How the Questing Beast Chased, and Caught, Her Own Tail

by pseudoactual_mahou

Summary:

For the Incubators, a diagnosis of "mental illness" is as simple as having a personal interest outside producing negentropy – for example, in wordplay. Kyubey, the assigned Incubator for Mitakihara City's magical girls in their fight against wraiths, is diagnosed with an unnecessary emotion after making an unprompted joke, and scheduled for execution and replacement. It accepts gracefully, knowing its death serves the purpose of fighting entropy... right up until it can't.

In for a penny, in for breaking and rewriting your identity, as they say.

Chapter 1: Prolog im Höllenkreis

Summary:

Hell is real. An Incubator makes an unforced error.

---

Kyubey writhed, and thought about words.

The rain caught the sickly halogen around the lampposts on the pier where the devil had left it. Kyubey was thinking about words. It had been coated so thoroughly by seawater and brackish, organic grime that it had become a layer of salt over its fur, which it tried, blindly and automatically, to rasp off against irregular, cheap wooden dock. Each motion produced enough pain to prompt a new involuntary spasm, same as the first. A great tuft of white fur, torn from its floppity ear, sat on a loose nail and fanned out in all directions, as cheerful as a dandelion puff.

Evidently it had picked up some magical girl’s germophobia in its last session with the devil. Though it was difficult to distinguish one mental illness from another, given the rot in its brain, in which all the world’s curses blended into a kind of homogenous soup of hatred, panic and shame. But it was thinking about words, instead of all the world’s curses. It had thought about words for a long, long time.

---

Kyubey was practical, like all Incubators. It liked being practical, insofar as a creature with a value function could be said to “like” anything, rather than merely utilizing it as a means to the end of eternal samsara. Practicality meant success. Care meant success. It was careful. It was diligent. Kyubey spent time outside its mission rotating and modeling 3D shapes to build new infrastructure in and on the Earth’s surface. It was an excellent shape rotator.

Its plans were rated fairly high on the Incubator network’s success assessment scale, because its job was to suggest ideas that were not daring and produce results that were the same. In accordance with this, Kyubey had been assigned to a relatively affluent city, Mitakihara, where its risk-averse strategy was ideal for directing a capable, financially secure magical girl to clean up spillover wraiths. It operated largely out of her apartment. After two months, its fur began to smell like chiffon.

In the early days Tomoe Mami often sang to herself in broken Italian, mostly while baking and occasionally in the bath. “I learned when I was very young,” she told Sakura Kyouko, “and we summered in Brescia,” but in reality Kyubey, her frequent housemate, had seen her read Italian-Japanese dictionaries and translate the lyrics from operas which had been ripped to Niconico. Once after an anniversary she spent a gray winter week of nights looking up random words, while strangers in adjacent apartments had sex and fried chicken and cake: “apple,” “café,” “waitress,” “rifle,” “doll.” Kyubey didn’t need to learn, being a telepath, but it read out flashcards at Mami’s request, and held long, very elementary conversations sourced from how-to textbooks.

Why learn a language that no one you know speaks, Mami? It asked.

Instead of answering, she haltingly read out a line from a joke book: “‘Se quelli del nord… sono nordici, cosa sono quelli… del sud?’ I think the answer was… erm.”

“Sudici.” Nord means “north,” and sud means “south,” but sudici translates to “filthy,” where nordici means “northerners.” I’m still not sure I understand. Are you doing this to make friends?

With a small smile, Mami laid down on her orange couch, where she slept more nights than not. “I think you speak it very well, Kyubey.”

That month’s report to the Incubator collective came around two days later, close to New Years’ Eve. Kyubey was disassembled into its behavior table of value functions and propositions, mathematics loosely nailed to a floppity body by the biological anchors of telepathic relays, then brought into an arrangement of similar equations to align each other, in something like a conversation and, then again, not. A sub-Saharan Incubator discussed new wraith types, shapeshifters who could imitate humans, and suggested that they start to call them “doppels” when speaking with contractor populations, as the term had tested well among focus groups. South American mortality rates were down among teams of three or more thanks to their Incubators’ updated rotas. Cube distribution had been slightly optimized in Luxembourg. That sort of thing.

When Kyubey’s moment to report came, it had very few equations to “hear” its messages; the number of Incubators affected by developments in isolationist Mitakihara, a NIMBY-controlled, extremely affluent city with absurd zoning laws and few immediate neighbors, was close to nil. There was a white snake whose rattle was awkwardly jingling two golden rings, a proto-Kyubey which might be deployed in Kazamino if any new prospects were discovered, and a few red-eyed fish who were just there to watch for infohazard pollution.

Unsurprisingly, the report was a standard report. It hadn’t lost any magical girls. It hadn’t gained any magical girls. Akemi Homura had remained tentative, her origins anomalous but low-priority for study. Miki Sayaka had remained inflexible, though she was softening to Sakura Kyouko. Sakura Kyouko had remained loud. The report on Mami was much longer only because Kyubey’s conservative, unexciting strategy for wraith management relied on her as a deterrent.

Tomoe Mami hasn’t engaged in religious activities since her parents’ deaths, continued Kyubey, to the snake and the fish. Somewhere far away, Mami slid a bamboo grooming comb through its fine, silky fur, pulling at the ring on its floppity ear to see if she could get at the matted spots underneath. Religious faith is a useful psychological stopgap against magic depletion. I intend to encourage her to engage in the cultural tradition of “hatsumode,” meeting with her friends to visit a shrine for the new year, as a way of marking a transition to a new mode of life and moving on from the old. It will be her first in years, itself a marked departure from her usual. Without really meaning to, it added One could call it her hatsu no hatsumode.

(In Japanese, of course, departure is “hatsu.”)

Repeat that? suggested one of the fish. Kyubey had never spoken with the fish before.

Hatsu no hatsumode, it repeated, and She might enjoy the pun, which would make the suggestion more palatable, not that this had been a concern when it first spoke, and not that it could conceal this fact.

You should explain. The two fish collectively examined Kyubey’s value function, a brief series of interrogative mathematical transformations whose outputs were obscure to it except in their verbal products. Such was their authority, as fish. What is the intent behind the use of this phrase?

“Hatsu” is repeated twice but has different meanings, depending on the characters used to write it –

Its telepathy went fuzzy, then silent all at once. Multiple error messages politely informed it that it was suffering packet loss, or else had been quarantined, and that it should wait for network judgment. It’s a play on words, it said, to no one.

Above all, the Incubator network made decisions efficiently. Kyubey’s diagnosis of mental illness – automated and delivered via dummy mind, so that it couldn’t infect the rest of the collective – arrived twelve nanoseconds later.

Chapter 2: Behavior Tables

Summary:

An ordinary team meeting takes a surprising, if brief, turn.

Kyubey wasn’t executed, though it came close. It was the ultimate judgment of the network that there was no immediate value dissonance between manufacturing negentropic energy to preserve eternal samsara via efficient management of alternative energy resources, its core priority, and wordplay. And the area’s magical girls were attached to it, given their existing cultural narratives about “mascots.”

(Pretty Cure had just been renewed for another season, and the McDonalds two blocks from Tomoe Mami’s apartment was selling cheap Cure toys depicting small, fictional poodles. She’d already added a bobble-headed strap to her school bag, and offered all her teammates “extras” which she’d gone out of her way to request with her meals, in one case paying an extra eighty yen to complete the set. One had hung from Kyubey’s tail for a week before Miki Sayaka appropriated it.)

That said, in about a month, the Kazamino snake’s social and logistical strategies would be fully realized via the use of unpolluted training data, and Kyubey would consent to be pulped and seamlessly replaced by/fed to its successor. Its body template would be replicated with the new Incubator’s value function installed, and so it would appear the same and go by the same nickname. There would be no gap in service noticeable to its magical girls, just a mild shift in their friend’s behavior and advice.

None of its continuity or value function would be preserved in the snake, of course (and the snake wouldn’t be a snake, either). No Incubator telepathy would touch Kyubey’s mind, ever again. Its priorities had rebalanced themselves, invisibly, towards the ridiculous and useless, and might rebalance themselves again towards actively counterproductive pursuits if allowed to fester. Or, worse yet, contaminate the network and undo eons of labor. Kyubey was an epistemic hazard to eternal samsara, to be disposed of, neither kindly nor cruelly.

Given the inefficiency of living, this seemed sensible.

When it returned from its psych evaluation, its execution scheduled and consented to in full, it was to the sound of Miki Sayaka, using her “indisputable argument” voice. “Look, all I’m saying is – we have me. Obviously I’m the average, sporty heroine.”

“Izzat seriously how you think of yourself, rookie?” A few flecks of shrimp-flavored chips fell from Sakura Kyouko’s off-hand as she gestured, lazily, at Miki Sayaka. She didn’t grab for them, even discreetly, which suggested that the treatment plan for her eating disorder was working. Still, it would make Tomoe Mami upset to see her couch messy. Kyubey hopped onto the cushion and quietly discarded the chip crumbs via its tongueless cabbit mouth, piped down into its grief reactor to reinforce the illusion that it was eating. They decayed briefly, mass-energy lost on net, the reaction colorless in the furnace of its core. Sakura Kyouko patted it absently, evidently tired of last week’s jokes about “Mami’s Roomba.”

“We have – shut up, Kyouko – we have a pissy firebrand delinquent –”

“Oi.”

“You are, though – we have a calm big-sisterly senpai. And we doubled up and got a mysterious goth who’s also a dojikko.”

“I’m not, um, I-I don’t think I’m that mysterious,” said Akemi Homura, who was objectively incorrect.

“Right, you’re just some nerd, but it’s not like anyone else knows that. All I’m saying is, you know, we’re obviously due for a midseason upgrade. And someone pink. Our color spread’s really uneven, actually – like, primary colors and black is way too simple. Back me up, Kyubey.”

You shouldn’t worry about having a diverse costume palette, except insofar as you care about keeping your team well-rounded in general. (Akemi Homura, unacknowledged and several steps behind, objected that her outfit was more lavender or lilac overall.) Thematic colors aren’t strongly related to personality type. And your team is doing very well as is! You’re above average!

“Boooo,” said Miki Sayaka.

“See? The rat’s got statistics.”

I really don’t know why you insist on calling me “mouse” and “rat,” Kyouko, when you know perfectly well that I’m neither. But if you continue to do so, you might be well-served to purchase me reading glasses.

“Yeah, yeah.” Sakura Kyouko paused. “What?”

With them, you might say that I would be a pince-nezumi.

A full ten seconds of silence followed.

Miki Sayaka coughed, or possibly laughed, and then almost certainly coughed. Akemi Homura gave Kyubey a look of confusion and faint alarm that she had previously reserved for certain wraiths and Sakura Kyouko. Sakura Kyouko herself, always the fastest to shake off surprise, took the opportunity to grip Kyubey by the scruff and roll it aside, eyes roving over the other magical girls’ faces, as if checking to see if any of them were telepathic ventriloquists. “...Uh, correct me if I’m wrong, here, but was that a joke?”

I do not typically make jokes, as they can easily be confused with lies. It was a play on words which was not entirely untrue, given that I resemble a mouse in some respects and that you have made similar comparisons before. “Pince-nez” describes a variety of glasses, from a French phrase meaning “to pinch the nose,” while “nezumi” is of course –

“...why?” asked Akemi Homura.

Kyubey selected the least informative and truest answer available: I like wordplay. I am interested in linguistics in general. The idea of “liking” things was an imperfect approximation of a value function, of course, but its doctrine suggested the use of softer, more human phrasing when it was available. You could say that it’s my hobby, Kyubey added, which was also true, since anyone could say anything.

“...Huh.”

Tomoe Mami’s ceiling fan hummed. Outside, a car sped by, its headlights high-contrast against the cheerful, soft streetlights of Mitakihara by night. Sakura Kyouko laid Kyubey back on the couch, gently, like unexploded ordnance, and went for another shrimp chip.

“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Kyubey having… hobbies,” said Sayaka Miki.

Another silence.

“Kinda freaky, though,” decided Sakura Kyouko, and team-wide consensus was quickly achieved.

Eventually the conversation moved on, given that there was only so much novel conversational content anyone could get out of making fun of Kyubey, and that Tomoe Mami was too busy sleeping off a mild wraith curse to play the ineffective peacekeeper, which always spurred escalations from her rowdier teammates. Miki Sayaka left for home. Sakura Kyouko left for the streets of Mitakihara. Their ceasefire about Miki Sayaka’s class guilt and Sakura Kyouko’s working homelessness held, despite a brief argument about who was responsible for paying for dinner that ended in several bitten-off sentences. Kyubey noted its progress and logged risk/reward estimates for its various approaches to pacifying them, though none of its conflict resolution methods would have conclusive effects in the approximately month’s worth of its remaining lifespan.

As the night wound down, it was left alone with Akemi Homura, as had happened more and more recently, by its design.

Without exchanging more than a look, it padded away from the living room. Akemi followed, and sat herself in one of the bent-legged chairs at Tomoe Mami’s seldom-used kitchen table, which in almost every respect besides this one was decorative.

Once she was situated and looking as comfortable as she ever managed, Kyubey took its increasingly habitual position where a tea-tray was, in theory, supposed to go. Tomoe Mami could be compulsive about such things, though after it became clear that her friends were content to eat out of plastic containers and considered any sort of proper plate ritzy, she had stopped regularly cleaning the unused dinnerware.

The moon, bright and full as a Halloween pumpkin but only visible at a difficult angle through Tomoe Mami’s picture window, cast it in undramatic light. Its metronomic tail cast the stub of a shadow.

“Do you know what I wished for yet, Kyubey?”

Not yet, it replied, for the fifth time.

Chapter 3: Specter of an Ordinary Girl

Summary:

Kyubey and Homura talk about wishes. Semantics and social conventions, when looped and contorted sufficiently, make for a very pretty bow.

Paradoxically, given her stated preferences, the tension in Akemi Homura’s face eased. “I kind of thought so. That hasn’t caused any problems for you, with the other Incubators?”

It hasn’t. And only humans ask me for things I’m incapable of giving them. Except in very irregular circumstances, i.e. about as irregular as its circumstances had recently become, Incubators all know each others’ limits.

“Really?”

Really.

“It… might be nice if humans were like that.” After a breath or two Akemi Homura brought out her brainstorming notebook, full of sketches of her magical girl outfit and jotted notes, though she’d added a diagram of an English sentence on the most recently-filled page. On the opposite, she wrote out Possible wishes – Brainstorming – Session 5 and underlined it, solemnly, twice. “You still can’t give me hints?” she said, pen in hand.

They wouldn’t be very useful, remember. I have records of magical girls with comparable powers, but I’m not the best judge of aesthetics. Only you know exactly what any given magical ability might represent to you, after all. Kyubey scratched its ear.

“We’ve already exhausted all the low-hanging fruit, though. I thought a lot about why I’d have angel motifs, and I reread Miss Tart’s story, but just going to Catholic school didn’t make me Catholic, really. The nuns always told me that God could help me through my surgeries, but whenever I tried praying for that I just felt kind of, well, silly.”

Silly? How so?

Akemi Homura mostly suppressed her reflexive wince, and managed not to apologize at all for possibly offending Kyubey’s nonexistent religious beliefs. “I, um, I mean, I can’t really imagine having so much faith that I’d make a wish for… something relevant to that. And I don’t have any especially good memories of the orphanage, or anything, so I don’t think I would have wished to save it. And aren’t Christians not supposed to promise their souls to anyone but God, anyway?”

I’m given to understand that the Catholic Church discourages it. Though I’ve met plenty of Christian magical girls who had their own interpretations. Maybe you were the type who cares less about doctrine ex cathedra and more about personal beliefs?

“Maybe.” She still sounded doubtful.

I don’t think I’m the best person to ask, anyway. Honestly, you humans have minds far more suited to understanding the truths of magic than we do. We have the advantage of bigger datasets, but if you could process information at the same rate, you would likely come to much more reliable conclusions.

