Lonewolf685

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Her expectations were less subverted and more shattered by the breadth of information gleaned from Regina’s reaction. The girl who had made the whole club dance in the palm of her hand had, for the very first time, reacted with unvarnished surprise to Roche’s approach. Lacking anything approaching subtly when it came to other Magical Girls, it was just alarming to see as it was to feel the whip-cord tension of Regina’s muscle in their brief, lopsided embrace.

Of course she’d rallied quickly, even if putting her back to the wall didn’t project the confidence she was aiming for. Just as outright revealing her intentions dispelled a layer of mystery, as though the Rule Keeper were peeking behind the curtain and seeing the Wizard at the controls of marvelous contraptions.

”You knew she could handle it? So you were going to burn down the flower shop even without us being there.” Roche’s lips thinned, finding a piece added to the macabre jigsaw yet still working to find where it fit. The curdling of her expression only deepened as she stole a look into the class, spotting Misoka as she learned of troubles she’d been unaware of.

”Sure you can- Wait, what?!” One could hear the record scratch as her brain ground to an abrupt halt. She fervently wished to have misheard but, alas, the group’s White Whale wanted to come into the club room all on her own.

”Look, I like Misoka, and whatever is going on I’m happy to help, but if I bring Ashbringer to the club room, Nyxia will shoot first and ask questions later. Let alone Suki and Tsubomi’s reactions.” The tanned girl ground the heel of her palm into her brow, trying in vain to quash the pressure swelling behind her eyes. ”You have to give us something here, or we’ll be repeating our last fight before you can finish introductions, and no one will be in a position to help Misoka after the school burns down.”

Though her estimations were shaken by the vulnerability from Regina, she still clung to her assumptions of her character. Wildly fanciful and the clear result of projection on her part, but the Rule Keeper held fast to the thought that Ashbringer was a principled young woman. The sort who imposed their own idea of right and wrong on the world via her own power.

Someone who would force herself onto the Club without offering something in return.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Roche crunched upon her toast, masticating without a thought to the ruddy mix of jam and butter sliding down her gullet. The shadow of a restless night still clung to her face as the tips of her fingers throbbed from laboring over a cork board hung in her room. Strings of red wool ran from pushpins that she’d torn loose and thrust anew ad nauseum for most of the night as she struggled with the tangled web in her mind.

Scraps of paper messily scrawled with the names of key actors in the farce that was her life. Marker slashed out ‘Ashbringer’ and ‘Schrade’ with equal emotion, pinned alongside their supposed civilian identities. Branching from them were known associates, the former only sporting Sink Queen and Misoka, while the latter bloomed into a tree of club members and their associates.

Before she’d put markers to paper, she had thought the club orderly in its chaos, a predictable storm to coax along per Rei’s rules. Now after putting a trio of branches from Shatterscape and seeing the names of three girls when she’d thought to have only held one in her arms, certainty was no longer something she could take for granted.

Satan and her perverse friend sat as twin islands further afield near a cluster of GEMS, with the latter bearing a tenuous bridge back to the Detention Club courtesy of Hizuki.

“What a mess.” Roche swallowed her paltry meal, expression tight as she cast a blanket over the board and tucked the entire thing into the closet. Stepping past a laptop whose camera was taped over and waltzing past curtains drawn tight over shuttered blinds, she shouldered her bag and departed to school, hand palming an orb sitting heavy in her wind breaker.

Emerging from the darkness of her home to find a pleasant day, she’d had time to make a habit of jogging with their new resident light girl. To her enlightened eye she still seemed innocent, and she exulted in the feeling of having another to break the solitude of her routine. Even as her height swelled with dread that it could all come crashing down with another revelation.

After saying her goodbyes, they’d split to make their own way into the school. Roche’s own route should have been without issue, and in truth, it was. If she would only turn a blind eye to the source of her distress, but when had the Rulekeeper balked from the flames that burned her?

After shaking the orb of wisdom in her pocket and stealing a glance at its answer, the Rule Keeper strode forward with a megawatt smile.

“Hey there, long time, no see!” Roche came alongside the crimson haired college student, snatching her into a side hug that let her briefly glimpse Misoka herself through the classroom’s window. Just as quickly she gave the most dangerous threat to the Detention Club her space, leaning against the wall and favoring her like an old friend. The sort of touchy-feely greeting everyone’s glazed over in a high school, too common and vapid to register in their minds if it wasn’t their own friend group.

After her response to the GEMS intrusion, one would have thought she’d be murderous and lashing out, but she’d spent far too much time studying her opposition to misconstrue her intentions so badly. Knowing full well she’d intruded onto Ashbringer’s territory, it feet neatly into her budding theory that Ashbringer showed up at the heart of the Detention Club.

”It’s good to see you. Our schedules really don’t line up, but I’m glad you could make some time after for us Hibusa girls. How’s life been treating you?”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

It was not her fault.

Yet Hotaru’s feet still pounded against the track field. No matter how her legs screamed and wailed at her, she willed to keep them going with magic. When that threatened to run out, she switched to willpower. When that ran almost empty, she turned back to magic. The warrior knew she could not sustain it, but at least it distracted her from her thoughts, save for the single one that kept returning.

It was not her fault.

Hotaru continued until she felt her legs start to give out, then she took a seat. She let herself relax for a couple of minutes, just enough to get back the reserves she expended, then took off again in a sprint. Even the Detention Club’s resident slave driver would likely be forced to concede that the warrior pushed herself too far, but she did not care. Maybe Ember would rethink her idiocy if she ruined this body.

And it was still not her fault.

So why. Why?! Why did her chest feel so hollow? Why did she want to disappear into the Sun?

It was not her fault. It was not her fault!

She kept telling herself that. It just made her breath run out faster, forcing her to take a break once again. Knowing that her exhausted legs could not make it to the benches right now, Hotaru sat down on the track and glared at the setting Sun, wishing she could banish it.

Rare were the days that Roche found herself the watcher upon the grass, looking out over the Track Field as another ran herself into the ground. She could accept Kiyo as a one-off, but looking over Shuuko running not for growth, but self destruction, couldn't be ignored. Even without her trauma and tendencies for extreme responses, not even a Dark Magical girl could ignore the display.

Her fingers caressed the smooth curves of a magic orb in her pocket, but she quashed the impulse to check it as her feet carried her forward. Picking her moment she didn’t need to hasten to come upon Shuuko, the girl who so often swung from cold efficacy and emotional vulnerability now wearily animated. Roche may have called it progress if it hadn’t led to the track as she was.

”Shuuko, what’s eating you?” There was no point beating around the bush in the Rule Keeper’s eyes, but there was also a plethora of reasons for what could be bringing her friend down.

Hotaru flinched. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she did not even notice her onlooker. Clenching her teeth, she whipped her head towards Earthshaker.

”Why should I te-” Her mouth snapped shut, the biting remark cut in half as Ember’s words surfaced in her mind again.

”Errr… ummm….” she stammered as she floundered for something Sylvia would do. ”I’m sorry?”

In the face of Shuuko’s peculiarities, Roche had chosen not to dig too deep. There was no lack of oddities she herself possessed, just the same as every girl in the Detention Club, but it felt like a line was being crossed when Shuuko was pushing herself beyond any constructive norm.

More than that, though, was that it was the first time Shuuko had ever sounded so insincere with her apology.

”Don’t apologize. The track is for anyone when the team isn’t using it, but that wasn’t what I was asking for.” Another step, and Roche was near enough to reach out and rest her hand against her friend’s shoulder.

”Yeah, well, it’s-” Hotaru cut whatever she had to say in half again, not even realising she pulled away from Roche’s touch. ”It’s nothing.” Confidence and certainty filled her voice.

”If it was nothing you wouldn’t be out here trying to tear an ACL or acting like a Tsundere.” Roche replies back, the deep bags under her eyes telling just how little restraint the Rule Keeper still possessed. Her hand clenched around open air and it proved an effort of Will to return it to her side with a heavy set scowl

”This isn’t like you.”

”I’m normally not piss- angry like this,” she responded, brushing off the comment as though it were a piece of lint on an otherwise immaculate dress. ”Lots of things happened. You can’t make sense of them if you’re pissed off, can you?” A lopsided smile appeared on her face as she turned towards Roche, but it fell away just as quickly as it appeared.

”Shit. I’m not acting like Sylvia at all.”

