to think of how big a mess she may have made for herself.