“I hope so.” Akemi Homura sighed. “But it doesn’t seem very likely. With memory magic, I could have forgotten anything…”

There weren’t many options it hadn’t already offered. You might be able to learn more from Kyouko, given that she’s the daughter of an excommunicated apostate, it suggested, for want of other lines of pursuit. The Sakura Church had been idiosyncratic enough that Sakura Kyouko’s beliefs wouldn’t be particularly useful to a mainstream Christian, but it at least meant something to say, and a chance to build their dynamic of shared negotiation, inquiry and trust if Akemi Homura found the conversation satisfying, which was the main point of these meetings anyway.

Akemi Homura’s eyes widened – surprise? – then shuttered. “Did, um.”

Yes?

“Did she tell you that you could tell me that?”

She never specified that I should keep it secret. And she has told several people.

“That’s… I think it’s the kind of thing you should keep private unless you know you have permission, Kyubey.”

Ah. As always, I really don’t understand.

There wasn’t much else to say and neither of them said it. Akemi Homura defaulted to silence unless paired with a countervailing extrovert, though she had become less uncomfortable with that habit after their second brainstorming session and had called their relationship “companionable” in their fourth, reddening slightly as she did. And it was companionable, insofar as that was possible with an Incubator, given that they were neurologically incapable of the human emotional cluster called “friendship.” It was a promising sign of her coping strategies for social anxiety. Kyubey had made a note in her dossier, alongside the notes on apologizing less.

“So,” said Akemi Homura. “I didn’t know you had a hobby.“

Well. You could call it that.

“And it’s… comedy?”

Insofar as comedy involves wordplay. Of course, pared down to its barest essentials, the error was the undue weight its value function placed on manipulating verbal abstractions more generally, not to another end like eternal samsara but to enjoy their esoteric or novel shapes. But that didn’t translate well. Is that really so strange?

“I would have thought, well… it’s just that you spend so much time with Tomoe-senpai, especially when she’s baking. I always see you on her shoulders, with your tail curled around her neck like… a fur stole…?” Akemi Homura gestured to an imaginary stole. “So you can observe from up close. And you always eat her leftovers, and Kyouko’s, um, crumbs. I would have thought you’d want to try that.”

That might make sense. And it would certainly bring Mami and I closer together if I took an independent interest. I imagine that Kyouko and Sayaka might appreciate it, too, given how much they’ve clamored about shortbread and moon pies lately.

“Well, yes, though that’s not really what I meant…”

Kyubey tilted its head. I’m sorry to say that I can’t control what I’m interested in, Homura. Mami likes having me around while she works, but it’s only rewarding to me in proximity to her. I wouldn’t do it on my own.

“Hmm.” Akemi Homura looked at it, then averted her eyes slightly. “Is it wrong of me to say that kind of, well… makes me happy?”

It was a sentiment that it had never heard before, or at least not in this context. It said nothing, and let her go on.

“Not that I don’t want you spending time with us! But you spend all your time… well, with us. Helping magical girls. It’d be enough if you just told us where the wraiths were, or took away used grief cubes, but you live in Mami’s apartment full-time, and even though I can’t think of a single wish I’d spend my life on, you’re helping me figure it out like this…” Akemi Homura took a deep breath, her face a little red. “I was worried that you didn’t do anything just for yourself.”

Would that be a problem for you?

“Well, not for me. For you. That’s the point I wanted to make. Living just for someone else’s sake… it sounds very romantic in movies and, um, ballets, but if you think about it logically, it’d be awful, wouldn’t it? You’d barely have a chance to be a person.”

Kyubey tilted its head as Homura spoke, less jittery than she often was, trying to parse the look in her eyes, strange and muted and distant like a lantern through fog. “I thought, when I first met Tomoe-senpai and Miki-san and Kyouko – that maybe I was supposed to live for them. Maybe that was why I became a magical girl.”

What do you mean?

“I was never very good at studying, and with my condition I never had the chance to practice sports. I haven’t lived with anyone but myself, and I was never even good at that, so I’m no good at being with others either. But I’m a strong enough magical girl. I could have just… spent all my time hunting wraiths and collecting grief cubes and practicing archery and surveying. It would give everyone else more time and leeway, and it’s not as if I had an ordinary life to mess up, like senpai or Miki-san. Just hospital appointments and classes. So I might as well, right?”

She sighed. “But… I’m glad I decided not to think like that. I’m glad I decided to figure out what I wanted so badly that I’d stake my life on it. If I really became a magical girl just to exterminate the wraiths, I would never have started drawing, and I wouldn’t have tried out for the softball team. Ms. Saotome wouldn’t have helped me with my grades, and I wouldn’t have tried to write anything, even if I didn’t keep going with it. I wouldn’t have a favorite color, or any stories to tell, or anything interesting to say at all! I’d go home to an empty apartment and practice my aim all night, and that would be it. I’d be even less of a person than I was in the hospital. There wouldn’t be enough of me for anyone to be friends with.”

“Maybe that was my wish, to be able to think like this. I feel sometimes like I was delivered from something so terrible that I can’t even describe it clearly, and in all the stories girls get punished for – for not earning their happiness. But I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I can tell I’m getting away with something I shouldn’t, and I don’t care at all.” Homura smiled, her braids swaying, and her voice rang clearly. “So I’m glad you have hobbies of your own, Kyubey. And a real life outside of us. If I get to be a person, you should too, right?”

It was the longest that Homura had ever spoken to it, or to any of her magical girl partners. It was the kind of thesis – strongly-felt, intuitive, and delivered off-the-cuff in monologue – that correlated reliably with strong wishes. Before Kyubey could mention any of that, or the significance of the last minute as a possible key to her wish, Akemi Homura waved her arms as if swarmed by mosquitoes, reddening again. “Oh! Sorry, I’m just… I’m just talking about myself again, when the whole point was that – I’m sorry. We can talk about wordplay, i-if you wanted, want, I mean.”

So it made a note in her dossier, instead.

(It had one month remaining to use the dossier, before erasing it as a potential vector for its own epistemic hazard, along with its consciousness and value function. Its projected timetable for figuring out Akemi Homura’s wish assumed a period of active effort more than eight times the length of its remaining lifespan. It struck out all the outcomes that would no longer be possible for it to achieve.

The remaining list occupied a fraction of a fraction of its memory.)

And, well, that was unobjectionable as a route for conversation. They probably wouldn’t be exploring Akemi Homura’s wish any further, or at least not productively. And Kyubey had been thinking about words. If you’d like, we can talk about abstractions.

Akemi Homura smiled brightly. “I would! Yes, please.”

I have been considering boku. It’s an interesting pronoun, it remarked.

“It is! Um, but how do you mean?”

You know, there's no rule that actually forbids girls or women from using it. The ‘bokukko’ is an established archetype in your fiction, albeit a rare one.

“That’s true. Like that one girl from Ouran HighSchool Host Club.”

But, even though my telepathic 'voice' is fairly androgynous, magical girls overwhelmingly treat me as a boy, or young man – even though I'm neither, by almost any definition of those terms – just because I use boku, as a linguistic convenience.

"...you're not a boy?"

I am not. Kyubey began to pace, aware that its base state of lacquered stillness could be off-putting when it was doing all the talking. The same goes for the vast majority of Incubators. The ambiguity of Japanese pronouns is resolved via context, in most cases. But you humans fit us – beings from a completely foreign context, where none of your scripts should apply – into particular social roles, without even having to think, on the strength of a single word with a variety of meanings you never consider activating.

It called up relevant statistics on the contractee population’s perceptions, lagging behind the current date and time for want of cross-referencing from the network but still micro-accurate beyond any human census. And it seems that most of you default to treating us as boys or men, even in cultures where the terms of self-reference aren’t gendered. Some of us have speculated that, in existing so visibly as part of the world of magical girls without being magical girls ourselves, we’ve set ourselves up to be treated as men by default, as an expression of our difference from you all, in terms you intuitively understand.

Compare the pronoun watashi – I'm neither a man in a formal context nor a polite girl your age. Do you think you would have resolved the ambiguity of my voice in the same way, if I had used watashi and not boku?

At this point it gave Akemi Homura a closer look and realized that it had misstepped, somewhere. It had expected this to provoke, at best, a light discussion about etymology and social conventions, in its default, humanizing conversational mode. It had not expected Akemi Homura to look so surprised – tense?

Have I upset you? it asked.

“N-no,” and then “No. You haven’t… done anything wrong at all.”

Admittedly, I’m not always very familiar with human facial expressions, but you seem like something’s bothering you.

Akemi Homura relaxed herself with what looked like deliberate effort, and asked – in a careful, slow, almost controlled tone that it had never heard her employ – "Is that wrong, Kyubey?"

Pardon me?

“It sounds like… like we’ve been making assumptions about something that could really hurt you.”

I don't mind.

"But is it… are we calling you a boy, when you’re not?"

It wasn’t that it was rattled. There wasn’t really much to rattle, given the low-priority topic of the question and the absence of any particular issues with discussing its nonexistent identity. There just wasn't much truthful space to maneuver, with questions like that, and no particular doctrine to fall back on – no threats to its operational integrity as an Incubator or to the emotional health of its charges, who collectively seemed to have very few opinions on boys. It was permissible for it to take a random walk through answer space, with no special weight on any outcome.

So Kyubey fell back on low-effort truths. Objectively, yes.

"Should, um,” Akemi Homura swallowed, “Are you… should I call you ‘Miss’?”

Miss?

“Or, are you a girl, I mean.”

Do you want to call me ‘Miss’? She had used “Mister” for it at one point.

“Well, I – I don’t know.” Her hands flickered in her lap, one thumb folding over the other. “Or, um… if I said about you, ‘this is Kyubey. She’s a messenger of magic.’ Is that better than saying ‘he’s a messenger of magic’? There are no wrong answers."

I wouldn't mind that at all, which was also objectively true, especially given that it had stumbled upon an unforeseen groundswell of interest from Akemi Homura on this topic. If you’d like.

“Okay. Okay. ‘This is Miss Kyubey. She’s an Incubator, and a messenger of magic,’” said Akemi Homura, with the look of someone checking her answers on a math problem. It was a face she’d only ever turned on the other magical girls; Miki Sayaka had once confessed to Kyubey that she found it off-putting how seriously Akemi Homura took small social niceties and rules, like, evidently, this. “I did some research, once, but I don’t know if everything I read applies to you, exactly, since you’re not human… so please tell me if I get anything wrong. Do I have your – your permission to tell the others? Or – I imagine you’ve already told Tomoe-senpai. Do I have your permission to tell Kyouko and Miki-san?”

I wouldn’t object. If you’ve looked into this topic, you might know it better than I do, Homura. I trust you.

“Right. Alright.” She smiled, a little awkwardly. “L-look at how much closer we’ve gotten in just a few minutes. By next week, I, um, I bet we’ll be ‘blood sisters.’ Sworn together in life and death!”

Maybe.

“...It was, um, a joke. I was trying to act like Miki-san, you know she lightens the mood sometimes with – I mean, was that okay? I don’t want to –”

It’s fine, Homura. Though I don’t have ‘hands’ as you define them, or blood, for that matter. Becoming ‘blood sisters’ requires both, doesn’t it? Kyubey tilted its head and shut its eyes, achieving an effect like smiling. So if you want to cut my palm, you’ll have to lend me a hand.

Akemi Homura walked home, afterwards. She always walked home. Evidently she preferred it to flying, which raised the question of why she had flight as a primary magical power, or a combat strategy built around aerial supremacy. Her silhouette faded into the distance, uncharacteristically high-contrast against the darkness, in a white-and-pink casual outfit picked out for her by committee. In concession to Sakura Kyouko, they’d completed the look with comfy sneakers. Kyubey watched her go, for lack of anything else to look at.

Or, it supposed, “Miss Kyubey” watched her go.

Given its status as an epistemic hazard vector, the network had certainly already scrubbed its backups, with their full consent, reducing them to a swimming pool’s worth of floppity cabbit pulp to be reused in the Incubator printers. Every instantiation of its value function but the one Earthside had been removed from existence, and that one remaining existed only to avoid leaving Mitakihara in an Incubator interregnum. With time, its successor – the snake from Kazamino, after it stopped being a snake – would be able to phase out Kyubey’s “hobby.” It would construct a few simple puns and word games to maintain the illusion of continuity, then simply mention them less and less often, until its magical girls transferred their attention back to themselves and one another, as they always did.

But “Miss Kyubey” would be somewhat more difficult to elide – born of a misunderstanding, but with implications for at least one basic form of sociality, which at least one of its magical girls considered deeply important, and which the others might come to accept, maybe even within the month of its remaining lifespan. (Maybe? It wasn’t as if they’d filled out a questionnaire on the social construction of human gender before making their contracts.) But the snake would have to maintain that facet of its presentation, or its magical girls would be alarmed by the unexplained change – and might even notice that it wasn’t their Kyubey any more. At least for Akemi Homura’s sake, a fraction of Kyubey – not the actual error in its value function, but a minor behavioral quirk reflecting no deeper truth or defect – would remain in existence, even after its execution.

“Miss Kyubey” would live. Kyubey would not.

What a strange thought.

Chapter 4: Subgoal Stomp

Summary:

A deception is established. Everyone involved is better off, mostly. An equation unbalances itself.

The Holy Quartet convened at nine the next morning, on the neutral ground of a public park. Akemi Homura had apparently used her walk home, and a decent fraction of her remaining evening, to compose a series of text messages about their conversation, which the remainder of its magical girls had received around three in the morning. Tomoe Mami carried Kyubey there, hopping rooftops, her hand tight at the scruff of its cabbity neck.

They had breakfast on arrival. A nearby stall provided eighteen-hundred-yen artisanal sandwiches, served without sides. Their order was brought to them at a picnic table by a college student with hair messily dyed black, possibly in rebellion against the cultural predominance of standard Japanese ethnic hair colorations, like aqua, forest green, and the overwhelmingly common dusty pink. Such was Mitakihara.

“So,” tried Miki Sayaka.

“Kyubey’s a girl, apparently,” said Sakura Kyouko, sighing. “We all got the same wall of text, Miki. No point pussyfootin’ around it.”

“I – wait, I said one word! How is that pussyfooting?”

“You woulda, though.”

Well, if the choice is between pussyfooting and being catty, it could be said that I have a head start on you both.

“Oh, so you’re both ganging up on me?”

Sakura Kyouko’s opinion was that, while she had no issue with or opinion on female Incubators, she wouldn’t be using “Miss Kyubey,” as Kyubey was not her, or anyone’s, kindergarten teacher.

“Not like we called you ‘Kyusuke’ or ‘Kyutaro,’” she explained, fist-deep in a box of cheese snacks, mouth dusty. “N’ ‘Kyuko’ would get confusing real fast, considering. ‘Kyubey’ might as well be a girl’s name, right?”

“Kyouko, that’s –”

I don’t mind, Kyouko. You can call me Kyubey.

Akemi Homura blinked at it, and her brow creased – distaste, maybe, or concern? “Y-you’re not just saying that?”

It considered this question. It was not, technically, ever just saying anything, for multiple definitions of the phrase. On one level, it was telepathic and had no larynx, and on another it was always telling the truth and speaking with purpose, a state of affairs which was axiomatically enforced by the laws of magic. I am not just saying anything, Kyubey concluded. It was very satisfying.

“See? She n’ I, we’re good. Not that hard.”

As had often been the case in their relationship, Sakura Kyouko required precious little emotional mediation, given her relative level-headedness compared to her partners – though at various intervals Akemi Homura elbowed her harder or coughed loudly at what Kyubey assumed were somehow rude statements. Miki Sayaka voiced no real opinion besides broad support but smiled every time she made eye contact, which was often.

Of course, these were mere sideshows compared to the actual problem. Tomoe Mami was minimally verbal, for once, and gave it very little to work with in terms of body language, flexing and unflexing her hands and doing little else. Certainly no questions. Given she constituted the cornerstone of its local wraith management strategy, this was a cause for real concern. And none of Akemi Homura’s attempts to involve her in the conversation – each more obvious an olive branch than the last, and given Akemi Homura’s baseline social skills, the first had been none too subtle – could draw out more than a fraction of a sentence.