A more rational Roche may have responded with composure and an unflinching resolve to get to the bottom of the matter. The one that had an eight ball rolling in her pocket bodily tackled the imposter off the field and into the grass.

Driving the air from her lungs as the Rule Keeper straddled her chest, both hands clutched at clothing and pulled her up till they were nose to nose. Bloodshot eyes narrowed to pricks of roiling fury lanced down into the imposter.

”What did you do to Shuuko?!”

”I am Shuuko, you idiot!” Fury met fury. Hotaru grabbed Roche’s hands and squeezed, almost driving the nails into the other girl’s skin. ”And if you don’t let me go, I’ll fuck up your face!”

Violence only invited equally fierce reprisal and in that regard, few in the club could match Roche for sheer depths of spite. ”You would have done better impersonating Nyxia with that mouth!”

The imposter had no warning before the Rule Keeper’s head came down., foreheads crashing together with a barbaric crack of impact to rattle loose her grip on Roche’s hand. Surging forward, she tried to wrap her hands around ‘Shuuko’s’ wrist to pin her fully. ”Are you one of the GEMS? Or are you just another opportunist thinking you can fuck with us?”

Reeling from the impact, the warrior had no chance to dodge the Rulekeeper’s attack, nor did she have a snowball’s chance in hell to resist being turned around and then made to taste dirt as she was pinned. Reduced to spitting the clumps out of her mouth, she nevertheless tried to struggle, but could not even budge the Rulekeeper’s hold on her.

”What the fuck! That’s insane!” She snarled back at her opponent. ”Get the hell off me or I’ll shred you into pieces!”

”Now you aren’t even trying anymore.” For all that she balked at Suki’s insistence she was some malicious tormentor, there wasn’t a point in deluding herself into thinking darkness wasn’t nestled in her heart.

Because feeling this threat that possibly harmed her closest friend was intoxicating.

”Did you hurt her? Where is she? Tell me now before we see how well you run with broken bones.” Days of venom that had no release in the face of her own powerlessness was pouring out upon the vulnerable girl beneath her, and the sheer eagerness in her hissed tone conveyed it was not an empty threat.

”I’ve told you I’m Shuuko! Get it into your thick skull already!” The biting anger in Hotaru’s voice probably did not help matters, nor did the constant struggle against the Rulekeeper’s grip. ”Now let me go, or I…” A pause. A sudden flash of inspiration, and she thought she knew what to say. ”I’ll never cook for you again and you’ll eat that tasteless crap the rest of your life!”

Her words proved to be like a splash of ice water, dousing Roche’s rising violence and leaving her staring with a medley of shock and concern. There hadn’t been a point she’d told anyone about that, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned it in any electronic messages to be intercepted by their enemies.

Shock paralyzed her like a spider frozen in the moment before biting into squirming prey, but steadily she leaned down with an iron grip upon the girl’s wrists.

”You….You could have been watching us on the street that day. Tell me something private that anyone couldn’t have seen in passing.”

”We watched a movie after I cooked for you.” Hotaru ground her teeth as she suffered through the indignity of, out of all the things, being mistaken for a light girl. ”I made you teriyaki chicken, you ungra-” She snapped her jaws shut before she could finish her sentence, hissing through her teeth as she tried to calm down.

Roche went from the verge of mutilating Shuuko to scrambling away in a heartbeat, bounding beside her with stark horror on her warbling lips. She couldn’t consider anyone torturing that information out of Shuuko and she certainly wouldn’t have shared it willingly, so that could only mean Roche had attacked Shuuko.

”Shit! Damn it, I screwed up. I-I didn’t think you were you.” The Rule Keeper cursed, all that heavy vitriol turning inwards as the weight of her mistake struck her bodily. ”What the hell is going on here? Why is nothing making sense anymore?!”

”I could ask you the same thing. What gives?” Hotaru asked as the weight disappeared from her back and she could stand up at long last. Or at least she wanted to, before she realised that her body had not agreed to this most unwelcome treatment and she was forced to sit back down on the track.

”And don’t you compare me to them ever again.” She added after a moment’s pause, her steady voice displaying her unrelenting hatred.

”Who is them?” Roche knew she hadn’t spoken about Shuuko’s family, so what had she done besides the obvious to rouse such a response if it wasn’t over the near-beating that Shuuko had avoided. ”Even if you are Shuuko, you’re acting completely different. This isn’t even like the other times you acted like a switch was being flipped.”

Fingers clenched clods of grass and tore them loose as she rose, casting her shaky gaze upon a girl she thought she knew with an unbecoming skittishness. When violence failed her, Roche felt naked before the encroaching madness seeming to swallow her home, and the weight in her pocket felt like a lead ball trying to drag her to the ground once more. ”Tell me what is going on, please.”

Hotaru snapped her head back towards the Rulekeeper, ready to tell her that she needed to mind her own business and that everything was fine.

But that look. It stopped the warrior right in her tracks.

The Rulekeeper could see Shuuko’s expression change from one of righteous anger to a strained one that seemed to be on the verge of buckling from some sort of pressure or conflict. Neck muscles tightened right before the ‘Shuuko’ she talked with balled her hands into fist and hit the ground. An explosion of magical force followed, causing dust to swirl around the two.

Hotaru closed her eyes. Clenched her teeth. Tried to force herself to think. But such was not her area of expertise. So she sucked in air a couple of times, breathing loudly and blowing the contents of her lungs out through her nose as though she were a bull.

”You…” the voice remained confident, if strained. ”are talking with Takae Shuuko Hotaru.” Hotaru slammed her hands into the dirt again. ”Before that, you…” she sucked air through teeth again, ”talked with Takae Shuuko Sylvia.”

A beat.

”Damnit, I knew this wouldn't work!” Hotaru shouted to the high heavens at full power. She knew she should have lied, tried to cover it up. But the look in Roche’s eyes… it was exactly the same as Chiaki’s when the light bitches betrayed her one last time.

If her words weren’t enough to convince Roche of Shuuko’s authenticity, then it was the belief in her words that put to rest her doubts. As outlandish as it was to accept there were multiple Shuuko, her friend had an uncanny talent for rousing her from the spiraling mire of filth that threatened to drown her mind. She bobbed uncertainly upon the surface, feeling the rippling sludge roll against her chin as she hovered in the liminal space between surety and stark, raving madness.

With outbursts that she could never have imagined Shuuko having before, the now named Hotaru explained things and instantly regretted it. That regret was too palpable to be faked and Roche felt her lungs swell with the cool evening air, shoulders rising as she uncurled from a bestial hunch.

”You’re saying there are multiple Shuuko sharing a body?” The Rule Keeper ventured tentatively.

”Yes, I am.” Hotaru's steel-clad voice cut deep. ” Sylvia, Ember and Hotaru. That last one’s me. It really doesn't take someone with keen eyes, does it?” She asked rhetorically, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

”It wasn’t something I’d have considered as possible, so no.” Roche said, and considering the trauma that Shuuko had endured it would have been more likely to say she was simply mad herself, or fractured her mind into several parts were it not for magic

”Magic has done strange things before. Creating new mentalities and mindsets in others under pressure. Creating entirely new people isn’t out of the question.” It was nowhere near close to the rest of the mind fuckery that was threatening the city, so what was hurling herself into another leap in logic?

”Since you know about that da- Night together, then you all must see the same things. Could I take to Sylvia now?”

”No. You’re stuck with me.” Frustration mixed into Hotaru’s voice, along with a hint of guilt. ”So make the best of it.” Now in a much better spot, physically speaking, the warrior forced herself upright and looked straight at Roche. ”What the hell happened to you anyways? You look like you've seen a dozen demons.”

”Okay then,” Roche deflated, accepting that it wasn’t going to be so easy as getting Sylvia out on request. It would be too much to think such a condition was anything approaching convenient, and she was finding in the wake of her outburst she was lacking the vigor to push the matter now that Hotaru was unbound and fired up.

A mirthless snort preceded her answer as she carded a hand through sweat matted hair. ”Two demons, more like. There was a lot of crying, and I’m a couple thousand yen poorer for the experience, but I suppose it could have been worse. One of them seemed a bit handsy in the Suki sense.”

”It seems every other day I’m finding new and dangerous things out there that all suddenly want a piece of us, and we can’t even get stronger without inviting more of them here in the process. My already poor sleep cycle is shot to hell more than usual for a Magical Girl, so when I come here to see Shuuko acting like a completely different person, you can imagine my surprise to find she actually is!”