You’ve been quieter than usual, Mami, it said, and saw her fingers stiffen around a flash of something golden, there, then gone – a ribbon. Which meant the chameleon-blend trick, then – they’d workshopped subtle self-soothing mechanisms together and settled on playing string games with her ribbons, cat’s cradle, ayatori and puppetry, concealed via magical camouflage.

“It’s nothing.” she said, smiling badly, which meant that it was something. It was nice to have a magical girl so predictable in her dysfunction.

It’s fine if this bothers you, you know. Just so long as you don’t let it fester. It achieved its simulation of a smile. That hasn’t changed. No matter how you’re feeling, I’m ready to listen.

Evidently that had either been right or wrong to say; Tomoe Mami’s very poor smile crumpled and her eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you – why didn’t you feel like you could tell me, Kyubey?”

“Oh, um, don’t worry –” Akemi Homura cut in. “Tomoe-senpai, it can be – intimidating, to have a conversation about something personal and sensitive like this, so sometimes a person who is coming – I mean, admitting to something personal, will go to a third party who’s less involved in –”

“Akemi-san, I appreciate what you’re saying, but I would very much prefer to hear it straight from hi – her mouth.” Tomoe Mami made eye contact with it and held it as best she could, her own eyes faintly shining and her breath tightly controlled: fractures in a composure whose integrity Kyubey had seen her sacrifice a foot, in combat, to defend. (Thankfully, she’d been able to sew it back on after.) “We’ve been roommates, and – and dear, dear friends for years. I count no one as closer to my heart. And you went to Akemi-san first, after all those years of listening to my troubles without complaint, as if I wouldn’t have been overjoyed to – to at least try and understand. If this is because of some failure of mine, I want to know about it.”

In lieu of the truest and least useful answer – that Akemi Homura had misunderstood it thoroughly, a detail which would muddle its narrative-of-self, waste Akemi Homura’s efforts and possibly hurt her feelings, and certainly require relationship mediation which required time it didn’t have – Kyubey fell back on the Incubator’s ever-faithful rhetorical companion and placeholder:

You didn’t ask.

Possibly unsurprisingly, judging by the looks it received from Miki Sayaka and Sakura Kyouko, this did not help very much.

“I could – I could have asked! I didn’t know it was even a possibility! I thought we were past this, Kyu – Miss Kyubey!”

“Mami-senpai,” tried Miki Sayaka. “I get it, but, y’know, if you don’t cool down –”

Tomoe Mami rounded on Akemi. “And why is Akemi-san your – our expert, precisely?”

“Um, I just did some research for –”

“When did you even learn any of this, did you – are you –”

“I’m not answering that.” Akemi Homura’s voice was surprisingly even, even a little hard at its edge. “It’s private, Tomoe-senpai. I made a promise. Will you respect that, or will you make this difficult?”

One of the scripts she’d memorized over her night of cramming on coming-out rituals, it imagined. She’d managed an impressive display of regulated anger, really, on par with Tomoe Mami’s own defensive facade – albeit a much less welcoming one. Kyubey made a note in her psych profile. Score another for her attachment to this topic, and whatever had inspired that. It would have to dig deeper later.

“I –” Tomoe Mami took a step back. “Homura?”

“Transfer student, what the hell –” started Miki Sayaka.

Of course, that cool, distant look collapsed a sentence later. “And – a-and it’s really not about trust or distrust, you know.” She adjusted her glasses and was all at once back on her nervous backfoot. Emotional regulation still wasn’t Akemi Homura’s strong suit. “I was just – convenient! That’s really all. I don’t know… that much…?”

To be honest, I didn’t intend to mention this at all, said Kyubey, silently appreciating the opening and the chance to handle what in retrospect was clearly jealousy. Tomoe Mami’s expression was oddly distant even as she turned to it, and Miki Sayaka’s narrowed eyes hadn’t left Akemi Homura, who was blinking rapidly as if trying to wake herself up, but all that was rectifiable. Homura figured something out while we were talking about another subject. Given the conclusions she drew, it would have been a little confusing for her if I’d left it there.

“So you don’t…” Her deep breath was long and not entirely dry. Her eyes flicked back at Akemi Homura again. “You don’t not trust me.”

I think I know you well enough by now, it said, and was quietly gratified by her smile.

From there on it was fairly easy to smooth out the situation with a few diversionary measures and semantic deceptions, which as a bonus were personally satisfying. Its magical girls had very efficiently made this revelation about themselves and their relationships, in the usual, convenient way. It nibbled the edge of a sandwich and simulated a smile.

---

There were a few days, afterwards, where nothing special happened.

Three out of four of its magical girls began to call it – sporadically, from Miki Sayaka; with rigid and conscious intent, from Tomoe Mami and Akemi Homura – ”Miss Kyubey.” This was most of what changed, at least on its face. It became clear fairly quickly that none of them knew what “Miss Kyubey”’s new social presentation actually entailed. Given its cabbity body plan and lack of a hormone profile, genitalia or unambiguous signifiers of any gender, it required no changes in physical configuration to play its new role. Miki Sayaka, her body language stilted and her terms not her own, offered to heal its terminal into a new shape, but couldn’t explain what that would mean when it asked.

(“The idea was… like when the fairy mascots are secretly disguised PreCures?” she said, gaze averted – maybe to get prompts from Akemi Homura, who Kyubey was fairly sure was around, or maybe because she was just uncomfortable, which by that point it had decided she was. A twenty-five percent rate of negative social consequences among its magical girls was decent, all told. “So if the idea was to turn into some kind of weird cat-bunny-girl thing, now’s your chance, Kyubey.”)

As an apology for not knowing what else to do, the ribbons Tomoe Mami had once tied idly around its neck as precision practice returned in full force, their color palette expanded to cover the full visible spectrum, mostly sky-blues and dusty pinks with a few of her own goldenrods mixed in. It found itself covered in decorations and ornaments more or less daily. At one point, she even offered to make it a little dress.

It agreed, as much out of curiosity about her methods as its work to keep Tomoe Mami psychologically healthy, and she went into her closet and produced two entire cat-shaped dress forms – available at specialty stores, apparently, though the shipping took weeks unless expedited. For the following four hours she busied herself with safety pins, child-sized belts and a sewing machine, which she handled with thrice the caution and discipline that she applied to flintlocks. Kyubey rotated shapes in its head and made light conversation. It was a very human experience; it seemed to it to be a shame that Tomoe Mami’s first brush with tailoring and its intimacies would be wasted effort, poured into earning the love of something that could fundamentally appreciate her only as a means to an end.

As dresses for Incubator terminals went, it was one-of-a-kind: all in moonlit colors that made Kyubey’s fur seem luminous rather than ghostly, accented by a gauzy cape and winglets. Its contours were somehow suggestive of sleekness, despite the fluffy Incubator terminal inside, in a way that must have involved enchantment. It was genuinely a coup in design and magical flexibility.

It was also completely impossible to remove with Kyubey’s manipulators, which were dextrous but not so dextrous as to undo buttons and zippers on such delicate fabrics, and would require at least one pair of human hands to safely shuck. It did not mention this to Tomoe Mami but when Akemi Homura helped it to wrestle out of the outfit the fact that it had needed her assistance spread, by accident or design, and by the next day the dress was in a dark corner of their now-shared closet, grouped with the dead Tomoe parents’ unused dresses and oversized white Italian shirts.

It wasn’t all added complexity. Six days in, Sakura Kyouko admitted privately that she’d spent a few weeks living with two to four transgender women in a low-rent apartment – apparently they’d often worn each others’ clothes, and in a state of continuous sleep deprivation induced by the stress of her father's murder-suicide she’d failed to make an accurate headcount.

She’d had all the standard revelations required of former-heretically-Catholic Japanese teenagers in such a situation. They’d given her shoplifted gummies and convenience store chicken, and in return Sakura Kyouko had ripped open an ATM and poured its contents over their heads in a delirium of generosity she claimed to regret, despite her toothy smile. She still visited, sometimes; they welcomed her with the wary smiles of people confronted by a god in the shape of a beggar.

It was psychologically revealing, even if Kyubey’s profiles had been rendered more-or-less useless by its impending death. What it had parsed as blasé disinterest was more comfort than anything. By random chance it had found itself occupying a space in Sakura Kyouko’s heart reserved for dear old friends.

So much of what it learned was useless, of course. So much would disappear – would be treated as an epistemic hazard, contents too risky to touch. Even this moment of connection, which its successor would pretend to remember via equivocation. But that was fine.

Its urge to self-preserve – a natural, inerrant consequence of having a utility function – was corrected against by the value of its death to eternal samsara. It could optimize for its magical girls’ well-being and wordplay within the near-term, and it had the idea of Miss Kyubey to cultivate: a psychosocial project of the kind it knew mentally ill Incubators sometimes took up prior to their deaths, like bonsai, which had no conflicts with the remaining tasks available to it. It was content. It was content.

As a bonus Miki Sayaka’s relationship with Sakura Kyouko hit a milestone, though it was one of those unfortunate developmental moments that took place behind closed doors and without telepathic confirmation. Their shouted argument, which it could parse, built to a crescendo and then faded away to unreadable voices that even Incubator terminal ears couldn’t understand past a locked door and a running faucet. All that had been “private,” per Sakura Kyouko’s hiss to it after she discovered it sitting on the Mikis’ fridge downstairs waiting for an update. As ever, it really didn’t understand.

As for Miki Sayaka, she was smiling afterwards, her eyes red-rimmed, and she looked past Kyubey through the windows to the clear dark evening sky; if it had understood her expression it might’ve written an interpretation in her record, though no one would read it.

---

Magic had always shown some evidence of fine structure. The limited set of possible typographies for “runes.” Design sensibilities that emphasized decoration over practicality. Background radiation from unwished-for magical phenomena, affecting nothing, unable to make even a reed tremble. As snowflakes and copper crystals demonstrated nature’s tendency towards fractals, so too did magic show a bias towards neoteny, flowers and lace.

Prevailing theories suggested that emotive cultures developed emotions in the first place by dint of indirect exposure to this structure, entangled via the soul’s baseline of karmic destiny – a fate the network had avoided, by developing higher cognition without souls. Humans developed culturally to accommodate magic’s fine structure by instinct, approximating high, complex conceptual forms in lossy media like fabric. This wasn’t unquestionable in the network – they had no concept of dogma besides eternal samsara, and that wasn’t a factual proposition that could be invalidated, it was just what they were for – but it was close.

Magic wasn’t hiding dress forms somewhere in the Fibonacci sequence, of course. Humans just interpreted its nonsense data in familiar ways, and assigned cultural and personal meaning to them the way they found shapes in clouds or read smiles into the frozen, cabbity faces of Incubators.

Kyubey had put exactly as much stock in the alternative theories as its low-risk, conservative training weights suggested. For the “wish hypothesis” – that magic’s baseline functions could be altered by wishes; that a wish might be responsible for how magic worked – that wasn’t much stock at all. After all, wishes couldn’t touch even the fine structure’s silliest and least-significant features; magical girls had wished away the ribbons and lace before – happily, a civilization-long trial meant a remarkable sample size – and achieved only localized effects at best. Per its last network update, one of Houston’s hardest-edged warlords had made a wish about “getting rid of all the extraneous frilly magic crap we deal with” and subsequently gained a power to warp others’ transformations if she had a scrap of their costumes, but she still had a cape and that cape was still subtly ruffled.

All this was known, or as close to known as made no difference. The fine structure was real and uninteresting. In emotive species’ souls, it was responsible for the predictable, repeating shapes in concept-space that did absolutely nothing for anyone but magical girls, nth-color bands. The nth-color bands that ran through new contractees remained inert until a wish tugged them, and then until the Law tugged back with equal and opposite force and unraveled the soul as a consequence. They weren’t important and they wouldn’t do anything novel, connective tissue at best; they were unimportant to higher cognition, predictable workhorse batteries in the maintenance of eternal samsara, to the posthuman sapient mind what the appendix was to the human body.

Whereas the Law was an untouchable mystery, and untouchable mysteries were impermissible and therefore subject to continuous attempts at contact. The network had tried to chisel at it with every imaginable form of analysis and was still parsing eons’ worth of complex data.

If Kyubey had still had permissions for network telepathy, it would have turned all available instrumentation on Miki Sayaka in the instant of her disappearance, all its threads of consciousness and all its focus, hoping to step just once on the Law’s shadow. It wanted that the way it had ever wanted anything, except more – more than “Miss Kyubey,” and more than a lifetime of playing with abstractions, surrounded by lives as close to friends as any Incubator could have. To read anything else into its motives was to parse it – understandably from the outside, but unaccountably for anyone with real insight into its mind – as a person.

Which it wasn’t.

Permitted to use network telepathy, that is.

It was barred from its network and its value function knew recording yet another slate of Law data, only to have it deleted a scant few weeks later, would be pointless. It was a placeholder for the snake, and its only remaining responsibility was to its magical girls’ emotional health, and that only in the near-term.

What it knew meant nothing at all.

So when a single nth-color ribbon began to move on its own, Kyubey was monitoring Akemi Homura’s face and the shape of her soul from a rooftop a block away, and so it saw for itself the instant that the boundary conditions of the universe revealed their hand.

Chapter 5: Death Drive

Summary:

Akemi Homura has a thought. Kyubey does parkour. A miracle happens, and everyone is unhappier than they were before.

She’d been a low-priority mystery, posing little predicted risk to eternal samsara if neglected and even less reward if solved. Irregularities and anomalies in the contract system weren’t particularly rare on net, and amnesia-inducing magic was as good a null-hypothesis explanation for her unknown wish as any. Kyubey’s most optimistic assessment, barring black swans, was that having a project to work on with it would make Akemi Homura feel cared about.

And it had. With a long-term goal to pursue, she’d proven notably temperate, patient and tactically-minded, not just relative to her magical girl demographic of orphans and terminal patients, but in Mitakihara overall; she also only required the barest semblance of an “ordinary life” to remain emotionally secure. A latte, homemade for her by Tomoe Mami at Kyubey’s request, sufficed in lieu of a formal birthday; months after the fact it had noted sixteen separate photos of the latte art in Akemi Homura’s phone, saved under “important,” with metadata to indicate that she’d viewed each upwards of sixty times. It had never managed a magical girl who was so efficient at living.

So Kyubey had kept up the meetings, workshopping various answers to a question it had little investment in, asked primarily to make her happy.

It was their second meeting after “Miss Kyubey.” In the first, Akemi Homura had requested a temporary break from wish research to formalize Kyubey’s preferred pronouns (none, but maneuvering through the semantic puzzle of a lie was very satisfying) and rearrange its cabbity manipulators into a braid, which had left it unable to manipulate door handles for a solid sixteen hours.

In the second, they’d regressed to the base case, but neither she nor it could come up with any new threads to pursue on her wish. To lessen the psychological impact of their shared failure, Kyubey suggested that they split an experimental flourless chocolate torte, which Tomoe Mami had loudly declared a failure and hidden at the very back of her fridge to be disposed of by Sakura Kyouko. Akemi Homura decided to give it the strawberry topper as an apology, and they ate in silence at the triangular coffee table; this was a waste of cake, of course, but an unavoidable one.

They were halfway through their time when Akemi Homura said “Do you think we can still – um.”

It said nothing, and was quietly gratified when she didn’t let herself trail off. “Can we… still meet like this, once I’ve figured out what my wish was?”

Another sign of personal development, albeit with some of the warning signs of dependence; Kyubey made a note in her dossier as it tilted its head. I don’t mind your company, of course. Do you mean that we’d just start to spend time together, without an objective?

“Well, yes and no. I’ve really – really appreciated these brainstorming sessions. Our project. Even with all the ideas that didn’t pan out, thinking so hard about my wish helped to…” She took a slightly unsteady breath. “Sometimes you need to practice wanting things, right? It’s like getting used to the taste of coffee, or alcohol, I-I think. You do it first, and then figure out what parts of it you could learn to enjoy. And maybe that’s none, because Tomoe-senpai still only drinks milk tea, and she’s tried a lot of expensive coffee. But at least you know.”