Though just because the energy had left her didn’t mean the madness brewing in her eyes lessened much. ”But that’s just me. What’s got you down, Hotaru? You don’t mind if I skip to first names, do you? We may have just met formally, but you already know the majority of mess.”.

”Well, if you know a nice place in Hibusa, you’re about to be a couple thousand yen richer,” spoke Hotaru as she moved around to let some blood flow back into her body, ”because that sounds like a really shitty experience. And I’m not going to let you get off just because you have to patrol or something.” She then started brushing the dirt off herself, with very little luck.

”Anyways, don’t mind my problems. They’re mostly just… idiot issues.” No, they really weren’t. ”And thinking that things are just a little too suspicious.” She continued, adopting an angry frown. ”Say, I know you’re on the new light chick’s side, but… isn’t it a little suspicious how the GEMS showed up at our doorstep right after she’s joined?”

Yellow eyes met Roche’s greens with an almost unbearable intensity.

”Because I sure as hell think so.”

There certainly was no lack of shit to be found in Hibusa, and even Roche was scratching her head trying to consider a place not tainted by association with GEMS or Miseria. But the distraction was welcome and she almost cracked a wan smile in the face of Hotaru’s clumsy deflection that was so very alike to Sylvia’s own efforts.

Till she brought up their newest member and the Rule Keeper groaned with frustration.

”Okay, I understand you- Well, all three of you have issues with Light Girls. I’m not fond of them on principle either, and I certainly won’t hesitate to beat the crap out of her friends when they come back, but I think you’ve got some things mixed up here. I’m not accusing you of anything, but you showed up after some things happened at the beach.”

”That trip of ours to the ocean? Yeah, we bumped into the Gems there. The ones that shot us outside the Club Room. Probably enjoying their own vacation till we gathered up all the civilians and terrified them into summoning a Giga Miseria. So the GEMS aren’t here because of Hizuki.”

”They’re here because I made the Club provoke them. Hizuki didn’t even come to the city till after that, and if you believe the GEMS girls would send one of their own alone into our territory, then I’ve got a lake house on Mt. Fuji to sell you.” Roche finished with a weary shake of her head. It wasn’t like she expected Shuuko to forget all her animosity, but accusing Hizuki of such patently impossible things wore on her nerve.

”You too?” Hotaru groaned, rolling her eyes. ”Come on! Just like you knew I wasn’t Sylvia, you know she’s told them where we are! They couldn’t have found us otherwise.” Her voice dripped with bitter conviction. ”Open your eyes already!”

”What do you mean ‘Find us’? You can’t be under the impression no one knew about Hibusa.” While Shuuko hadn’t been the most active in the group meetings, could she really not have known the GEMS knew full well about them?

”Rei nearly took my head off for provoking the GEMS. If there’s anyone here you want to strangle for provoking them, well, I’m right here! Everything that’s gone to shit here is because of calls I made. We attacked Ashbringer because I chose to fight a stranger instead of reigning in Nyxia. I’m the reason a Giga Miseria nearly flattened the city. You got lasered and emotionally mind fucked because my actions broke whatever peace we had and called the GEMS in!”

The Rule Keeper’s laugh was a wretched thing, curdled with loathing. A step drew them closer and she raised her chin, running a nail along her own taut jugular. ”And here you are raging against a girl who was drawn here, not by any of that crap, but because we’re all so miserable she’d work herself to the bone to help. She’s so *Light* it almost hurts to look at, but she didn’t hesitate to throw her lot in with us in spite of all we have done to scare her off.”

”So you’re either going to hurt the one who started all this, or you’ll save that anger to beat the GEMS into an early retirement. But I’m not letting you store up any more trouble.”

”Oh for… The club room, Roche, they attacked the damned club room!” Hotaru smacked her own forehead. ”See, all you’re telling me is that our light bi- traitor got me lasered, not you! Do you think the world revolves around you or something?” She pointed a finger at Roche, voice growing heated. ”Screw that! The GEMS attacked us because they’re conniving, good-for-nothing, traitorous, fuck you class bitches! And I’m going to wring their heads off their pretty little necks, starting with the one in our-”

A sudden breath. Hotaru slammed her fist into her own palm, causing a ripple of golden magic to rush out from the point of contact, the sound of metal encountering metal clear even though no Devil Arm materialised.

”Damn it, we’re both screwed in the head.” The warrior growled, her primal fury turning into embers. ”You need a break. I sure as hell need a break. Everyone needs a break!“ She seized Roche’s hands, drawing them away from the Rulekeeper’s throat, then started dragging her away, though it was not nearly as effective as she would have liked. Having spent her strength on the track earlier, it almost felt as though a malnourished kitten was the one who tried moving Roche.

”Are you listening to yourself? Anyone could find our Club Room. Nyxia is always transformed in there! We’ve never been subtle in where we gather, but we were expecting them not to be so underhanded.” The two were getting into a roaring shouting match, something Roche never would have imagined with the skittish girl who she’d been welcoming into her home. There was a deranged sort of catharsis in voicing it all out, the kind of fight she could still partake in without regret. Though Hotaru seemed to have had her full as she flashes a burst of magic without transforming fully, leaving the Rulekeeper real back under a gust of golden motes.

In that space where tempers cooled as Hotaru withdrew her interest, Roche deflated amidst being tugged rather feebly away from the field. With a grunt she advanced, shaking loose the grip and instead supporting Shuuko with an arm around her shoulder. ”Let’s just table this for later. We can agree that the GEMS are going to be eating through straws next time they show up, but let’s just blow off steam elsewhere.”

”Wanna watch a movie?”

Accepting the offered shoulder with a begrudging look, Hotaru let some of her weight settle onto the Rulekeeper while making an effort to carry at least some of the weight. She did not agree with her companion, of course, but… maybe it was better to leave it be for now. Roche would eventually come around. She knew it. So instead of making a fuss about it, she merely shook her head at her offer.

”No, I’m not going to sit down and rot away.” But she still felt exhausted and she could not swap bodies without Ember’s help. ”Let’s find some trouble instead.” She grinned. ”What’s your favourite sort?”

Roche shot the girl a disbelieving look given her state of exhaustion before brushing it off with a snort. For someone who claimed to be separate from Shuuko Slyvia, her bullish stubborn streak must be shared.

”Screw it, why not? Let’s go nick some over priced desserts from a cafe. It tastes better when you walk away with a full wallet.”

”That’s the spirit! We aren't going to transform, though. Wouldn't want to make it too easy.” Hotaru's grin grew wider as she found a fellow spirit to indulge her bad habit, hoping that the thrill of being caught would ease the growing guilt inside her. After all, it was not her fault that Sylvia hated her. No matter how many times Ember tried to make it so.

In her ignorance of Hotaru’s motives the Rule Keeper nodded her assent to the extra challenge. Having the chance to punch downwards might be just the release she needs amidst the constant torrent of Magical Girl issues. ”I just hope you’re better at running away then you are at running around a track.”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

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Nothing about Roche was subtle, be it in her complexion or her bearing, she stood out like a rock breaching the surface of a stream. In her experience, however, she’d never stood out for her deficiencies.

If Rei finds out I’m sneaking into the City of Light, I’m dead before I can even get off the bus back home. Roche thought tersely as she jogged sedately, hair in a ponytail beneath her raised hood, while took another lap of the campus. Pavement and manicured strips of lawn marked the spaces between dedicated buildings of the local College, and there she was, a high schooler, jogging around like she had any business being there.

People tended not to question someone who looked like they were moving with a purpose, but how many loops around could she make before someone stopped her to ask questions?

And much like everything else in the City of Light, Roche was alone in enemy territory. One she knew was stronger then, terrifyingly well informed, and with unknown numbers of powerful Allies. Let alone the worry that the GEMS might notice her, forcing Roche to keep her magic tamped down and not even dare to transform lest she be dragged down by weight of numbers.

Yet the Rule Keeper was finding ever more creative reasons to flex the principals of the Detention Club in the face of multiple existential threats. Possessed by some mad spark that would not- could not be appeased till she grasped it in both hands.

Why.

Why did Ashbringer insist on any of the madness she thinly veiled as revenge for what Roche was increasingly convinced was a staged encounter at the flower shop? Why give them time? Why suddenly decide to put together a team of her own?