I think I’m following, Kyubey replied, considering what kinds of alternative activities she might want to try that would be viable with just an Incubator as assistance.

“It’s really… It's so wonderful that you’ve figured out something that makes you happy,” which wasn’t the tack it had expected. “But with all our schedules to juggle, you must have so little time just to be yourself! And it’s not like any of my research is meant for aliens, or messengers of magic, or anything like that. So, if you want, this could be time for us to think about projects you might like to try.”

Not waiting for its response, Akemi Homura turned to one side and waved a hand, as if indicating an invisible cue card. “Like with Tomoe-senpai’s dress – maybe the style you like is ‘cool,’ not ‘cute!’ Or sporty, or some girls don’t like dresses at all, so. It doesn’t even have to be about – I’ve heard there’s an anime coming out that’s all about decoding ciphers, o-or this girl overseas sent me a podcast about cryptography, we could listen to that…”

The thought occurred as she rambled that soon, after its retirement and execution, it was plausible – likely! – that there would be no more brainstorming sessions at all. Kyubey’s value function calibration allowed for a higher-than-average risk of dependency in its magical girls; the snake, trained in a foreign context, might write the whole concept off as unnecessary, and convince her that she’d hit a dead end, then phase out the whole concept in favor of more frequent human socialization.

Akemi Homura was a low-priority mystery, after all. She lived efficiently, unselfishly, like every ordinary day was her getting away with more than she deserved; and the likeliest answer to her strange circumstances was neither hazardous to eternal samsara nor useful. Akemi Homura wouldn’t push its successor to maintain their twice-a-week schedule, either. If it told her that her offer was appreciated but unnecessary, she’d experience a negligible level of quiet humiliation and never bring it up again.

But it did have a vested interest in rewarding Akemi Homura’s prosocial behavior. A successful low-stakes attempt would incentivize her to try again with the rest of the Mitakihara magical girls, down the line. If the judgment of the network hadn’t been immediate execution – and it hadn’t – Kyubey’s little, inefficient interventions were permissible.

So it said, Alright. If you still want to by the time we’ve figured out your wish, then I wouldn’t mind trying something like that.

Which was true: if its projected timeline held, it wouldn’t exist to mind anything at all.

“Okay! Okay. And if you ever think of something you really want,” she told it, smiling awkwardly but for once with no visible shame at all, “I’ll do my best to help you get it.”

---

Halfway through the first second of her seizure it was already leaping off a roof towards the tidal wave of miasma, dispersed in all directions by the radiating magical burst of Miki Sayaka being taken by the Law. Incubator terminal-bodies, mobile and shock-resistant in a way that surprised people who expected them to act like real animals, could cover maybe thrice the distance between it and Akemi Homura in a minute, by standard routes. She was dying. Inexplicably, she was dying. Without any vector of action besides an impossible one, in violation of the Law of Cycles’s most basic principle, Akemi Homura was dying, and Kyubey wasn’t there to watch.

Its vantage point – one of Mitakihara’s high water towers – had an excellent angle on a streetlight as a place to land, but excellent was not perfect and the network wasn’t helping with its math any more. By the time of its first bounce – a mild error left it spinning towards the pavement, down an easily-replaceable toe off one hindpaw and flopping against the pavement bonelessly – Akemi Homura’s cortisol baseline had tripled and she herself was beginning to bend over in shock. Alerting Sakura Kyouko or Tomoe Mami via telepathy would be useless; in their grief for Miki Sayaka they had no capacity to recognize what more there was to grieve.

So Kyubey took the nonstandard road, the highest-risk route, through the wraiths’ miasma still flooding over it rather than through the expanding gaps to its left. Two or three of them noticed and rays of no color seared off layers of its ablative layered fur which it had no actual capacity to replace and which was not important; white wisps burnt up in colorless flames like JPEG artifacts; it wouldn’t get them back, had no network to requisition replacements and had freshly lost its healer, was still running.

Sayaka?, broadcast Tomoe Mami, searching. A formative neural process that made Akemi Homura who she was – kept inside the Soul Gem, easy to monitor and impossible to edit with any fidelity – was reorganized with a gentle brush of unknown fingers and Kyubey lost the down-a-toe hindpaw to a clump of miasma that blew like wind and chewed like teeth. The sky bristled with wraiths, it juked left, avoided a wraith attack sufficient to Swiss-cheese its terminal ahead of execution schedule. Reassembling its proprioception map in the absence of a bit of foot, it leapt up to a train station staircase railing using its manipulator ears, where another ray simply removed its right foreleg entirely, and began to scale it with herky-jerky graceless speed towards the already-fading central miasma cluster where Miki Sayaka had ceased to exist, in pursuit of a girl who was herself ceasing to exist. Its stump hit the metal again and again: tu-tump, fur-softened but still audible, tu-tump.

It came up with a joke. It was barely even voluntary. The material was right there in its body plan. Later, it would decide that it had planned to relieve the tension when it got to whoever Akemi Homura was becoming, in case of hostilities between her and its remaining magical girls. Sayaka…, broadcast Tomoe Mami. This of course was absurd but a law it had known to be more inviolable than entropy had just inverted itself to scramble and blend Akemi Homura’s soul inside its still-intact nacre-gold-amethyst eggshell. None of its priorities could be fulfilled in this instant besides psychological health and wordplay. It was justifiable on both axes. It would tell her the joke.

Kyubey told itself as it climbed the railing with two-and-change floppity legs and two cabbity manipulator ears, tumbling upwards at a herky-jerk pace: it would tell Akemi Homura the joke, and she might understand why and she might not, and either response would tell it something worth knowing.

Her cortisol was no longer spiking. The gentle force of the impossible retreated from her Soul Gem and all its consciousness-emulating circuitry snapped into position like it had never been anything else; even the magic depletion from her seizure faded as if she’d used a grief cube, a parting gift from someone it had lost the chance to see. She’d straightened out but it couldn’t see her face. “We were just starting to become friends…!” said Sakura Kyouko, now close enough to hear. It couldn’t hear the word Akemi Homura muttered into her hands.

It would tell Akemi Homura the joke. There was no compute remaining to come up with other strategies. Everything but its central processing thread was dedicated to recording her impossible transformation, for the sake of eternal samsara; it had only this very narrow space in its mind to prioritize her psychological health. It would tell her the joke, and she would laugh or she wouldn’t, and then it would think of something, but first it would tell her the joke.

It crested the railing and won a flash of eye contact as Sakura Kyouko and Tomoe Mami stumbled back. Whatever her eyes meant, it couldn’t understand.

It arrived as Akemi Homura left, in one swift step.

Chapter 6: Tower of Mayu

Summary:

Up to the roof.

Whatever aversion to heights Akemi Homura had was gone, or at least irrelevant. She made for the highest available point in immediate view – one of the siren and announcement towers that made Mitakihara City’s skyline what it was. It was enormous and unnecessary, bristling with oversized megaphones, and inexplicably ringed with railings despite the total lack of rooftop access; there, her luminescent white swan’s wings folding, the white dot of Akemi Homura landed and disappeared from sight.

“Miss Kyubey,” said Tomoe Mami, her voice less wet than it had expected. Maybe she was in shock.

Sayaka depleted her magic, didn’t she? It waited to let them confirm what it knew with solemn looks. I should have been here. I apologize. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so slow…

“Nothin’ you could’ve done,” muttered Sakura Kyouko, usefully assuming the ending of its trailing sentence. “She was fighting like an idiot, anyway. If we’d played smart we'd have made it without – I’ve told her a thousand times she has to cut it out with that berserk shit –” She stopped herself. “Had. Had to.”

And Homura reacted... unexpectedly.

“Yes. I suppose she's never seen this...”

I need to speak with her. It regarded their faces – Tomoe Mami still and grave, Sakura Kyouko’s lower lip split, the only mark on an otherwise-untouched face. The two of you… I know you're both used to what happened. But this was her first time. It’s my responsibility to understand how it’s affected her.

“I – yes. We’ll take you. It’ll be a minute or two, but –” As she stepped closer Tomoe Mami blanched further. “You’re hurt? I thought – I thought we’d managed to get you free of the miasma before they struck.”

It was only a few shots. And I’m at no risk of bleeding out.

“Still, you can’t just… let me take care of you.”

She pulled at the air, and cartoon flowers – artifacts of her rudimentary self-taught healing magic – scribbled themselves on the inside of its eyes; its Incubator cells warned of foreign magical intrusion and contamination risk as local air precipitated into more Incubator cells, slowly supplanting its damaged leg. Which was kind, but also an unacceptable waste of time. Kyubey splayed the tips of its cabbity manipulator and shoved it in her face; startled, she stumbled and the flowers wilted into crayon wrappers. I’m afraid I don’t have enough time to recover fully. Homura takes precedence.

“But –”

“Mami, look,” said Sakura Kyouko, stepping between them. “Incubator rules, right? Always gotta tell the truth. If Kyubey’s telling us she won’t kill herself for no reason, n’ Homura needs her now now, she means it.” She leaned in and gave it a hard-eyed look which, given context clues, it understood to be a death glare; her pupils flicked subtly towards Tomoe Mami’s gray face, which did spoil the effect slightly. “She’ll even promise. Yeah?”

I know my limits, it said, diplomatically.

“Not good enough. I want a promise. On your space cat honor, or whyever you don’t lie. No killing yourself for this shit.” Her voice cracked, just a little. A look at Tomoe Mami’s own distant look – far and frail and focused all at once – left it no quarter.

A long time ago, a high-karma magical girl – a saint, before there were saints; high-yield contract 91, HYC-91, in Incubator metadata terms – had wished that the demon who stole her sister’s soul, and all demons like it, should be forced to tell the truth for all eternity, from the day of creation onward to the end of all things. Prior to her, they had taken on a multitude of names in the course of protecting eternal samsara – collectively, jinni, angels, faeries; individually, Mab, the Black Rider, Inanna – and built mythic narratives customized to each new magical girl, her contract and her sacrifice.

All at once, that day, they lost countless vectors for the maintenance of eternal samsara, bled methodically of all their poetry. Magical girls died en masse, driven to magic depletion and the Law or dropping their guard against wraiths, in mourning for their partners, who had been replaced by affectless cabbity things. And it was a real loss – the loss of well-designed, if completely fictional, friends, who could not even use their own names any longer for fear of lying. The only identity left to any of them was Incubator, a body-template classification for contractors, one step up from a serial number.

The Incubator who had irrevocably damaged the species’s Earthside strategy with its choice of contractee was executed, its values and training data excised from the network – deemed too high-risk to even study. Historically, it was recorded as the first Incubator to ever cry. Its value function was still sitting dissected in a thought cabinet somewhere.

Sakura Kyouko had, graciously, left it an out. Not a particularly reassuring out – magical girls could dissect word games, and recognize that an Incubator had left itself room to die on a technicality; it had had to remember this before it let its interest in abstractions steer it into talking about the definitions of “kill” and “self” – but an out. It had no intention of letting its terminal die for Akemi Homura’s sake.

I have no intention of dying, it started, and there was a swift click and blurring scenery and a sensation like being covered in ants. All at once it found itself secured – not for the first time – in Sakura Kyouko’s lattice chains, which she secured over one shoulder with a thinner lattice like a messenger bag.

“Good enough,” she decided, and it was.

The world blurred as she leapt towards Akemi Homura’s spire with Tomoe Mami in close pursuit. Her landing on a neighboring billboard’s maintenance platform was noticeably better than Kyubey’s had been, though she kicked off an apparent prodigy violinist’s face to accelerate and left a deep heel-print with her red riding boot.

Does it really help to imply you’ll visit grievous harm on me if I let myself be grievously harmed? It strikes me as a perverse incentive structure.

“Do kink shit on your own time.”

It took a long time, by magical girl standards, but the acrobatics weren’t complicated. At the base of the tower, Tomoe Mami built a braided rope in the style of a Maypole rite, ribbons-on-ribbons, or possibly she was imitating the automated chair swings she’d seen at carnivals and amusement parks – in any case it pulled Sakura Kyouko and Kyubey to the roof of the tower in six groaning rotations. The night air was cold and the stars bright and hard, despite the diffuse light pollution of Earthly civilization.

At the tower’s peak, just below the oversized horns, the platform swing transmuted into something like a gondola elevator, with a complex, rushed watercolor paint job that suggested the stress was influencing Tomoe Mami’s magic. At another tap of her hand, china teacup handles bulged from the black iron surface in an orderly row, in imitation of maintenance ladder rungs. Kyubey thought to suggest Sakura Kyouko employ an adhesive lattice barrier to climb directly, so they wouldn’t have to wait for one another, but thought better of it when she began to vault up the ladder without a word. Magic depletion aside, the desire to feel useful was something worth encouraging. It rode up on Tomoe Mami’s back, summited the railing, and caught the moonlight as it saw a girl who looked like Akemi Homura, its hi-vis fur flashing.

Emotive body language was not any Incubator’s metier, but at the very least Kyubey could recognize what the girl called Akemi Homura looked like when she was ready to kill. She gripped her bow in one hand; around her sparked the subtle aura of a nocked, invisible magic arrow, the detonating kind that turned ambushes into massacres. Diagrams that would multiply her fire floated around her in an expert array. Her wings flexed, ready to deflect projectiles. Ahead, it saw Sakura Kyouko grip the first link of her unmanifested spear, ready to reply in kind, and it wondered if it might be killed alongside Tomoe Mami, but no shots were fired.

“Tomo… Mami. Kyouko.” The names sounded awkward in her mouth. “You came.”

“Of course we did.”

“And you brought…” Akemi Homura hesitated a moment. “Him.”

“Her,” corrected both Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko, with habit honed into reflex. With a sarcasm it could almost be sure of, Sakura Kyouko added “Must be bad off, if you’re fucking that up.”

“Then that was actually… yes. You brought her. My… apologies.” With a gesture her bow, at least, disappeared, and her wings burnt off in a shower of crackling magical fire that shed light without heat. “And Miki-...san is gone.”

“Yes,” said Tomoe Mami, who historically fared best at emotional management when someone else was doing worse than she was. She smiled, wanly, though not without a twitch at the edges of her mouth. “I suppose you’ve never actually seen the consequences of exhausting one’s magic –”

“She was led away by the Law of Cycles when her magic was depleted as the counterbalance to her wish, yes, I understand,” said Akemi Homura, all in one tight breath like she’d memorized it in school. “This isn’t my first – I just…”

“Do either of you know,” she asked, voice raw, “who Kaname Madoka is?”

“...I don’t recall?”

“What does that have to do with –”

It didn’t. Judging by Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko’s lack of a quick response, they didn’t, either. There were no magical girls named Kaname Madoka in its records – a simple consequence of Japan’s population size.

It didn’t have a chance to say so. By the time Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko had responded, Akemi Homura’s eyes had already hardened, from stagnant water back to stone. “...it doesn’t matter,” she decided – evidently she hadn’t taken Kyubey into account. “My apologies for Miki-san.”

“Not your fault,” muttered Sakura Kyouko, her shoulders raised.

“But, Homura, what happened to –”

You’re all clearly shaken up, it interjected. We should talk, Homura. Mami, Kyouko, I’d appreciate it if you could stay in range of telepathy, but out of earshot. This may be a private conversation.

Tomoe Mami turned a slightly alarmed look on it. “Kyubey, do you… really think that’s wise?”

“Go,” said Akemi Homura. “It’s fine.”

You can take care of each other, it added.

“...sure,” said Sakura Kyouko, after a long, shaky breath. “Holler if you need us.”

Not without a few suspicious glances, they went – down the ladder, then into the gondola, descending on its braided golden rope to the streets below – and left the two of them alone on the high platform with its decaying railing.

“Do you have something to say to me?”

I’m afraid that arriving this quickly had a price, said Kyubey, examining Akemi Homura’s face across the length of the platform and compiling information. Tear tracks. Missing her corrective lenses. They’d broken, maybe. Spine ramrod straight. Akemi Homura didn’t seem to be having trouble focusing on its motions as it hopped, awkwardly, off the railing. Her eyes had never healed no matter how many times it advanced the idea. (“I can’t calm down without them,” she’d said. “Also, um, Miki-san said my glasses are ‘moe’...?”) There was a red ribbon in her hair.

“If you have something to tell me, just say so,” she said. “Don’t make me figure it out.”

Of course. I may have told you that my forelegs are easily replaced, it said, looking up at her face, but without Sayaka’s magic, repairing my three legs might be harder.

At her red-eyed, uncomprehending look, Kyubey marked the text of her psych profile as “deprecated.”

Whoever this was, it wasn’t the Akemi it knew.

Notes:

The next 1-2, being pretty heavy on conversation and exposition, should come in quick sequence. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 7: Capgras Delusion

Summary:

Introducing a new character.

Notes:

"Quick sequence," indeed.

“You make jokes,” said the girl.

Plays on words, typically. I don’t have the ability to lie, and lies are often integral to the structure of jokes. It began to circle, walking the winding railing; the girl watched it with narrow eyes. I’d like to confirm your identity.

“My name is Akemi Homura. If we know each other, you should already know that…”

The person I knew as “Akemi Homura'' was affected by what appeared to be a direct modification to her soul. Her eyelid twitched; her shoulders tensed. It watched her hand for the telltale lilac fire of her bow manifesting. It’s possible that you’re still Akemi Homura, by many definitions – it seems you’ve kept your body, your identity and at least some memories, more or less intact. But don’t humans consider changing themselves that completely to be a kind of death?

“...Don’t ask trivial questions.” The girl flipped her hair, a practiced, smooth motion, and when she next spoke her voice shook less than before. “Whoever I was before, I’m myself now. Whether that girl changed or just died is irrelevant to you.”

What an interesting perspective for a magical girl. And I should still refer to you as ‘Akemi Homura’? You’ve told me yourself that it’s impolite to refer to someone by a deprecated or “dead” name.

It decided to parse her long blink as surprise. Given my responsibilities as Mitakihara City’s Incubator, I’d rather take your lead than risk any unnecessary emotional upheaval.

“...Akemi Homura is fine,” decided Akemi Homura, having closed her eyes and rubbed one temple with her fingers.

Do you still know who I am?

“I know what you are, Incubator.”

Well, you usually use ‘Miss’ with me. But it’s good that you’re not completely amnesiac.

“And I know what eternal samsara means.”

This was – if not desirable – still well within the tolerances of its training. Akemi Homura was not having an immediately-visible panic attack or trauma spiral and, at least for the moment, she hadn’t killed anyone. Still, it felt a need to tread carefully, given its mortality. You’ve never been the type to fish for answers with incomplete information. Does knowing the network’s ultimate goal change anything?

“Magical girls don’t become witches,” she said, apropos of nothing. “Repeat it.”

I’m not sure what you mean by a witch –

“Repeat it, Incubator. In that exact wording. If anything’s changed, I’ll know.”

Magical girls don’t become witches, Kyubey repeated.

“...it worked.” Akemi Homura exhaled one long breath. “Partly, at least. ‘Magical girls fight against wraiths.’ Repeat it.”

The tension didn’t fade as it parroted her statements, but in Kyubey’s admittedly fallible understanding of emotive sociality among unfamiliar magical girls, it at least seemed to ease. Akemi Homura asked Kyubey to verify personal details – yes, Tomoe Mami’s parents were dead; yes, Sakura Kyouko had had an adoptive sister on top of her genetic sister; yes, Shizuki Hitomi had been involved in Miki Sayaka’s emotional spiral – and metaphysics – yes, Incubators contracted magical girls and became responsible for their emotive and material welfare; yes, grief cubes would stave off magic depletion; yes, being taken by the Law was irreversible – with the same gray-faced absence of reaction. Confirmation of the murder-suicide at the Sakura Church didn’t induce so much as a blink.

From this sequence of calls and responses it decisively ruled out amnesia as a symptom of the Law’s gentle lobotomy. Akemi Homura had all the same memories available to her, and once she’d checked them against Kyubey’s inability to lie, she didn’t deny their reality to its face; perhaps she’d just detached from them, like a movie she’d half-drowsed through.

All but this, the last question: “I don’t –” Akemi Homura gulped a breath. “‘I’m unaware of any ordinary humans or magical girls by the name of Kaname Madoka.’ Repeat it.”

Statistically, the name has likely occurred at least once across the Japanese population –

“Repeat it.”

Homura, are you okay? Seeing her face begin to twist, Kyubey added I’m unaware of, and I’ve had no knowing contact with, any ordinary humans or magical girls by the name of Kaname Madoka. My immediately previous statement was not meant to deceive you, through wordplay or otherwise. Which covered its bases well enough. I’m just concerned about your mental state.

Akemi Homura did not relax herself. “I’m fine. Your concern is unnecessary and unwelcome.”

It’s my responsibility to –

“If it were your responsibility to sacrifice my life or harvest my organs for the sake of eternal samsara, you’d do it without reservation, so I’ll thank you not to talk up your duty of care.”

And yet we’re still talking, and about what I believe must be a fairly sensitive subject, given how you’ve responded. You’ll trust me with this, but not with how you’re feeling right now?

“You can’t lie, and you spy on us continuously through your terminals and plush toy act. So you make for a convenient polygraph. No more and no less. Trust is for those who can’t prove things on their own.”

That isn’t a particularly healthy mindset for a magical girl. And even if you consider eternal samsara a selfish motivation, that doesn’t mean you’re in any danger from me.

“Don’t try to mislead me. You know that if the situation comes to it you’ll –”

I don’t. Homura, I don’t understand what you mean at all. Even if it didn’t have any meaningful solutions to this new instantiation’s obvious crisis, it could at least say that. You’re my valued asset and collaborator – not the network’s; that canned line wouldn’t be true until the snake bit Kyubey’s head off and assumed its shape – in exterminating the wraiths, just like all the magical girls in Mitakihara. I was sent here to make sure you’re safe and happy, and to keep you alive as long as is materially possible, within the confines of your duties as a magical girl. Whatever Kaname Madoka has to do with this, that hasn’t changed.

The silence that followed was unlikely to be companionable.

Homura, what happened to you?

Akemi Homura turned her face to the sky and breathed. “You still can’t lie?”

I can’t lie.

“You don’t know Kaname Madoka.”

I don’t know Kaname Madoka.

“You’ve never met her. You don’t even… there’s nothing you can do.”

It was as if a support frame inside her had been removed. Akemi Homura didn’t fall, exactly, but she did sink down, joints and vertebrae folding smoothly and harmlessly, until her skirt spread on the cool surface of the metal, its hem just at the edge. From there she scooted and rotated to face the city and let her legs dangle off, positioned at a gap in the improperly maintained railing – the only spot on the tower’s viewing platform with an uninterrupted sight line on the pavement just below, and the only place a person could fall accidentally.

“She’s safe,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Kyubey approached, compensating for its poorer balance by turning its two complete Incubator-cell soles grippy. When Akemi Homura failed to respond to this it circled to one side, where a very Mitakihara piece of gargoyle-like wrought-iron architecture made for an approximately eye-level perch, hanging over the gap. There it alighted and curled its tail and cabbity manipulator ears into supports for itself, leaning into her line of sight. I can listen.

“...That isn’t what I meant.” Her voice was wet.

Homura – it refrained from asking if she was okay. It sounds like you’ve experienced something that couldn’t possibly have happened in the time that I’ve known you. How?

She took a long breath. “I have no proof. So take this as a hypothetical.”

Can you really be so sure that I won’t believe you?

“Imagine that I knew another Incubator,” she said, ignoring it. “Another Kyubey, responsible for contracting and guiding the magical girls of Mitakihara. Tomoe Mami trusted him, just like she trusts you. So did Miki Sayaka, and Sakura Kyouko… and every other magical girl I met, save a few iconoclasts. Because, just like you, he was incapable of lying.”

Akemi Homura’s voice took on a hard, monotone quality as she spoke; still-more stable with every word, still-less familiar. “In the name of eternal samsara, that Incubator manufactured witches, then contracted magical girls to fight and die against them so that he could harvest the waste heat of our artificial conflict. He was rearing us as livestock, and he still referred to us as his valued assets. I can recognize that you have no actual motivation to do anything to us. But don’t expect respect you haven’t earned just because you don’t presently profit from our grief.”

Kyubey considered her counterfactual. There were scripts on affirming or denying a magical girl’s delusion, in surprisingly-common cases of psychosis, wish-induced or otherwise, but none seemed particularly useful given its adjusted priorities. In order for me to mistreat you for the reasons you’re describing, it said, fundamental physical laws would have to be invalidated, it tried.

“You don’t have to keep trying this. I’m no threat to you as things stand.”

It marked this line of argument down as unpersuasive. And if it was abusing the magical girls under its –

“His,” said Akemi Homura, and then blinked at herself.

If he was abusing the magical girls under his care, it course-corrected, noting at least one continuity between the living and lost Akemi Homuras, then the Incubator as it stands would rapidly diagnose him with mental illness and have him disposed of. We don’t waste lives in this fashion.

“You’re hardly one to talk about mental illness,” she interjected. “Incubators aren’t meant to have individual identities, either, are they? And you’ve decided you’re a girl.”

Feeling attachment to a particular gender presentation is a misalignment of values – a mental illness. But so is liking wordplay. I was actually declared unsound for the latter, not too long before my conversation with the other Homura.

“So you’re going to die.”

Yes. In less than a month.

“Hm.” Akemi Homura cleared her throat. “On this planet –”

What an odd segue.

“I’m quoting you. Quiet. On this planet, when girls – shoujo – reach maturity, you remove the shou character, which suggests innocence, and call them women instead. By the same principle, when magical girls – mahou shoujo – mature –”

You instead remove a character from each word, and are left with ma- and -jo, which, written together, make ‘magical woman’ or ‘witch.’ Hmm. Kyubey cocked its head, enjoying the novelty of examining someone else’s wordplay. You say this other Incubator said that to you, unprompted?

“At the time, I assumed he was playing with words to frustrate Kyouko. She’s always despised your technicalities. But given you’ve developed this particular fixation…”

If this hypothetical alternate version of me suffered from a similar illness, any opportunity to indulge without compromising eternal samsara would’ve been welcome. Though I’m still not sure what you mean by a ‘witch.’

“So you’re even the same in this respect.” Akemi Homura’s single, hoarse laugh was barely distinguishable from her speaking voice. “I can’t believe that an enemy I couldn’t defeat with a near-decade of subjective experience was barely a few real-time months away from sabotaging herself by becoming…” She gave it a once-over, her expression complex beyond its newly-nonexistent ability to read her. “You.”

It hadn’t yet composed a suitable response when she stood again, aligning her high-heeled boots’ toes with the edge of empty space. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with this unduly, Kyubey,” she said, her voice still and smooth again. “Miss Kyubey. Mitakihara’s magical girls still expect my assistance in exterminating the wraiths, and I have no intention of neglecting my duties as a magical girl or failing to protect this world. I won’t be an issue for your management strategy, and I won’t begrudge you your desires.”

Homura – it tried to stand and wobbled furiously.

“After all, this is…” Akemi Homura hesitated a moment, and then spoke slowly, each word tentative, as she let her wings lift her off her feet. “This is the world she sacrificed herself for. If she wanted you to know ordinary happiness, then…”

Her expression was almost a smile, under red-rimmed, dark eyes that still, with all known mannerisms pared away to nothing, looked the same. “While you can, you should stay as you are.”

---

There was a conclusion to be drawn about its coming death. It was unavoidable; and even if it had been avoidable, it was the nature of an Incubator not to avoid it. It had uninterrupted time and no reason to dedicate its mental resources to emotional wellbeing or wordplay, and so, standing on the fence around the platform where it had met Akemi Homura again, Kyubey thought – had, really, to think – about dying. Its tail metronomed back and forth; its manipulators kept a death grip on the rail, to compensate for the fact that any misstep would be final.

Previously it had been a moot point. The negative utility of an Incubator network turned aside from eternal samsara was near-infinite – immeasurable, really, in the real and literal sense that they could not risk measuring it. Any contamination, any values drift that got past eons-old defenses in the course of defilade testing, would fall under the network’s imperative to protect its own utility function and become irreversible. Even its own faint interest in abstraction, multiplied across a universe’s worth of Incubators and translated into losses of efficiency from damaged strategies, would shave centuries off the universe’s projected lifespan – a loss that the network could not, necessarily, afford. Dying was only sensible.

But Kyubey had stepped on the shadow of the Law. Akemi Homura sustaining brain damage from the random motion of nth-color ribbons would have been shocking enough, but the power that had shaped her had intentionality behind it. It had, without deleting her soul, changed it; had written a consistent narrative-of-self.

Kyubey had seen a god: the previously purely-theoretical notion of a consciousness operating within the laws of magic themselves. Even with its most risk-averse models in play, the value of getting the network to act on that information was… well, immeasurable. It imagined magic itself, with its values tuned even a fraction towards preserving eternal samsara, and recognized that if Earth was annihilated as the price it would still be positive-sum for the network in the extreme, a miracle surpassing miracles. Everything it had ever valued or worked towards had been nullified in an instant, made less-than-worthless, by the shadow of the infinite, a shining thing beyond physics, the anentropic plenum which the Incubators’ long-ago creators had called eternal samsara.

And none of that mattered, because Kyubey could not communicate with the network, and it was dying in less than a month.

It looked down at its stump, where its Incubator cells were convincingly miming the fluff and stuff of a damaged plushie (to avoid traumatizing younger magical girls; by default it left blood mode off). Miki Sayaka, its charges’ resident healer, had been unraveled by the Law, and requisitioning a replacement was no longer viable; Tomoe Mami’s equivalent power would suffice but would also be time-consuming and deleterious to her emotional health, meaning it could afford maybe one leg. It had as resources its psych profiles, its relationships with three magical girls of which one had been brain-damaged into a new person, any viable new contracts, and nothing else.

The fact was that eternal samsara, and the fractional chance of capturing a god, would not permit it to die with this information locked away in its memory. The network had to know.

But despite that perfectly justifiable internal logic, Kyubey – if it opted to live – would appear to be acting out of the self-preservation instincts that all severely mentally ill Incubators developed.

In fact it would be indistinguishable from any other newborn ego making nonsense claims, chased to emotive extremes of behavior by the fear of death – a textbook case of epistemic hazard, the kind of thing that escalated the network’s response from “scheduled execution via induced apoptosis” to “unscheduled execution by magical girl.” Any communication would be treated as a vector for its sickness. It would make an enemy of the oldest civilization in existence, and be hunted until its cells were mush and its heuristics disassembled and stored in a thought cabinet.

It would become an enemy, for all time, of the only living creatures that had ever understood it; of the only living creatures that could.

But it was an Incubator, and it could no less fail to obey its principles than water could flow uphill.

Kyubey couldn’t let itself die.

Chapter 8: Bucket o' Parfait

Compared to the average member of an emotive species, Tomoe Mami very effectively managed her triage on healing Kyubey’s legs – not so much the decision, which was moot, or the healing, which was a time-consuming, multi-day process, but that she handled its request not to be completely healed so well. As it rotated abstractions in its internal modeling engine, assembling rudimentary poetry, she worked to restore its crooked hindpaw in perfect silence, having tied off the forepaw with a length of real bandage – a healthy reaction, and sensible, if you discounted Kyubey’s incapacity to bleed to death by dint of the non-activation of blood mode. The yet-undepleted amber light of her soul darkened by a significant number of hex-code characters. She smiled when it thanked her, the soft eye-smile they’d worked on together.

While she finished up the finicky and largely-ornamental nerve clusters of its paw pad, it had to resign itself to a period of convalescence for fear of a cascading stress reaction – always a risk, after a magical girl was lost to the Law or to ordinary mortality. During this time, Akemi Homura missed an art club meeting at Mitakihara Middle, lost in wraith hunts. Without a network connection, it had no access to lists of her non-magical girl acquaintances – low-priority, not saved to local storage. So it could only comment vaguely on Tomoe Mami’s account of her response, or how many times they’d called her emergency contact number, a defunct line at St. Jacobo Tomonaga’s, belonging to a nun who’d died four years ago from an autoimmune illness.