Why reach out to Roche at all and reveal her civilian identity? The only reason she had the vaguest inkling of where to find the pyro was because she had let Roche know, so it was only a matter of time before she came to investigate the college herself.

If only it wasn't so mortifying being the under-developed one on campus.

Most school children felt self conscious about something. This was true for most dark magical girls and doubly so for perfectionists like Roche. The truth was that most children were awkward, self absorbed creatures. Most of the college students were too busy trying to make classes and earn credits to pay attention to some teenager jogging around in circles. That, and the Collage of Light was gigantic. It was almost as big as a gated community, filled with facilities for all the sciences. It took five or so minutes just to make a single lap.

Though maybe there was a reason to feel a little nervous. Because even if these collage students were ignoring her, a magical girl certainly wouldn’t be. This was the home of the GEMs. If they knew as much about the Detention club as she thought, then they would have little issue dispatching her. She was alone, without a partner, and deep in enemy territory. It would be foolish to think there weren’t stronger light girls around. And even if they weren’t a problem, Ashbringer certainly was.

Just as Roche was running around a corner, she saw a petite woman. She was tall, had pink hair, and was dressed a bit too cutely to be a student. She was also carrying some groceries and had a piece of toast in her mouth. That was all Roche was able to make out before they ran straight into each other. Perhaps a normal highschooler would have had the decency to bounce backwards, but this woman plowed into Roche.

A teenager among young adults was already discomforting, but the scale of the College of Light really hammered home just how much of a disparity existed between the Detention Club and the GEMS. Just because Rei had carved out her fiefdom didn’t mean they were of equal quality, and the wealth of the Light Girl’s stronghold was aggressively direct.

Every street had cleanly marked bike lanes. The trash cans didn’t overflow. Micro-parks sprang every few blocks to offer a breath of fresh air amidst a modern concrete landscape. It was sickeningly cutting edge with an optimistic bent that ruffled Roche’s feathers.

But outrage was not a luxury she could afford, especially not when she was deep in enemy territory. One slip up, and the GEMS would at best use her as a hostage against the Detention Club. Worst case, well, Emblems weren’t impossible to break, and they already demonstrated a willingness to engage in emotional terrorism against the Dark Girls…

So even as she was actively searching, she was caught up in her tunnel vision enough to be taken entirely unawares turning a corner and engaging in an age-old cliche with a college twist.

Usually, when two girls crashed together turning the corner one would be atop the other, faces embarrassingly close as hands inevitably came to set upon feminine curves.

Alas for Roche’s dignity, the college version of this seemed to involve the junior of the two would be bowled over, the breath in her lungs forced out by a shoe stomping down onto her chest as the Light City local halted herself entirely upon Roche.

Feeling much like a doormat she looked up and saw her assailant was a pinkette which was bad enough for the reminder of the GEMs most frustrating members, but that she was actively eating toast as she ran around.

"Eyuu shuud reevy tie cunning wit tust!" She said through clenched teeth.

"I’m okay." She eventually said when it became clear the pinkette wasn’t going to be helping her up. With a hand holding her hood in place and rubbing a soreness that naturally occurred when cracking your head to pavement, Roche crossed her arms over her shoe-printed wind breaker and eyed the toast-enjoyer. "You must be in a rush to snack and go like this."

She reached a hand up to her mouth and removed the toast. "Are you stupid?" She held out the toast. "If you run around with toast in your mouth, you usually run into someone important. So that’s what I was doing!" She tipped her head. "But it seems like the only thing I’ve found is you." With a huff, she reached into her grocery bag and pulled out a second slice of bread, "Here, maybe if we both do it, we’ll run into someone important!"

Is she serious? Roche just barely contained her incredulity as the girl seemed intent on insulting her for interrupting the nonsensical ritual that would only have worked in an episode of Lucky Star. Yet in spite of the madness that would have left Suki caught unawares, the strange runner carried on without missing a beat and offered Roche a slice of bread.

"You’re looking for someone too? You got a description? I might have seen them on my laps." She offered with a shrug, tearing off a chink of a bread and swallowing it dry. Not out of the goodness of her heart, of course. "I’m looking for a girl. Really stands out with her red hair. Pretty mature. Her name’s Regina. See her around here?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why are you eating it? You have to hold it in your mouth!" She sighed. "Are you a patron champion? You’re kind of acting like one." She looked around herself. The campus corner was pretty non-discript. Other than the brick corner of the university, there was a hedge wall to block the street from the college. There wasn’t even a sidewalk back here. In other words, they were offered some measure of privacy. "Alright, let’s see what we’ve got." A black flame consumed the woman, and her form changed to that of one wearing a dark feudal outfit. She didn’t dance or introduce herself, and simply carried on like it was the most mundane thing in the world. She drew her sword and looked at the blade. "I knew it, you are a patron champion after all!" She laughed darkly after her discovery.

"What the f-" The swift transformation took Roche completely unawares, staring with a horror writ plain upon her face as she staggered back a step from the now armed woman before her. Yet she wasn’t the Rulekeeper for nothing and quickly realized that simply reacting to such a transformation already confirmed to this stranger she was a Magical Girl as well, so playing dumb went right out the window.

With a growl she shifted her weight to her back foot, fingers clenched tight enough to deform the bread in her grasp. "What are you doing just transforming like that?! Do you want the GEMS to jump down your throat?!"

"As if you know anything about how things work around here…" The girl pointed her katana at Roche. "Speaking of deep throating, how about you eat my sword, bitch!" The mysterious, and apparently violent magical girl, took a swing at Roche.

Roche’s luck was truly a black hole of crap rolling downhill. Just when she thinks she takes a step forward, someone tries to kill her!

The track captain had braced herself for a verbal lashing but her balance was just as suited for spring back to evade a slash trying to cleave her in two. "Do you always jump to murder? Cut it out, I’m just visiting the campus. I’m not here to poach your turf or steal Miseria."

Roche was bouncing on the balls of her feet, poised to bolt like a rabbit. She still didn’t want to risk transforming when the GEMS already had an archer with city wide range. Which left her on the defensive, anger warring with incredulity at meeting such a maniac. "Put down the sword already!"

"No!" She practically shrieked the words. "There’s no way some pathetic brat like yourself is going to get me to do anything!" She twirled her blade. "If you’re so scared then run! Run back to mommy and tell her what a bad, bad, BAD girl you’ve been!" She continued to approach and swing with abandon.

"This damned brat!" Roche snarled as she found herself ducking and weaving, backing up from the sword lashing out at with juvenile skill. True, no one in the Club really used a sword but the crazy girl was a damn sight easy jer to evade then Suki or Shatterscape. Even the Miseria pirates telegraphed less clearly then the pinkette.

Running away with an invisible slasher at her heels wasnt ideal either, as at best she’d make a scene just by sprinting across the lawn like a fleeing burglar.

Waiting for the sword to pass by she changed tact, lunging forward as both hands grasped for the aggressors wrist and pulled up and sidewards. Her leg sweeped out, catching the girl at the ankle and trying to through off her balance so she’d fall harshly on her side.

Despite how wildly unpredictable her swings were, that she was transformed, and should have possessed abilities that outstripped Roche’s untransformed state, she managed to pull off her risky move without hardship.

"Oof!" The yet-to-be-identified dark magical girl picked herself up. "I’ve had my salad tossed pretty hard, and that was nothing to write home about." Her onyx black blade shimmered. "No more fuckin’ around, It’s ass eating time!" When she lifted her blade over head, the entire thing turned into the upper half of a lion. But it was a black as the blade was, and its body was filled with stars. Then with a swing, the lion roared and reached out with both paws, threatening to maul Roche.

While a transformed girl was vastly more capable then an untransformed one, throws had a lovely way of turning strength against itself, especially when the magical girl was so reckless.

That only mattered up to a point, however. Overwhelming force had a way of crushing finesse, and the Rulekeeper’s ire was overflowing with wrath as the crass Magical Girl transformed her weapon into the leading section of a roaring lion. Faced with what was clearly a Dark Magical Girl trying to either kill or violate her- Hard to tell when she was talking like a fouler Suki- There was no option left but to discard secrecy.

The shift was instant, no fancy transformation sequence to pad out the run time, and Earthshaker was swinging her shield overhead with both hands. It’s hidebound length crashing into the celestial beast before her power expelled its force to try and crush both lion sword and Magical girl to the ground. This time Roche wasn’t going to give her an opportunity to get back up either, eye gleaming with a malice that would have chilled her club mates.