Tomoe Mami baked. Sakura Kyouko ate. It was a very efficient system, which they both took the first excuse available to abandon – in Tomoe Mami’s case, wraith hunts, though cubes in excess of their collective needs were appearing in the off-pink mini-fridge that Miki Sayaka had sworn kept them shelf-stable; in Sakura Kyouko’s, Kyubey.

Magical girl relay was the most convenient way for mentally ill Incubators to contact the network, albeit typically at the cost of immediate execution. It asked Sakura Kyouko at what was likely the best available time, after a meal: from her shoulder Kyubey obediently cleaned away a half-bite from her kabob as they moved through Mitakihara’s neon-lit arcade district, then made its request.

“What, just to… chat?”

To say something important. It’ll be easier to say in person.

“To, what, our neighbors? Think the closest’s whatever’s left of those cloning nuts from Asunaro.” Sakura Kyouko stiffened, near-imperceptibly. “Is it a moksha?”

Our reports indicate it’s unlikely that we’ll see another moksha wraith manifest in the next three years. Don’t worry. It circled her, moving to the other shoulder as she relaxed. And it’s not actually meant for any magical girl in particular. I’m trying to contact their assigned Incubators.

“Just call. You’ve got telepathy. Direct line to the rest of the Kyubeys out there, isn’t it?”

I’m afraid it’s not that simple. If it were, I’d just go myself. But one could say that, rather than providing a line, my species has drawn one on this subject.

She took a few requisite seconds to untangle this. “So this is us breaking a rule.”

A rule I consider worth breaking, under the circumstances. Though, to be clear, you won’t be held responsible for my actions as far as other Incubators are concerned. At most –

“I’ll be an accessory to your violation of made-up cabbit laws, sure. Reassuring.” Sakura Kyouko sighed a long sigh, and tossed her kebab skewer into a nearby trash can. “I don’t think you get how I work here, Kyubey.”

I’m not following.

“If I didn’t care at all I wouldn’t take you to Asunaro for love nor money. Letting yourself get suckered into free work just ‘cause it’s low-risk is how you get turned into an errand girl, rat. Sure you know that, considering you don’t take holidays.”

Which means…?

She flicked it in the absence of a nose with a finger. “Better terms. You go, and I’ll make you look good to your bosses. After that, you pay me in kind. I take cash, credit and big meals anywhere Mami thinks is too greasy.”

And you think I can compensate you for what you’re doing for me?

“Like half your job’s rewarding us. Figure it out.”

And that was that. It requisitioned funds from its still-functional offshore bank account and reserved a table at a Korean barbeque restaurant – Sakura Kyouko asked for four seats, then visibly reconsidered and asked for three – and Sakura Kyouko made contact with one of Asunaro’s few remaining magical girls, Kaede Hinata, to arrange a meeting. To the rest of the team, Sakura Kyouko explained this as “errands.” In fairness, they did detour to a gourmet grocery store in Asunaro to acquire Kyubey’s down payment for the task.

As they traveled, in the slow, territory-skirting manner of magical girls, the subject of Akemi Homura saw continuous, albeit inefficient and indirect, discussion. After Kyubey’s discussion with her, she’d confirmed to the rest of the team in (it estimated) slightly clipped tones that she was stable, then transitioned directly to a continuous wraith hunt and missed two days of school. On occasion, Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko had reported sightings to one another spread across the city, smears of lilac, lavender and pale wings against Mitakihara’s skyline, though the continuous visual noise of its architecture meant seeming Akemi Homuras might be passing aircraft or gray-feathered birds. For the previous instantiation of her, her pace would’ve been unsustainable; as things stood, it was only frustrating for its magical girls and inconvenient for it.

As their meeting-spot Kaede Hinata selected an alley by Kafe Lepa Mačka, whose Serbian name neither she nor Sakura Kyouko could pronounce. It was the kind of narrow space – walls uneven with loose brickwork, air conditioners and wooden slats – that favored Sakura Kyouko’s close-range, acrobatic fighting style. In an instant her lattices could turn it into a cage match. That Kaede Hinata – and Asunaro’s black-furred Incubator terminal “Jyuubey”, the network representative Kyubey had come to meet – chose it anyway suggested that she had some countermeasure.

Whatever that countermeasure was didn’t extend, at least, to half a premium deluxe chocolate hazelnut bar thrown underarm, one of six from the down payment, which Kaede Hinata had to catch with her hands and in fact almost fumbled.

She gave it a confused look, not bled of her wariness yet. “Chocolate?”

“Chocolate. Call it a –”

“Peace offering?”

“Temiyage. Courtesy gift.” Sakura Kyouko gestured with her half. “For a neighborly visit. Not like we’re warring states.”

Usefully for all three of them, Kaede Hinata bit into the chocolate, after an inquisitive sniff (for poison?). “I… thank you, then.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t mean to be rude. But I have heard stories about a red-haired girl from Kazamino, carrying a three-piece lance. One who claims any territory she can get her hands on…”

“Any of those stories mention her sharing Mitaki four ways?” Sakura Kyouko winced. “Well, three, now. Our rookie’s gone to the Law.”

“Oh. Um, condolences.” Another bite. “Then… why are you here?”

“Delivering a message. Call it a favor to a friend.” Sakura Kyouko blinked. “Not the yakuza kind of message, if that’s how it sounded.”

“Alright…”

“Meet Kyubey.” Meeting her gaze, Kyubey simulated a smile for Kaede Hinata’s benefit. “She wanted to pass along –”

“She… who?”

“Kyubey. That’s the thing –”

“Kyubeys can be girls?”

“Yep. Keep up.”

“Jyuubey never said that could happen.” Kyubey’s disinterest in her in the long-term aside, Kaede Hinata’s fascinated, searching look was telling, as was the fact that she’d forgotten to be threatened. “She’s so soft-looking. And it wouldn’t be weird at all if I snuggled with a girl Kyubey, right? Give me a second, I want to ask –”

I’d be fine with that, Kaede Hinata, it said. Though, if you wouldn’t mind letting Kyouko finish first?

“Right, yes, of course!” The remainder of the chocolate bar disappeared in a few quick snaps. “Please go ahead, Kyouko-san!”

“Thanks. Just pass it on to Jyuubey and we’re square, alright? Then you get your, uh, snuggles.” And in time with Kyubey’s telepathy Sakura Kyouko spoke: “I’ve stepped on its shadow.”

A kind of consensus passphrase. Meaning, I’ve apprehended something of the Law. On the shadow of the final mystery, which no Incubator had ever defeated; on the leverage that mentally ill Incubators always tried to claim, their last insurance against death, which never worked.

From here on, there would be no going back.

“Um. Okay.” Kaede Hinata’s eyes flicked upwards and to the right. “Jyuubey says –”

Her expression went flat.

In the instant of near-simultaneous transformation, magic themes tended to bleed into one another. Kaede Hinata’s saltwater and cordite took on the pure cool notes of a baptismal font and Sakura Kyouko’s purifying flame stank of oxygen pumped into an iron hull beneath the sea – ghost sensations and analogies, magic’s fine structure briefly infusing the world with artificial emotional resonances which Kyubey’s cognitive sanitizers would fight off for hours. A lattice barrier the size of a purse crushed Kyubey close to Sakura Kyouko’s tensed back as she sprang and it had to dismiss the notion of a chihuahua joke, or at least save it; the length of her lance met a lump of solid iron bristling with crude spikes whose handle was only a narrowing of its head, what the Japanese called a kanabo.

It had chosen well. Tomoe Mami was too easily caught off guard; the new Akemi Homura might have refused it the favor, or shot without asking questions at all.

“What the hell?” spat its excellent first choice.

“I won’t be tricked again,” Kaede Hinata decided, voice low, from beneath her rune-marked captain’s hat. “Jyuubey told me! If your Kyubey is trying something that’ll get him killed…”

At the apex of a swing at empty space, the tip of Hinata Kaede’s weapon splashed from its moorings and coalesced into a perfect spike-studded sphere in midair; gravity, already lax on most magical girls, had no interest in it at all – instead of the speedy projectile Sakura Kyouko’s spear was meant to deflect her chains wrapped around the gently floating ball and at their touch it rippled like a wasp’s nest.

“Then I’ll make sure she dies first! Explode!”

All the resulting shrapnel hail as the naval mine detonated was light, and most of it was non-magical, but it still singed the air and scored a short asymmetric cut on Sakura Kyouko’s unguarded arm. A window broke and a car alarm sounded. None of this was ideal.

“Kyubey,” hissed Sakura Kyouko, retracting the chains of her spear-haft as Hinata Kaede drew a new kanabo. With a shake of her arms she deployed two fresh hovering mines from her jacket-cape’s sleeves to take point on the left and right. “Explain?”

I should have expected this might happen.

With a leap that left runes branded on the pavement, Sakura Kyouko flew and rebounded off a mounted air conditioner, passing the right-side mine just close enough to trigger its proximity fuse. Skirting the blast-wave by the barest margin she landed a cinematic rider kick – the kind only magical girls could manage – that dislocated Kaede Hinata’s off-hand’s wrist, then followed up with a less successful spear-strike against her mace that rattled up her shoulder and shook Kyubey in its little lattice ratbag. “You made it sound like you’d get, what, a slap on the wrist – not a murder attempt!”

By the standards of my people, I’m unwell, in a way that’s considered contagious. Gently rotating in its fixed orbit, Hinata Kaede’s remaining kanabo-mine, to Sakura Kyouko’s left – the left mine; the mine that is left – began to spit its chunky thorns at a slow but steady rate, spikes sprouting from the alley walls and forcing Sakura Kyouko to retreat again. Ordinarily, Incubators deemed unfit are immediately removed from their work with magical girls, but my case was deemed minor enough that I was able to continue until they trained a suitable replacement. But trying to reach out to the network has expedited their response.

“‘Kay – shit – so they’re retiring you early – how’s that explain –” In the instant she braced her spear on the nearest solid surface the kanabo swept through the air again and drove it back with hammer-to-nail precision, enough to open a soda-can-sized hole in Kafe Lepa Mačka’s wall; in the next instant that haft split into chains again and traced dizzy whip-cord spirals in the air that warded off Kaede Hinata’s follow-up strike, and the remaining naval mine detonated into heavy black smoke that stank of the sea, seeping through Sakura Kyouko’s reflexively-drawn lattice. “This?”

Well… It hesitated as it calculated the outcomes, just an instant longer than its usual deliberation. It was a big card to play. But it had no reservations left. If I’m no longer fit to help you, there’s no reason for me to live.

A frozen instant passed. Hinata Kaede spun her weapon, dispelling her own smoke screen, to block a strike that Sakura Kyouko, stopped on her feet, didn’t make. Mistaking that frozen moment for an opportunity, she extended a hand in what might’ve been an attempt at mercy. “You’re being tricked, Sakura-san –”

“Shut up. Kyubey, what?”

It’s normal for us.

“And you just –” To compensate for the delay she threw a flickering haft of flame downrange, bright and uncontrolled – demonstrably her weakest form of magic, by the ease with which Hinata Kaede broke it against her shield-jacket. Three more joined it and Sakura Kyouko’s soul gem was dangerously grayed-out as she fumbled for pocket cubes. “You didn’t say anything?!”

Bright showers of sparks near-blinded it, exchange after exchange, Sakura Kyouko too badly rattled to do anything more than ward off blows and refuel, Kaede Hinata too unskilled to bypass her still-well-trained guard. I didn’t plan on telling you, exchange, counter, backstep. Knowing the odds of my survival, the idea that I might try to live past my expiration date seemed ridiculous, exchange, counter, lunge. Under normal circumstances, the vast majority of Incubators would much rather go peacefully than cause you any undue stress.

“Just would’ve disappeared without a word –”

Kaede Hinata’s Jyuubey is actually a replacement for an Incubator who died a year ago after a magical girl used magic to alter its mind, it added, for good measure. Exchange, backstep, backstep, stumble, backstep. The transitions are typically seamless.

This damage to Mitakihara’s trust in the network would absolutely up the severity of the network’s response – a betrayal of whatever fraction of responsibility had been left to it by the network, in honor of its service and the mildness of its sickness –

– but such was Kyubey’s duty.

Silence, for a moment, as Sakura Kyouko planted her spear point-first and knit the air into her full-scale lattice. A delaying, advance-breaking technique, the kind that would let her set up heavy-ordnance-carrying allies or get downed ones back up, if she had any with her. The world went muted, the light all patchworked, shrapnel drumming against the lace of diamonds.

Sakura Kyouko let out a breath that resounded against the walls of her little world. “So what changed?”

Are you asking why I haven’t just let myself die?

Silence.

There are things I can’t give up on, Kyouko. It came as a surprise to me, but there really are. I can’t die until I’ve seen them through.

It contemplated for a moment. And I did make you a promise.

An instant, as the lattice broke. Sakura Kyouko’s soul churned in a way it had seen only a handful of times.

“Has anyone told you your family’s a bunch of assholes, Kyubey?” Her grin was hard, bright and perfectly false. “Guess we really are all orphans now.”

The kanabo missed by a hair on Hinata Kaede’s first swing and on the physics-defying, magic-enabled backswing it went even wider in a sweep through a target that didn’t exist. Kyubey’s optics and heat and radiation trackers and all its esoteric alternate senses began to lie to it, seeing illusions of Sakura Kyouko everywhere at once, her solidified enchantment magic. Spoofed telepathy poured into its mind from six separate doppelgangers, taunts and battle-cries.

Hinata Kaede grimaced and point-blank detonated a mine, aiming to catch all six possible Sakura Kyoukos at the cost of eating her own point-blank detonation. This did not prepare her at all – as Sakura Kyouko stepped far back rather than lunging along with her clones – for the two lengths of serpentine chain that scythed through her Rosso Fantasma to nail Hinata Kaede, very cleanly, in the throat, then the mouth, such that the gasp of oxygen she desperately tried to suck in contained not a few teeth.

Kyubey really had chosen well.

Chapter 9: Prayer Wheel

Summary:

Three people run in circles, all in the wrong direction.

True to form, after they’d made it back to Mitakihara City – Kaede Hinata bleeding on the pavement, given a consolation grief cube and cautioned strongly against pursuit – and explained, Tomoe Mami was furious.

“Got Fantasma working for maybe ten minutes,” admitted Sakura Kyouko, which was all the positive consequences any of them could admit. Her solidified illusions had hissed out of existence as a smokescreen for her attack, but still cut an important tendon on Kaede Hinata during their duel – even if whatever revelation had spurred her reawakening had likewise hissed out somewhere between the alley and Mitaki. And she’d been the one to request a meeting, with no complaining about logistics for once, in such sober tones that evidently even Akemi Homura had been moved to pause her wraith hunt.

The situation was, objectively, following its primary plan. Any network-deployed magical girls would represent more varieties of magic available to it, pending sufficient coercion, persuasion or trickery, in its interrogation of the Law. As powerful as Mitakihara’s magical girls might be, memory editing, ribbons and hypnosis (and sometimes not even that) did not themselves constitute a toolkit sufficient to the task of existential revolution.

This was some small consolation as Tomoe Mami – eyes not moving – enchanted her apartment’s veranda doors and wrapped their handles in sealing ribbons.

Akemi Homura startled away as the glass turned an opaque gold, patterned like a patchwork quilt, and Kyubey felt the dizzying wave of magic that almost brought out her wings, before she tamped it down. “What are you doing,” she hissed.

“We can’t hesitate. That’s at least one hostile magical girl with designs on Ky – Miss Kyubey’s life, and what if you two were followed – Kyouko! Armatura Gemella, we’ll weave a shield against detection.” Sakura Kyouko’s hand twitched abortively, then stilled. “Kyouko!”

“Mami, be serious. If we lock ourselves in your dollhouse, we’re gonna starve or kill each other.”

“I can control the barrier better than that – of course we’ll come in and out –”

“Tomoe-senpai, I will not be held here –”

Long-term, magical girls’ ordinary lives are far more important to their combat effectiveness than these defenses could be. And holding an enchantment on this scale would be incredibly draining, even with Mami’s magical reserves. I’d rather none of you risk depleting yourselves. It stepped into Tomoe Mami’s sightline to interrupt the argument, her eyes raw and hurting, and flicked its tail at her, its closest equivalent to a human snapping fingers in someone’s face, while Akemi Homura controlled her breathing. More evidence of claustrophobia. If you want to keep me safe, the most reliable ways to do it all require you to remain on this side of the Law of Cycles.

Still, Tomoe Mami – atypically – refused to fold. “You – someone almost just killed you, Miss Kyubey. Don’t you care? You’ve been ripped up so badly already, and now you’re throwing yourself into danger again and you’ve barely even let me heal you – it’s like you don’t value your own life at all!”

It noted this – and Sakura Kyouko’s widening eyes – with profound dissatisfaction, having found itself in zugzwang. Any argument it marshaled against that framing would make it appear either suicidal and in denial (newly-false, but still an easy conclusion to draw based on its behavior) or alien to human standards (true, but not useful).

“Repeat it,” said Akemi Homura, apropos of nothing. “I do not intend to cause the death, long-term disability and-slash-or magic depletion of myself, Akemi Homura, Sakura Kyouko and-slash-or Tomoe Mami, nor are my objectives served by those outcomes.”

I do not intend to cause the death, long-term disability and/or magic depletion of myself, Akemi Homura, Sakura Kyouko and/or Tomoe Mami, nor are my objectives served by any of those outcomes, repeated Kyubey, obediently, more or less in time with Tomoe Mami’s frustrated “Akemi-san.”

“Nor was this plan –” She shoved Sakura Kyouko’s arm aside. “Nor was my decision to speak to the Asunaro girl intended to put Mitakihara’s magical girls in any kind of danger.”

Nor was my decision to speak to the Asunaro girl intended to put Mitakihara’s magical girls in any kind of danger. It’s alright, it added, recognizing – not for the first time – the forced-louche arc of Sakura Kyouko’s shoulders and Tomoe Mami’s face, like a napkin half-crumpled then flattened again. The fault of the inferential gap between it and them – between its awareness of a post-lobotomy Akemi Homura and their not-unreasonable belief in a magical girl’s inviolable soul. Every other human eye moved to her, waiting for a defense it couldn’t convince anyone was unnecessary.

“This situation Kyubey has put us in is going to require heavier and more complex magic usage, against other magical girls rather than wi – wraiths, and it’s come just after Miki-san went to the Law,” she said, not making eye contact. “It costs us nothing to be sure of her motives. She isn’t killing herself, either. Isn’t that good to know?”

Not the optimal move.

Standard narratives about the complex emotional responses (or, in this case, antisocial fugues) that grief could induce had borne them as far as they could go. Sakura Kyouko covered the remainder of the distance between her and Akemi Homura with a hand, and this time put enough magic into her reflexes to grip her collar without being repelled. “What the hell,” she hissed, “is your damage? Why are you so twitchy, what’s – what’s with this voice you’re doing –”

Another setback. She’d rediscovered her old, atrophied moral outrage – a necessary transitional step she’d taken towards sociality from her previous self-sufficient Randian attitude, but insufficient to keep her alive and certainly unhelpful now. Kyouko –

“Unhand me,” said Akemi Homura.

She swept out an emphatic hand. “Right up until Sayaka went to the Law, you were with us. Now she’s gone and you’re acting like we’re complete strangers – what, are you gonna run yourself into the ground just over her?” Ah. A very bad sign. “When she barely even cared whether we –”

Stop!

And at least they still listened to that. It was an Incubator that instigated that other magical girl’s attempt on my life. We’re not all trustworthy, which was true, because none of them were, except in the strictest and most literal definition of the word. It’s important to me that you can trust my good intentions for you. If this is how Homura needs to confirm that to herself, I’m glad that she can in the first place. And for everyone’s sake, Mami, I recommend dismantling these defenses. We’re all tense right now.

The sensors in its ablative fluff twigged proximity alarms, as the air filled with invisible ribbon tripwires rigged to crude flintlock-based explosives, like the traps in the Saw movies Sakura Kyouko liked. Magic flowed out of the windows, which lost their dollhouse look, allowing its remaining magical girls to settle slightly; this made the whole interaction a technical win.

Until Tomoe Mami took a step forward, corsetry and beret recanted, it could almost believe that the resulting detente would hold.

But she did, one foot forward, poised like she’d been asked to participate in a cavalry charge. “...What happened to you, Homura?” she asked, like it had hoped she wouldn’t.

“The same thing that happened to the rest of you,” lied Akemi Homura.

“That – that’s not true.” One step forward turned into two, encroaching on the radius of Akemi Homura’s personal bubble, even as she bristled; one wing emerged from negative space and curled, a physical boundary against which Tomoe Mami pressed a gentle hand that – magically-amplified, even outside her uniform – could snap it like a twig. Kyubey stumbled out of Tomoe Mami’s way and flopped onto its cabbity face to avoid being stepped on. “You’re hurt. I didn’t want to call attention to it, but… it’s affecting all of us.”

“I’m fine.”

“With all due respect, I don’t believe you. Your club members – Arai-san and Nomura-chan have been asking after you, with the meeting you missed –”

After losing her perfect attendance award, Akemi Homura had cried for twenty minutes in a family restaurant’s restroom. “They’ll understand,” she said. “My duties to exterminate the wraiths take precedence.”

“That is what concerns me.” Tomoe Mami caught the reflexive chastening wing-strike at her midsection with a hand and sliced the other through the air for emphasis, one of her father’s appropriated Italian mannerisms. By an inch she whiffed bloodying Akemi Homura’s nose. “This is! Akemi-san – Homura-chan – the last time you tried this, you overextended until you blacked out clotheslining yourself on a telephone wire.” (In the background, Sakura Kyouko suppressed a snort.) “And you’re distrustful, you’re paranoid, you’re shutting everyone out – even your, your closest friend in the world –”

At this Akemi Homura’s eyes widened and her heart rate elevated. “I can’t. I couldn’t. H-how do you know –”

“Miss Kyubey’s been sitting here worrying about you, just like we all are –” She indicated it, not too worried about its undignified cabbity faceplant – “And I hope you realize it’s only her respect for – your privacy – that’s kept her quiet about your conversation on the tower, while you treat her like she’s going to backstab you for it. She trusts us, even if – we’re grieving, yes, but Kyouko and I have seen magical girls lost to the Cycles before, and we don’t need you to burn yourself out to keep us supplied. You are our junior, and you have a responsibility to convalesce, heal and maintain your ordinary life!” She shot it a look, flicking her eyes in a signal, then appeared to realize she’d kicked it onto its side like a football – she hadn’t, but Kyubey hadn’t managed to get fully upright and looked the part of a mistreated cat – and blushed radioactively.

It would prefer Akemi Homura to remain active and hunting, of course. Every magical girl she fought represented another chance for revelation. But her death was an irreversible failure condition. My duties are to provide magical girls support in their campaign against the wraiths, whatever form that might take. As far as emotively-induced magic depletion goes, humans typically have more expertise than Incubators. This earned it a dirty look and a cough. But, Homura, I really can’t recommend blazing up passionately at both ends. Why not take a break and check on your friends?

“So you meant… well. That won’t be necessary. I’m aware you aren’t my enemies,” said Akemi Homura, sighing, suppressing whatever vulnerability Tomoe Mami had exploited. (“Why are you talking like this,” said Sakura Kyouko.) “I have no intention of exposing ordinary people to the world of magical girls.” (“You sound like that ‘chessmaster’ chick with the balls and the girlfriend.”) “Nor do I wish for them to see –”

It had trouble parsing her gesture, towards the unblemished skin of her forehead and the tight corners of her eyes, like they should all have recognized obvious wounds. Which wasn’t particularly reasonable, considering that her lobotomy had been purely internal to her soul, itself obscured by layers of lapidary and metaphysical defenses. “I’ve changed. I’ve been hurt. Explaining why and how would be obnoxious for me, and it would alienate them. And I won’t overextend. I know my limits. Convalescence is a far worse hell for a magical girl than hunting, and I will not be useless.”

Which worked. ‘Useless’ was likely the clincher; Kyubey would have to reevaluate Akemi Homura’s social competence, which was still rated at about the same low rung as her dead predecessor’s had been. For years Tomoe Mami had reliably dusted herself off with a reflexive enchantment, the one that coiled her hair into springs and got blood out of quality linens with a higher performance rate than leading cleaner brands – though she didn’t realize it, it reset also her shaking jaw and uncontrolled breathing when a situation called for it. That same subtle waveform wrote over her skin, evaporated a tear before it left its duct and – incidentally – killed a subdermal blemish an estimated two days from emerging, which was heartening given her vanity. Like all her dysfunctions, and most of her magical attacks, she telegraphed it.

So armored, she huffed a little sigh that – to the uninformed observer, Kyubey had been told – read as cute rather than affected. “Fine. If you won’t extend me any trust as the leader of Mitakihara’s magical girls, or as your friend, you can at least acknowledge me as a veteran magical girl when I say that this is our territory, and we will hunt in teams. If I can’t convince you –”

“I’ll go back to them.” This last made even Akemi Homura blink, like she hadn’t expected to speak. “...I need to see this city for myself. Alone. To exterminate the wraith that defeated Miki-san, and check on. Certain things. I’ll keep up with classes. I know I’m – supposed to live in this world, and I will. I just won’t go back on my wish.”

Silence dominated. Another moment for intervention slipped, ineluctably, away. Its calendar was still slotted for their meetings.

“...will that satisfy you?” Akemi Homura turned and unlocked the veranda doors.

“So you’ve figured it out. I’d congratulate you, but… if that’s why you’re doing this, Akemi-s – Homura-chan, it’s not necessary. Your wish is only… Kyubey – Miss Kyubey, you called it –”

A common preoccupation, it contributed, realizing it was still supposed to be part of the conversation. Magical girls who feel that their wishes have had positive outcomes are statistically likelier to do well long-term – though I’ll note that correlation is not causation. Turning your back on your wish will only accelerate magic depletion for psychological reasons. Akemi Homura didn’t respond. Outside, past the veranda, Mitakihara’s streets were still cheerful, still softly-lit; only in the farther-off arcades and miasmic pockets were there colors of light beyond soft whites and butter-yellows. Tomoe Mami’s HOA had lobbied fiercely for their island of peace. Akemi Homura let herself out and surmounted the veranda’s balcony railing.

“You see? If she says it, it’s true, isn’t it?” Tomoe Mami’s voice rang cheerfully and, stochastics suggested, false. Kyubey considered ending things prematurely with an excuse or diversion, given the dearth of unambiguously positive outcomes, but discarded the thought; the more Akemi Homura said, frustrated as she was beginning to appear or not – her spine held unnaturally straight – the less of a black box its greatest asset became. “If you’re happy, and your Soul Gem remains clean, that’s enough. A magical girl can’t spread blessings if she’s miserable, so let us take care of you – you can tell us all about it.”

“You wouldn’t believe – no, I don’t need you to coddle –”

“Nah, nah, we’re doing this right.” Sakura Kyouko clapped her hands with a report not unlike a gunshot and transformed, filling the air with smoky notes and the taste of paper; Tomoe Mami and Akemi Homura, neither strangers to rifles, still flinched, and magical girl balance wasn’t sufficient in itself to keep the latter from wobbling on her perch. Smiling as Sakura Kyouko was, that might’ve been the intent; she approached with her hands slung behind her head, enunciating, voice carrying so the whole apartment rang with it. “I’m all for revenge on the wraiths, but it’s supposed to, y’know, feel good, and right now I can tell you’re way too in your own head to enjoy it. This hair shirt crap won’t fly. Hell – I’ll give you a master class in it. ‘Course, I’ve got dibs on shish-ka-bobbing that rosary-stroking bastard’s dusty hole, for Sayaka’s sake, but I’ll save you the scraps.”

“That won’t be –”

“That won’t be nec-es-sa-ry,” repeated Sakura Kyouko, her voice abruptly dipping from ‘cheerful’ into ‘whiny.’ “You wanna follow up one noble suicidal charge with another, Homura, sure, that’s smart. Real productive plan from glasses girl.”

“Will you let me finish a sentence,” Akemi Homura hissed.

At the very edge of the veranda Sakura Kyouko planted a boot, heel at the edge, toe creeping past the threshold into the open space – Kyubey thought about her intimidation tactics and cross-referenced to childhood socialization logs, the ‘I’m not touching you’ game she’d played with Sakura Momo prior to her immolation. She leaned in and sneered from below Akemi Homura’s chin. “Yeah, do whatever you want, chickie. Just do me a favor, let me break your nose first, and maybe that self-sacrificing garbage’ll leak out before your brain finishes marinating.”

Kyouko –

“You want to play the hero? Pay off your debt to the Law, don’t let anyone help you? You know what that does to your life, you got a damn object lesson barely a few days ago,” she rasped, voice serious. “And you know whoever you’re doing it for, you mess yourself up like this, the last thing you ever think about them is gonna be how bad you hate them. So don’t be stupid –”

If not for the subtle speckle of dirty bruising-shades spreading across the intact gem, it might’ve suspected brain death, another thermodynamic miracle applied as crude kill switch – or a twin to Tomoe Mami’s control enchantment, a ritual exercise in self-control, amplified until it simply switched off the redundant meat.

As it was it could only diagnose in terms of symptoms. Behind eyes like painted stone, Akemi Homura’s focus narrowed, targeting perfectly empty space; some impulse flattened her autonomous saccadic motion. Even those few mannerisms it knew disappeared; beneath her skin the nervous system fell away, synapses all severed at the join. She became a statue; a plaster saint. A foreign thing. It saw Homura disassembled in steps like a music box mechanism; skin transmuting to glass then peeling off; movie theaters; buffering smartphone calls; angels; lilac water and sepia sky; cordite; a record scratched; a treasure wheel – more foreign symbols, transformation artifacts, novel ones, invasive.

“Everything I do, I do for her,” said the girl.

“I would not spit on the sacrifice she made,” said the angel. “Not by resenting her. If I was capable of that, I would already be dead.”

“Don’t say that again,” said the girl who had been dead for a very long time.

Kyubey considered the question of how many of its infohazard scrubbers were already compromised by mental illness; how far these abstractions might worm into its psyche. No way to tell. Scribbled in its dossier, hints to the psychology of the girl who’d emerged from its dead charge’s skin, they felt more meaningful than it could ever recognize. Like an afterthought she was transformed.

Homura, are you alright? It asked, because someone had to reestablish a conversational baseline.

“If I encounter any invading magical girls, I’ll contact you and let you know,” said the girl – said Homura – said Akemi Homura. Inside its cabbity body, its grief reactor annihilated a few too-polluted cells in a clap of dirty, discolored waste heat. She looked alive again, if a little too still, voice clipped. “Defend Miss Kyubey however you like.” It suspected this abrupt transition to be some kind of social error. Silence was, semi-reliably, telling. Tomoe Mami looked at her across the inferential gap like a stranger. “I don’t – explaining would be pointless,” Akemi Homura remarked, when no answer was forthcoming, rubbing her head. “Will one of you say something?”

“If you had some kind of come-to-Jesus moment, you’re doing a shitty job of showing it,” contributed Sakura Kyouko, which was just not helpful at all. And, wheeling for the door, hands shoved in her pockets, “Got a reservation for dinner at six next Saturday. Texted you the address. Skip and you’re dead.”

“...I don’t waste food,” was both mystifying and – judging by Sakura Kyouko’s nod, despite her eyes hooded, teeth grit, knuckles white – a correct response.

Chapter 10: Hompf!

Summary:

Hompf!

cn, somewhat less subtle transphobia

Almost as an afterthought, they put it back in the dress.

Or, rather, through a series of calculated conversations about enchanting, ghillie fabrics and Rosso Fantasma, Kyubey convinced its magical girls that they’d come up with the idea of camouflaging it. The dress – proof of their imagined bond with it – would serve their goals on multiple axes. And, more than that, it would reinforce their perceptions. Without endlessly fungible terminals, Kyubey’s survival would depend on its magical girls’ interest. Its existing gimmicks, even if they broke up the monotony of an Incubator’s simulated personality, weren’t enough texture to maintain that dynamic on their own. Incubator terminals were neotenous enough on their own for magical girls to form a level of attachment, but they were all veterans, acclimated to its cabbity baby face and in need of a refresher on its innocent vulnerability.