The overhead shield bash had knocked the opposing magical girl to the ground, and it looked like her sword arm might have broken. "What the hell is going on!?" She said to no one in particular. Then she looked up at Roche. "What? You’re going to pout at me now? Just wait until you see the apex of my power!" With a grin, she plunged her malformed sword into her own rib cage. "WARPGASM!"

Her body grew in every direction, but not uniformly or with any sort of purpose. Initially it was like watching tumors grow on someone at an accelerated rate, but eventually the growths became so numerous and massive that the original girl was no longer visible. Some out of control monster was growing around Roche and threatening to crush her. Walls of flesh came up on all sides of the rule keeper and started to close above her head, blocking out the last rays of sunlight.

While her blow had struck and laid the girl out, it hadn’t been enough to end the fight. Rather it had pushed the vulgar girl to reveal she was as hideous on the outside. Impressive and horrific in equally wretched fashion, Earthshaker reeled back at the sight of flesh rupturing and expanding, a rippling wave of meat trying to crush her in its twisted embrace.

Not moving far enough she felt the wet, raw skin clap against her, stretching overhead till everything turned dark.

Dark. Wet. Suffocating. Clammy hands closing on her windpipe as they sought to drag her down into the ocean depths.

Deeper still and close to home. A memory that sat deeper then her brush with the pirates. One that carried a far stronger familiarity due to the presence of a Magical Girl. Hot blood shaving my skin. Her lips at my throat as a tendril speared my calf. That insane girl would have killed me.

There was no active thought in face of such a hauntingly familiar threat. A flame could be smothered, a bolt of lightning could be grounded, but raw concussive force would travel through flesh all the same. More to hit meant only more to batter. Earthshaker screamed and lashed out without restraint, open palms slapping out into the encroaching walls as she hurled herself forward with a feral scream.

The magical girl, creature, inner demon, whatever Roche was fighting, it ruptured like a balloon and made a hissing sound as the skin deflated. Roche’s charge had carried her out of the magical girl’s clutches, and her deflating form flew around erratically after she had been deflated. She face planted in the grass nearby, possibly knocked out.

Roche didn’t even have time to catch her breath before another girl walked onto the scene. Initially Roche thought she had been followed by Acid Drop, but after taking her in, it was clear that she only looked like Tsubomi out of the corner of her eye. Her clothes were monochromatic. She wore a grey shirt with what seemed to be some devil stars and designs scribbled on with a black magic marker. She wasn’t wearing pants, or if she was, they were too short to be visible over her long shirt. Her hair was closer in color to a slate grey, and her fingernails were painted black. Only her eyes had any color, which were a blue darker and deeper than any non-magical human should ever have. Yet the girl didn’t really look like a magical girl either, whoever she was.

"Oh, now this looks like a mess." She grinned from ear to ear as she approached. "I wonder who was roughhousing so hard back here. They made an awful mess of the grass here. Hmmm…"

Hunched and panting, Roche looked every bit the savage maiden her Magical Girl form projected outwards. Eyes shrunken to pin pricks as lost herself in the raw trembling of her extremities, fingers tingling from the muted splat of her magic striking meat without any holding back.

Just like last time the Rulekeeper was left the one staring down at a Dark Girl, and it was some fluke of fortune that the girl who had burst into a blob of meat wasn’t a smear against the grass. A ragged exhale as she banished the phantom image of Suki imposed upon the lecherous assailant and she considered changing back to her regular form to leave the rotten city behind.

And was stricken in place, a chill racing down her back as she looked to see they were no longer alone, and this girl looked equally as unlikely to be a GEM.

Was she a Magical Girl? Impossible to tell given her attire, while dark, wasn’t screaming magic either. Pushing down the lizard brain instinct to leap away with a blast of force, Earth Shaker took a silent step back onto the paved path and watched the stranger wordlessly. Hoping against hope she was blind to her presence as the other mundane people and she could slip away from this mess.

The stranger approached the fallen girl and kneeled. "Hmmm. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmmmm…" She lifted a flap of skin that had popped to look under it. "Things are changing around here, we can’t be as reckless as we once could." She allowed the skin to fall out of her hands. As violent as the exchange was, there was no gore to speak of. It was almost as if Roche had defeated some sort of balloon miseria. Only the girl didn’t bubble away into nothing, nor was she all black. "There’s a time and place to be the hero, and it’s not now." She started to stand up. "So, what brings the detention club to the city of light?" She asked her question without looking at Roche. "I thought it would be a few months before you got cocky enough to mount a siege, and certainly not by yourself."

When did everything get so complicated? I swear a year ago all that I had to worry about was Suki and killing Miseria. Earthshaker seethed in her frustration and stepped forward, letting the cloak pull tight around her.

"I didn’t come looking for a fight, but this girl thought different and pushed the matter till I had to push back." The Rule Keeper exhaled, hood quirking to the side as she scanned the campus tensely. If two Magical Girls showed up, it was only a matter of time till more joined them, and she already had a mountain of questions to unpack just from the strangers monologue. It reeked of secrets Rei would keep.

"I came here trying to meet an acquaintance of mine. If she’s not here, then I’ll get lost. I don’t know what you think the Detention Club does, but we aren’t looking to storm the City of Light, even if the GEMS are pushing things too far."

"Well yes, all of that is pretty evident. At least, everything but the ‘meeting an acquaintance’ bit. A dark girl wanting to meet anyone here is about as uncanny as dark girls being in the City of Light. And to clarify, Madness and I don’t really qualify as either of those." The mysterious girl folded her arms behind her back. "What are you doing here, really?"

Magical Girls not identifying with either side, even with their edgy bearings? If she were back home she’d have called it ridiculous, but it wasn’t worth splitting hairs over given the circumstances.

"The GEMS aren’t the only ones stepping into my home to cause trouble, and I was hoping to find her to get some answers as to why she’s bothering with it. Maybe…de-escalate things if she’s reasonable."

Saying that while glancing down at the pummeled Madness didn’t have her too confident in the last approach.

"Ah, of course." The yet-to-be-introduced girl nodded. "I think I got the picture now." She held out her hands and framed Earth Shaker between her thumbs and point fingers. "There are plenty of fish in the sea, but none are biting your hook, if ya catch my drift." She tucked her arms behind her back. "The dating pool back at Hibusa town, or whatever you call it, is far too small. They either don’t like you, you don’t like them, and those you do spark with don’t do so hot enough to fire your cylinders." The pile of flesh that used to be Madness gurgled something. "Yes, your hunch was right, but that’s always your hunch. I can hardly give you kudos for making the same observation you always make." Her eyes returned to Earth Shaker. "I’m afraid your attempt at a romantic rendezvous will not work here. I’m not allowed to say exactly why, but there’s a reason why they’ve chosen to keep their distance and made themselves so hard to track. That, and your world had shifted. Surely you’ve noticed things have not been the same since Ashbringer showed up? Things feel different, don’t they?"

"Wh-What?!" Earthshaker choked on her words, gasping and pounding a fist to her chest at the sudden turn. Even if Madness had been so very vulgar about it, hearing the insinuation directed so flatly at her did leave the Rule Keeper bothered. "This isn’t a romance thing. She’s trying to-"

Huh, so what’s it feels like? No wonder Ashbringer was upset with me. The gears in her mind caught and spun, vision narrowing against the strange gothic girl. One who didn’t seem to identify with either group that fit within Roche’s worldview, and who dropped the name of the very girl she’d refused to say aloud here.

"I see I was too arrogant. Too hopeful she hadn’t put together a big team." Earth Shaker loosed a rueful laugh and forced herself to loosen up. Fighting wouldn’t help her now if this new girl pushed things, and unlike Madness she didn’t seem the mindless berserker type she could lay out with a good counter. "If she won’t talk to me I’ll stop looking to force it, but I won’t stop asking why this is happening."

Or why the world was so tilted, for that matter. Miseria were escalating to the point it was a wonder they remained hidden from the world. The very existence of Giga Miseria was unsettling, as though every natural disaster was in actuality a lumbering monster cleaving across the country.

"Are you saying Ashbringer opened us up to some hidden truth of the world? Or did she actually change reality?"

Finally, the smug grin on the girl’s face opened up her lips. She turned her head and attempted to shield her face from Earthshaker’s view. "Ah, you almost got me." She lowered her hand. "The magical girls here are powerful, but none can transcend the laws of this place. Causality as it pertains to mortals remains intact, etcetera etcetera. No, I am implying that something happened that allowed Ashbringer to show up." The girl produced a gourd from behind her back, one with a tiny hole in it. She shook it a few times and then by the opening was a tiny-teany apple. She pinched the apple between her fingers and slowly pulled it out, at which point it expanded until it was large enough to fit in her hand. "What do you think happens when a god gets tired of their creation?"

That was a small relief. Given the scale and power of girls like Rei and the absurdity of some forms of Magic, it didn’t seem beyond the pall that causality would start being twisted into knots. But any succor she found turned to ash on her tongue at the pointed question. Because the answer had been staring them in the face from the moment the strange girl had introduced herself.

"They’d burn it down and start over." Earthshaker’s voice was tiny, barely heard on the wind as she considered the first meeting with Ashbringer. A flaming harbinger of doom that came completely out of the blue. "She’s older than us but she came all the way to our city to put us down. Like she already had a connection to the Club and wanted to wipe it away. A girl who easily brought together others for a new group like she had experience."

The blob beside the girl snorted. "Holy shit! Dude, what did she just say? Satan here isn’t talking about the six-foot-ten dommy mommy you want to step all over you."

The girl who had been called Satan looked down at Madness. She had taken only a single bite of the apple. "You’re healing up fast."

"Give me ten more minutes and I’ll be feeding this girl an ass wooping!"

"As interesting as that would be, I don’t think she’s going to remain here that long." Satan dropped the abble into the blob, which promptly devoured it. Then she looked back at Earth Shaker. "Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Ashbringer. I was talking about the simple relationship between a creator and their creation on a cosmic scale. And I’ve found that they do not, actually, bother destroying what they created. I mean it sounds very cool, but more often than not they simply move on. Rather than pillaging their creations to start over, they simply back away from them and begin again elsewhere. Gods do not have to be as frugal as you or I do. Their power is limitless, so there is no need to conserve it. And so, sometimes something else can swoop in and start playing with the god’s old toys."

"That’s….better" The Rule Keeper felt she’d dodged a serious bullet there, and with how mysterious Rei was she wouldn’t have doubted if Ash Bringer was some founder come to end the club they started. But no, Ash wasn't god, she was more like the Demiurge trying to fill the void. Though what that said about a God

Though considering the girl telling her all this went by Satan, it might have been wise to take everything she said with a measure of salt.

"Yeah don’t worry, I’ll be gone before the meatbag is back up, but just to be clear; You’re saying all this craziness is because someone set up my City as their playground, and now that they left we’ve got strangers rolling in and there’s nothing to stop them. That’s….a relief."

"No god is pulling our strings or writing our fates. Just a bunch of Magical Girls getting into a fight. That’s so typical I’d call it boring if it wasn’t setting fire to my neighborhood."

"Oh no." Satan finally chuckled. It was dark. "No, no no, no no no. When a god abandons their creation, that is an opportunity for something far more sinister to step in. I don’t doubt there are truly benevolent beings that wish to keep things in harmony, but it’s clear your world is now in the clutches of an eldritch horror."

"Preach it sister!" Madness lifted part of its blob up, which might have been an attempt at pumping her fist into the air if she had one.

"Yes, Aigorost has come to this place. Isn’t it funny how impossibly strong you are, and now there’s a city of light that houses a bunch of ultra strong light girls, some of which can stand up to you? How convenient that Rei has almost stopped making public appearances in your time of need? These anomalies, inconsistencies between the world that was and as it was now could only be the result of a creature that feeds on despair!"

"The tendrils of the unborn god have coiled themselves around the white god’s creation!" Madness bubbled in glee. "It remains to be seen if they will pull themselves out of inexistence, or you into it!"

"Beware his symbol!" Satan opened her hand, revealing a decomposing frog overtaken with plant life. Both squirmed in her hand. "A corpse that fosters life! Duality!"

"From beyond the veil of reality, their unborn eyes look back at us from the stars!"

"Do you see now?" Satan placed a hand on Earth Shaker’s shoulder. "I will be departing from this world shortly, but if there is anything you need, I will do my best to help you. In exchange for a favor, of course."

A moment of stunned silence passed in the aftermath of Satan closing upon her, hand clasped to her shoulder as though they were old friends, and not that she was a complete stranger trying to overturn her understanding of reality so completely she’d be left rudderless and adrift. How did searching for Ashbringer turn so complicated? Were the Giga Miseria a consequence of this supposed Horror?

Her eyes slid to the frog in her hand, mind lurching towards her own city’s resident frog girl, but that relation was only superficial. No, there was something far more appropriate that dawned upon her; The bone giant and it’s shrikes. Creatures of bone with flesh and muscle, life and death puking a viscera that melted all it touched.

There wasn’t a fiber in Roche’s body that didn’t want to call Satan insane, or attempt to label her the deceiver she was named for, but there were enough loose pieces that she couldn’t cast it aside. Especially when she was the only one who seemed interested in explaining whatever was going on in the world.

"What do you want?"

"Tell Suki that I forgot her E-mail address, and I need her to send it to me again." Satan tipped her head. "TheRealRizzo, she’ll know who it is."

If one listened closely, they could hear a loud, visceral snapping sound. One couldn’t know if that was from the grinding of teeth, or if Earthshaker was suffering from an aneurysm at the sheer insanity that was her life.

Her voice was deceptively flat as she nodded, expression blank. Almost serene for the lack of life behind her eyes. "I will tell her. Now if you would be so kind as to help."

It always comes back to Suki. Everything always traces right back to her and her messes….

"Help with what?"

"With the Eldritch Horrors? And Ashbringer?"

"Oh." She clapped her hands together. "I don’t think we can do anything about Aigorost, as Madness is their acolyte. It’s not like we can bring the white god back anyway. All we can really do is pray."

"You need a virgin sacrifice!" The blob jiggled. "Come here, and we can appease all the watchers with an X-rated ritual!"

"As for Ashbringer, she’s not my area of expertise. But I’d say keep an eye out for what’s happening in Japan. Wild fires aren’t common outside the dry season, so they could be an indication of where she is." Satan produced a crystal ball. "Or I could give you this. I’d need you to pay me, of course, but it will let you see exactly where she is."

The horror was clashing miserably with frustration at the pair who switched tactlessly from rousing terror back to irreverent interplay, and Roche was liable to pop a blood vessel if she squinted any harder at Satan.

"Tell me what you want for the crystal ball, and it better not be an X-Rated ritual."

"Good heavens no!" Satan laughed. "Ah, you finally got me. I’m not nearly as depraved as Madness here is. I was going to charge you 25,000 yen for it, but you made me laugh, so how about 20,000?"

"Show me that it works and you have you’re 20k." It wasn’t like she couldn’t steal some groceries to make up for the dip in her funds. If this orb could track Ashbringer then she would have considered the rituals regardless of her words.

"Very well, I’ll show you first, but don’t even think of weaseling out of our deal." Satan closed her eyes and gripped the ball with both hands. "Where is Ashbringer now?" She gave the orb a shake and turned it over to look at the hidden message on the bottom. "It says to ask again tomorrow."

"Ah." Such was Roche’s turmoil that her expression looped upon it into a state of serenity.

Without an ounce of tension she reached out and clasped Satan’s shoulders like an old friend. "How much of all this was you messing with a tourist? I just wanna be clear before…."

Earthshaker’s head tilted with her drifting words, the hood casting an especially deep shadow over her face.

Satan looked back at the crystal ball, shook it again, and waited for the next answer to reveal itself. "Signs point to yes. It helps if you frame your question with a yes or no answer in mind."

"That’s what I thought."

There was nothing in the world Roche Wouldnt have given to be gripped in the thrall of Nyxia’s predisposition to violence without great consideration. It may have helped her forget just where she was or that Madness could likely get back up if she really wanted to soon enough.

But cursed as she was with responsibility and with the sputtering blob of meat before them, Earthshaker would not be blowing her top. Or much of anything, as her transformation unravelled, leaving Roche able to reach into her pocket and draw out her wallet. Wrinkled bills came free and she held them out to the great Satan.

"Thank you for the help. I think I’ll take this back home with me now."

The lavender haired girl took the money without counting it and handed her the globe. "I hope it brings you to what you seek." She folded up the money and pushed it into the tiny gourd, then moved it behind her back to whatever invisible space seemed to hold her inventory. "Ah, but a few more words before you depart." She picked up Madness and swung her over her shoulder. "The world is big. There are many things in it and things happening at every level. During our time together the insects beneath us move beyond our notice. Aigorost and Glexaroth continue to wage war beyond the stars. Regardless of scope, these things are both equally immaterial to us in the moment." She turned around to leave. "A second meeting with Ashbringer is an inevitability, is it not? The time you spend apart will seem so short when you are finally together."

"That’s nice." Roche said, not entirely listening as her eyes glazed over. Fingers curled like the rictus limbs of a departed spider rolled the ‘crystal ball’ over in her grasp. There was a sound like crackling of ice the day after a blizzard, that crisp shattering of a pristine surface that only needed the slightest pressure to collapse into fathomless depths.

Mirth rose sticky and black as she gave the Orb a jerky shake. She didn’t ask it for the whereabouts of Ashbringer or the machinations of the GEMS. Not the secrets of Rei or twisted past of Shatterscape.

Will I ever be loved again?

A childish impulse. The sort of question a cluster of girls would ask a ouija board amidst a giggling sleepover, but it was what emerged as her mind was pushed to the precipice. Bloodshot eyes warbled as the crystal ball was lifted to her face.

Signs Point To Yes.

The Rule Keeper’s cheeks grew wet and contorted, a feeling of euphoria washing away the last of her resolve. A manic laugh as her arms slid over the magic eight-ball and the world tilted wildly.

She struck the grass beside the path, curling into a fetal ball as she wept, cried, and bawled like a newborn babe. Something’s were just too much for the mortal mind to bear.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

A responsible adult had a tendency of de-escalating conflicts between youths. Even with a clear bias towards one side, neither really had the same motivation to go at it under an adult’s gaze, even if she was a rather disjointed and airy personality.

Earthshaker should have appreciated the moment of peace and surety, secure in the knowledge that the GEMS would be unable to fight them any further. That the Detention Club had succeeded in driving off the invading Light Girls. Yet, was that even true? Had the Club won, or had the Light Girls cut their losses before they even had to pay the tiniest bit for the Hell they brought to Miso city.

Those sanctimonious little…The gore Shuuko with a laser while trying to hit me, they have no issue forcing their emotions on us or themselves like a bunch of junkies, and they tried to kidnap one of our own after they gave up on stealing our mascots. Earthshaker was seething, wrathcooling into a poisonous malaise as she watched the Gems trickle away unblemished for their adventure. Not a scratch on them.

Never had Roche been more grateful to be Nyxia’s partner then when the laser enthusiast suggested they race off to crush Miseria. It was almost quaint to focus on what should have been the main enemy, and not the City of Light or….other forces.

I’ll need to look more aggressively into that. Think I’ll have to start poking into that college more directly. With a harsh exhale Earthshaker turned away from the insensate Shatterscape and followed at Nyxia, needing to release some of her pent emotion away from their supervisor’s oppressive gaze. ”Catch up soon, High Priestess. I need this, but it would be better together.”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

center][/center]

---

After dealing with all the worst that the GEMs junior members could throw at them, Earthshaker was past the point of caring about Rei’s threats. Topaz was right there, and she was about to thrust her arrow into their most vulnerable member. Everything they’d done since they came to Hibusa had been to hurt the Detention Club, so if she had to maim Topaz to send a message, well, she was willing to pay the bill for that one.

And if she went further, then she’d not have to worry about her consequences for much longer once Rei got wind of it. Assuming that rule of hers applied to Magical Girl on Magical Girl violence. She’d had a hunch the taking of an innocent, defenseless life that had no perception of Magic may have carried a special cost….

But before she could get a good feel for Topaz’s keen eyes, a presence she was both relieved and frustrated to exasperation revealed itself. Because in the end, you couldn’t have a proper without an adult crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s.

Even a Magical Girl club.

Instead of striking out against meat, Earthshaker tumbled forwards, swallowed into a gap of infinite nightmares. If she weren’t so wrapped up in tunnel vision she may have suffered a panic attack and roused to the fore of her mind recollections of the pirate misery trying to choke the life from her.

But the Magical Madam’s powers were expedient, and she lurched back to stable reality in the woman’s grip. Dangling like a flour sack she offered a dry glare up past the woman’s buxom before righting herself amidst friendly faces.

While they may have unexpected backup, Roche had no doubts that she would keep the conflict ‘clean’, or as close as it could be.

”Ah, you haven’t met, Nyxia. This is our….adult supervision, Nocnitsa.” Earthshaker grumbled, agitation bleeding off in her waves as she summoned her shield and eyed the opposing light girls. In particular the display between Hizuki, Willow, and Morganite that left her wanting to spit in disgust. ”This is bad comedy. I can’t believe Willow really thought we could stomach watching that.”

Though as she simmered without an outlet for her aggression she could expand her awareness, looking aside to notice Shatterscape beside, looking strangely lost, her form scuffed from what looked like hurling herself face first into a washer on its spin cycle. She reached out, trying to squeeze the girl’s shoulder and steady her, even if every nerve of Earthshaker’s body was still alight with contained violence. ”You okay, Shatterscape?”

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

It was one thing to have suffered at the hands of the GEMS. Another to know they had hurt her club mates while they were out and about. Entirely different was experiencing the former, and bearing witness to the maliciousness of the sanctimonious vipers planning to inflict emotional devastation on the most emotionally vulnerable of the group.

Stab Nyxia and Miso would burn under a laser-based rampage, but Nyxia would pick herself up out of the ashes with a new vendetta and some creative curses, but still the same Nyxia they knew. Stab Tsubomi? Roche didn’t even know if she’d be the same girl after that!

Even in the depths of her rage she felt a flicker of pride in her partner for shooting first, a laser set to remove the archer’s hands at the wrist in what would have been poetic justice. But in spite of delicious irony, Miso’s resident Light Girl had to intervene and pull her hands out of the way.

The Rulekeeper couldn’t see anything else as a massive toad landed between them, and she had no intention of letting Topaz hide behind the beast, no matter how familiarof a familiar it was. Breaking out into a sprint that reminded all in the club there was a damn good reason she captained the Track Club, her steps ate up the asphalt between as she telegraphed a punch to its admittedly cute face.

Only to find it unmarred as Roche slipped low, ducking under an expected lash of the tongue as her shoulder barreled into the amphibian’s broad belly before releasing a fraction of the stored power she’d built flying Air Nyxia. A teeth-shaking, ear popping crack that would send the frog hurtling backwards across the street to crash into an unfortunate storefront.

And leaving the Rule Keeper standing over Kaeru and Topaz, shoulders heaving as a dark glare bore down upon them from the shadow of her hood.

”Get away from her, you bitch.” Hands curled like the talons of a striking bird the Rule Keeper lunged, no hint of restraint on her face as she closed on Topaz’s face.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

Had it only been a matter of Morganite and Pearl, Earthshaker could have handled it without issue. Even if Pearl shot her mid-leap, Roche was ready for it and would have absorbed the shot right then and there with her bare arm. Yet that focus was too narrow when the GEMS were so numerous, and once again in minutes of the first sucker punch, another took the Rule Keeper without Shatterscape to intervene.

The glimmer of gold under the iridescent lighting of a city by night was the only herald Roche had for the incoming strike, and unlike with Pearl, she wasn't prepared for it. They struck her with mercy, and the kiss of each shaft piercing her brought neither pain nor blood. How bizarre that one like Pearl could be so exceedingly lethal yet they had an Archer who could only strike at the heart in it's purest form.

Each puncture roused not pain, but memory. An attack upon her emotions, turning recollections of joy into a tool to undermine her own resolve. She faltered before it as rage was bludgeoned and battered under flashes of joy. Those moments she held dear roused not by her will, but the impetus of another to smother her heart under a heavy blanket of warmth. The Rulekeeper's fist unfurled, brushing against a floating shield in passing before coming down upon a patch of grass.

A softer fall then one would expect in such a furious trace, the folliage watered with the overflowing tears that were ripped from her by Topaz's magic. It left her with a feeling of fulfillment she had long been denied. An acceptance like her father's arm around her once more. The laughter of friends who cherished her for company. The feel of Shuuko's lips against her, meeting in a dance as old as time without any fear in their hearts.

Roche felt it all. With hot, salty tears rolling down her cheeks, Nyxia beside her with a trepidation that far more real. Because Roche knew that her friendships were not ones so lofty as exist without give and take. The club would have turned from her had she not the strength to be of use, and the desperation to bear her throat to them when the time called for it.

She knew Shuuko's fears ran so deep, and scared her so deeply, that the vulnerability would not fade for so fresh a crush as Roche's.

She knew her family was dead, and she could never have the innocence and safety she took for granted.

But most of all, Roche had felt Suki's poisonous touch warp her mind with love and lust aplenty. Try to drown resolve with bliss and humiliate her as just another conquest. To know the body and spirit could be turned against oneself, and only the mind would remain. Resistance was a losing gambit. Denial and suppression failed when the flesh was as weak as the spirit.

So the Rulekeeper didn't deny the happiness the arrows had wrought. She accepted, wept for it, and looked beyond it. Roche wanted those feelings, but Suki had taught her to want them on her terms, and her terms alone.

"I'm...Pretty fucked up right now." Earthshaker breathed, her voice hoarse and scratchy. Weak, even to her own ear. Bloodshot eyes and glistening cheeks turned to Nyxia, expression morphing into a wry, depreciating grin as she saw her partner so off kilter. Feeling her hand against her own shoulder was a relief threatening to plunge her heart back into that poisonous joy that wanted her to succumb. To drown in a lie till she couldn't even dream of facing the cruelty of reality.

Roche took in all the discomfort plain upon Nyxia's face and focused instead on how much it unsettled her to do even that much. It made it...tolerable. Enough so to rise to her feet.

"Those arrows bombard your heart with lies. Everything you could ever want. Every happy memory you...you know can't come back, till you don't have the strength left but to weep at how beautiful it would be to live in that delusion. You....You must not let them hit you, Norika. Please, don't even get grazed."

Because the city was going to have a hard time surviving what Roche would do to the GEMS. A Nyxia who experienced even a glimmer of her brother's love, only to have it torn from her by cruel reality? If Rei didn't strike her down in a heartbeat, there wouldn't be much of a Miso City left.

Magical Girls were beings of emotion, after all. The Light Girls clung to the pretty ones without substance, those lofty notions of Righteousness, Love, and Justice. They acted with surety in their actions, but it made them feel untouchable. Dark Magical Girls were a more realistic bunch. All that tripe was like junk food congealing in their veins, slowing them to a bawling mess.

So Roche looked at all of Topaz's happiness and asked herself, 'How happy would I be once the GEMS feel free to run this city?'

Her eyes turned to the direction she saw the arrows come from. Knowing it was a threat she couldn't stomach any other Club Member to suffer from. With a curl of her fist her shield was in hand once more while the other pointed in the direction of Topaz.

"I'm so tired of being smacked around without a chance to fight back. I'm exhausted from letting someone else make the first blow. Nyxia, can you do me a favor and shoot my shield over there? I need to break a few rules tonight."

With a leap Roche was airborne, turning to hold her shield out towards Nyxia to catch a ride towards the distant Archer and whomever else was waiting there for her. Drawing power from the laser itself, a bright light show that would be impossible to miss even through the swarm of Eyeballs above.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

Morganite was a nuisance, not a threat. For all that was evasive and meddlesome, and even with her weapons being of a defensive bent, nothing about her screamed to Roche that she was a serious threat. None of the mystery of Sink Queen, the overflowing power of Ashbringer, or the aura farming potential of Rei.

Roche struck with every intention she would rush down the pinkette and drag her kicking and screaming through the school campus before seeing how much she had to tear off before she had the girl’s Magical Emblem in hand. Enraged at the affront against the club and the clear escalation of the GEMS, Roche still hadn’t found herself genuinely considering going beyond the rules of the club.

That came to an abrupt change wrought not by the hands of the GEMS, but from Shatterscape’s massive gauntlet grasping her shoulder with a cutting haste and hurling her aside. Flight turned to a tumble and Earthshaker’s cloak pulled with the wind, a contrail of fabric as Earthshaker saw the horned Magical Girl looking back at her.

Then she saw her struck, a beam of light puncturing clear through one side and out the other, perforating Shatterscape with a surgical precision that would have left Vlad the Impaler flush with envy. Stunned did not even begin to describe Roche in those moments stretching into eternity where a lance of light threaded through her newest partner’s form. Till Morganite intruded, shoving past her and sending Roche bouncing off the masonry of the school.

What wicked irony that Morganite remained just the nuisance they thought her to be, but she was now one that protected some very formidable friends.

Staggering to her feet with a swirl of emotions that were leaving her feeling drowning on dry land, Earthshaker’s gaze wavered expecting to see Shatterscape strike the ground and fail to rise. Even if her brain knew damn well that Shatterscape was the most resilient of the Club, it was still an immeasurable relief seeing her sprint off with palpable fury after her attacker.

Roche was running after her when she had a front row seat to Morganite striking Shatterscape from behind, her partner hitting the ground hard while she scooped up a vaguely familiar face from the beach trip. Unassuming, but with a power that was direct, like a more innocent Nyxia.

Any other one of us and they’d be dead or crippled. Even Nyxia has never fired a laser at another human like that.

The Rulekeeper’s expression had gone beyond fury to a resolved calm as she broke off into a sprint, tearing across dirt and grass with great clods splashing her step before she took off onto the paved streets. Cratering the road as she met the earth with bounding leaps. They could run all they liked but Earthshaker was on their tail, shield in hand as she blazed with energy that built with each step, absorbing the shock of her footfall back into herself. An unwavering gaze locked onto Pearl, the frail scholar a prey she couldn’t abide laying in wait for another shot on her team.

For the Club. For my teammates. Morganite would only get to hear a crack as the sound barrier was infringed upon by a ballistically hurled shield, the leading edge blunt yet looking no less capable of harm as it gained on the airborne shield. Yet the projectile gaining on their rear was, while a threat, only a distraction from Roche launching herself high and coming down in arcing leap with her fist cocked back for a street rupturing impact.

Kurai Majokko: Tsundere Gekido

---

The Rulekeeper hadn’t expected such dissonance to form from turning partnerships into teams, an addition of a single member upsetting tenuous bonds till the Club was struggling against itself like a snagged beast. A little friction, perhaps, but then again, they hadn’t expected to be so sorely tested so soon.

And several of their members weren’t operating at their best either. When Nyxia noticed someone wasn’t doing well? It was glaringly obvious to every other person in the room, though they lacked the firsthand experience of seeing Shatterscape poorly combat the Miseria.

”I’ll keep close to her while you focus on the laser show. We won’t have-” An issue was what she wanted to say, but instead a glaring issue came bobbing before the window. Because even in her wildest paranoid fits had she not considered the Light Girls of all people would be brazen enough to attack them at their own school, all but declaring there was nothing stopping the conflict from striking you at your most vulnerable.

These insane bitches. First the streets. Now our school. Are we going to wake up in our beds with a baseball bat coming to crack our skulls?! Will we be in the middle of class when a Magical Girl comes through the window for our lives?!

Indignation and fear festered as she witnessed Morganite’s bold display, Shuuko’s words rolling off Roche like water from a duck’s back. She felt herself slipping, pulled down a swirling current as the situation tumbled outside her control in an escalating conflict the Club wouldn’t survive. All because the Light Girls had crossed every line.

Earthshaker transformed as a cold weight bowed her shoulders like the phantom hand of the Grim Reaper herself. Pupils dilated to pinpricks of darkness as she found herself sagging under the weight of Rei’s expectations.

”No, none of you are staying behind. Morganite is mine. Nyxia, please lead the way to the rest of the club.” Resignation weighed heavy on her tongue and Earthshaker tugged her hood up, casting her stricken face in shadow as she approached the window and clambered onto the sill.

”You were there at the beach. We nearly died because of you, and now you come to our club room. You planned this, so you can accept the cost.” The Rule Keeper exhaled the breath in her lungs, and she dipped forward. Light as a feather she reached out, hand grasping the banner of mockery strung before them.

And shredded it with an explosion of force that sent Earthshaker rising upwards, palm outstretched to grasp Morganite like the talons of a bird of prey seeking prey as she rocketed upwards.