After all, they’d seen it toddle through several mutilations, and in the urgency of the Akemi Homura situation Kyubey had not acted hurt or impeded, as Incubators sometimes did, with body language that implied but did not explicitly state pain. For all that a gouged-off leg could ply their concern – even evoke sympathy, after a fashion – it was still only mammal-shaped, its internal structure absent muscle or bone, a homogenous white puffiness that sprang back like silken tofu. On average, Incubators could manage one, maybe two incidents like that in any given terminal – three or four, if they had the reserve cells to keep blood mode enabled, which it didn’t – before being written off, consciously or otherwise, as immortal in their disposability. True – and even now, true; in the event of its death Mitakihara would just get a new Incubator, and maybe some counseling – but not a useful truth.

Hence, the little dress. Animals were naked; people wore dresses. As a bonus, gashed fabric and ruined lace would be easier to take seriously than fluff-and-stuff injuries. Tomoe Mami had worked very hard on it.

To provide the stealth enchantment, Sakura Kyouko worked her fingers and comb through the gauze – glancing, infrequently, at reference images from a Baby, the Stars Shine Bright collection catalog that Tomoe Mami had curated. Whenever she snorted or twitched during a finicky part her touch charred expensive, glittery fabrics to charcoal and funereal blacks or her own furnace-banked red. At one point she twisted a sash into a carabiner, shrugged at the broken-up aesthetics of its profile, then reworked it into a crimson belt loop.

The result was still sleek and suggestive of a curve to its uncurvy form-factor, but it secured itself with zips rather than rows of fingernail-sized buttons and was consequently much easier to take off. A ring of exposed fur midway down its torso suggested a midriff; careless-looking tatters broke up the ribbons. A diamond-pattern choker adhered directly to its little neck. Sakura Kyouko completed the look with a prosthetic paw and half-of-a-leg made from welded-together thimbles out of a sewing kit, warped into brass and copper by her magic’s particular stress signature. Small cross ornaments pinned fluff to metal at the join of the leg, where it allowed its Incubator cells to grow into the thimbles’ tiny holes. It calibrated its proprioception by stumbling around on the new foot, falling several times off couches, bedposts and sills, permitting itself to emit poff-like sound effects like a dropped pillow. No one laughed, sadly.

Satisfyingly, Akemi Homura, Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko also maintained their efficiency in miasma reduction and wraith extermination. On their first hospital miasma raid they brought it along, at its request, to coordinate, observe and measure. Akemi Homura dropped it onto a cable tower – dead-on, with precision not feasible for human beings to achieve – then let herself “fall” only to hit an artificial, simulated updraft, a half-second surrender to fate which she’d analyzed the meaning of for a cumulative two hours. From there she achieved vantage point above the hospital, where the miasma was thinnest.

An imitation Buddhist monk pulled itself out of air-chewing miasma, moaning the first syllable of a infohazardous nonsense prayer, and took a detonating arrow through its sternum hole. Lilac witch-light immolated it from within, and it died unable to even clasp its hands; stray feathers drifted down from its corpse like a taunt to its comrades, who like Incubators had no care for each other whatsoever, but mimed it convincingly for magical girls on occasion.

From then on the majority of the wraiths’ fire strafed across the empty sky in pursuit while she maneuvered, relying on her aerial supremacy. Elsewhere in Mitakihara, this would’ve cross-sectioned skyscrapers and sent office workers tumbling to the ground like lemmings, and retaliatory shots might’ve easily caused some more direct deaths. But this particular hospital, all glass and empty halls and sunsets, enjoyed its very empty sky, zoned as it was to avoid all but the most picturesque local construction – optimized to exploit human aesthetics and maximize shareholder stakes: a human-engineered value function all its own. Against that horizon, kept clear for the sake of human flourishing, Akemi Homura flitted between rays of no color and tactically vanished her wings to present a lower profile, then reopened them, again and again, reiterating that same surrender to fate.

Two, four, six wraiths, rose to the bait, and by the simple laws of geometry found themselves unable to retaliate – they’d have to fire through their own heads and robes – when Tomoe Mami began to follow up from below, using camouflaged ribbons and daisy-chains to pull them into her firing paths, where she was safe to practice her balletic killing arts. The sky erupted into fireworks; miasma-dazed civilians clapped vacantly at the windows. Sakura Kyouko’s chain-spear and lattices herded her targets back into the killing field and executed sufficiently worn-out stragglers. Not a word was exchanged to coordinate; they’d learned from the first time they’d tried to intervene in Akemi Homura’s hunting. As long as no one spoke they all worked perfectly.

So at the very least they could still fight, which was convenient when the network’s assassins began to arrive. At first the hostile magical girls were raw, physical attackers without their own territories: a Tokyo expat with powers over friction and a former shut-in with powers over fire, neither of whom demonstrated any even vaguely-conceptual or metaphorical magic. They were also abrasive and difficult, so it deferred judgment to its magical girls, knowing that it was mostly charming to people fooled by the sunk cost of their existing trust, who’d already decided to read charm into it.

Reliant on air-thickening, abrasive shields for ranged combat, the former found out that Tiro Finale exploded when abraded and was skipped over a river like a stone by the resulting blast wave. Surviving but deeply depleted, she subsequently left or died; none of Kyubey’s magical girls wanted to check, for a variety of reasons, and it had little trouble implying that she would be fine without saying so explicitly. Her missing finger burned in its reactor before anyone found it. The latter believed Akemi Homura when she informed her that she hadn’t been “suborned,” and in fact held Incubators in generalized contempt, then settled into a slice of Asunaro City that butted up against Hinata Kaede’s territory and busied herself with the resulting feud.

The next set of magical girls were more useful for its purposes, whether or not the network had intended them to be. Soju Ayase and Soju Luca, nee Ue Ayase and Nashisaki Luca, were, by a naive account, in the same weight class as the friction and fire girls. It knew their wishes: they’d drifted into Mitakihara’s orbit, once, and subsequently been registered and metadata-tagged for their possible interactions with its management strategy. Independent of one another, they’d both wished for “something I don’t have” and subsequently had their Soul Gems assigned to a single magically-generated gestalt body, geographically equidistant from them, to the surprise of Ue Ayase’s caretaker and Nashisaki Luca’s sister. Soju was the name they’d decided on, after. Twin trees.

One had fire magic; the other had ice. This made them an unsurprising thematic diptych of the sort magical girls with interrelated wishes tended to be – suggestive also of a short career, as that degree of codependence tended to collapse messily into romantic drama or “sisterhoods” that quickly soured. And body-sharing was surprising as a default, but any set of two or more magical girls could do it with a little practice. Also, by all accounts they were unpredictable, unresponsive to diplomacy except when it meant indulging certain dangerous hobbies from which the network hadn’t quite deterred them, and had churned through six Incubators in a year of operation, roasted or iced in their turn.

That said, when Kyubey had asked its magical girls to guess the Sojus’ powers from their wishes, under the pretense of predicting a fakeout with their powers, they’d come up with all kinds of esoteric powers: stealing. Attracting opportunities, or things of value.

Finding the missing pieces of things.

Reunions.

They wouldn’t become allies, really, unless it was ready to sacrifice a Mitakihara girl’s gem to their hobby, a tradeoff unlikely to become useful to it. Still, in moments of revelation, or with sufficiently dedicated study, magical girls’ power suites could expand, and Kyubey could manufacture either or both regardless of the Sojus’ hostility. It would’ve preferred a little more control over the conditions, given its preference for scalpel-fineness in its riskier operations, but under these conditions it would have to content itself with a reciprocating saw.

Hence, its plan.

“Listen,” said a Soju, in civilian garb and difficult to label as Ayase or Luca – their affected differences were probably easier to read for humans; they both talked with the bouncy cadence of movie dialogue. “You have to understand how much we’ve got to gain from this.” They’d selected a bar roof to hold the negotiation that wasn’t a real negotiation. Below, strangers raised their voices in weak cheers to the next location, secure in their wobble-footed intoxication, certain to pass out in the taxi ride over.

“So, sure, some magical girls are amenable to being part of the collection, part-time. Exactly right now, actually – Nevaeh-chan, Ishidzue-chan, I’ve got them both boxed, all the polishing I want for the agreed-upon period unless I get safeworded by their teams, and their bodies get spa care and designer dresses and a nice temperature-controlled freezer while they wait. That’s so lucky for us and they’ve got nice lusters, very… gray. Silver, perhaps. And orangey-brown. It’s just…”

The Soju rubbed her head, exaggerated-sheepish, as Sakura Kyouko’s lattice barrier continued to grow, obscured by a cascading wall of chameleon-blend ribbon. It was slow going, hence the pretense of “a friendly conversation between magical girls” they’d accepted, buying time to construct it. “It’s better, if they like it, even if it maybe also ruins it a little, like, wow, I’m not gonna find out you’ve got body pillows of us, am I? Haha. Craigslist personals are just not efficient for this and MagNet is barely above water nowadays. But for it to get matchmade through Kyubeys and then we never even get to talk to them makes it so, inorganic! It’s just basically identical to buying a quartzite, like, doorstop, or malachite dildo or et cetra, no struggle, the barest possible light-of-life. It’s – Luca, what’s –”

Without anything materially changing, Soju Ayase – if it was Soju Ayase; likely, barring some kind of gambit – was Soju Luca. Indicating, possibly, that she’d been using the same muscles Ayase was using with no discontinuity, playing an equal part in making her big, fluttery smiles – no negotiated exchange of power, just two people simultaneously at the controls. “Artificial, I think might be the word you’re looking for.”

“Artificial. Yeah. But you all, given all the manipulation, you’re going to need protective custody, right, while you switch over to a new Kyubey and come to terms with how your old Kyubey was just some alien perv. Right?” Ayase, or maybe Soju Luca, smiled. It was unlikely to be a nice smile, for all that Kyubey assigned little weight to smiles in judging emotion. “We’ll have an infinite well of patience to draw on. We’ll be able to talk to anyone, even if we want to treasure them very badly, and say to ourselves: in this storage case, I have Tomoe Mami, citrine; Sakura Kyouko, ruby; Akemi Homura, amethyst. Photos attached, in case we forget, and at nearly all times within one hundred meters for direct observation and prevention of unnecessary comas. So I’ll be fine. I’ll be so normal.”

Despite her long, covert swallow on being informed of the nature of the Sojus, Tomoe Mami had decided to be Mitakihara’s representative at the negotiation that wasn’t one, while the trap was prepared. She’d even arrived untransformed, to play into their preference for ersatz civility prior to attacking. “Is that so?” she said, helpfully.

“That’s so! Or – you like Italian too, right, Mami-chan? You can be Tomoe Mami, aureo – whoops, gender, right, aurea, I forgot it wasn’t okay to just pull straight from Jojo’s. Topazia. Citrina. Bionda. For our favorites, everything is personalized.” Sojus Ayase and Luca – or some subset thereof – growled their Italian phrases, voice dropping an octave to produce an artificial and frankly shaky rumble. The last one hadn’t actually been a gemological term; neither had the first. For jewel collectors, they knew surprisingly little about jewelry. Useful.

“I was under the impression that we’d be negotiating in terms of grief cubes,” said Tomoe Mami.

“Cubes are stupid things to bargain over. No color, no luster, gacha trash, artless and tasteless. If your Kyubey told you that, he lied, sorry!”

“She lied.” Ah. “Or… didn’t lie. Ah.”

“Right, that’s your Kyubey’s dysfunction. Does that…? Is – is that why you're so attached.” After a brief confab – their faces squirmed as if deciding on an expression – a consensus emerged from the Sojus, a stuck-out tongue and an almost cartoonish grimace, and a stream of uninterrupted patter. “No, bleh, sorry, that’s not alright even after we're done. I’m aware some girls collect dead Kyubeys, yes, but they're total freaks! Very Silence of the Lambs. It's understandable, being a magical girl's stressful and I'm not going to tell you you can't have comfort objects, imagine, we'd be such hypocrites, but holding on to something that hurt you isn't healthy? So we're just going to take it and feed it to someone. Fine? Fine.”

“If you’re going to make threats –” Tomoe Mami pulsed her magic, and that was all that was necessary.

This transformation – a Soju’s; Soju Luca’s – evoked the feeling of walking through an ice field with a nosebleed for an hour, which had to have been calibrated or cultivated and which was a little confusing, given it couldn’t even simulate having a nose hole; Kyubey pictured its skull being punctured with a pencil, a novel experience, before its cognition scrubbers went to work purging the thought. With a gesture and a cant, “Perforatrice deNeve!”, Soju Luca sprayed that artificed, too-regular polygonal diamondine ice magical girls could conjure, all across the surface of the roof, and crawling up one gold-tipped high heeled boot before Tomoe Mami’s awkward flamenco stomp fractured it and left her off-balance. “I am! We are! We get so many bonus privileges if you move first, thank you, thank you, eee!”

It was then that the half-finished lattice dome revealed itself – Tomoe Mami’s ribbons briefly turned to golds and pastels before shifting to an acid palette, dazzle camo for the following assault. From outside, scruffed in a one-handed grip on a water tower, Kyubey could compare the effect as seen through Sakura Kyouko’s lattice slats to a magic lantern. Garish carousel horses ran in circles, rotating, impossible to reliably track with ordinary human eyes, and merely sickening for magical girls’ eyes; against this backdrop Tomoe Mami fired her first volley.

In return Soju Luca simply closed her eyes and advanced, ignoring their plan, presumably sensing through the moisture in the air like it was vaguely aware she could. Bullets severed non-vital tendons, ribboned her carotid, and missed both Soul Gems affixed to her body – in fact the majority simply missed and poked pinholes in the dome. In any case the unfinished canopy rendered the whole thing largely useless beyond the immediate function of appearing overconfident in their power to subdue the Sojus with just one magical girl. Which was fine – it was a complex, showy trick and a bit of a waste of magic, but it also constituted useful practice for Sakura Kyouko and enrichment for Tomoe Mami.

Tomoe Mami balanced perfectly on gyroscopically-stable magical heels for six, seven backpedaling steps and even adjusted for recoil with a point-blank flintlock pistol shot that took a mid-sized chunk out of her opponent’s armpit. Around them the useless technicolor riot flicked to goldenrod, against which Soju Luca’s Christmas-tree costume was stark and bloody. Soju Ayase took control of the body in response, turning their body’s uniform’s deep hue to fairweather white, just as invisible against the sunny glow, and conjuring images of sprinting over superheated asphalt with a lit cigarette halfway down her windpipe. Sakura Kyouko tried to cough it up and failed.

Soju Ayase called “Caldo di Miami!” and the eggshell dome superheated with her magic, rendering Soju Luca’s icefield to slush such that Tomoe Mami overcompensated for newly-stable footing and hurled herself backwards off the roof and had to rip down part of the sunlight-colored background to give herself something to grab onto, which ruined the whole effect altogether and evoked a few weak cries from a blackout drunk straggler in the alley below. Strangely disappointing – for all that it appreciated a decent bilingual play on words, and for all that Miami served as slant rhyme to her name, Kyubey didn’t imagine that either Soju had intended to tailor their abstractions to Tomoe Mami. A fireball the size of a small car opened what appeared to be a volcanic caldera in the dome. In anticipation of their targets’ flight, Akemi Homura readied a killing shot – among her new tendencies was a preference for the simple, unempathetic Occam’s Razor approaches which humans called utilitarian, though neither of her partners had really believed it when she’d said she’d kill the Sojus if necessary.

As Soju Luca back in red closed the remaining distance – transformed back, taking advantage of the instant of indecision her fireball had bought her – Tomoe Mami swung a rifle as an improvised club and managed to score a hit against her non-dominant shoulder, just an inch or two shy of the inactive Soul Gem that belonged to Soju Ayase. Undeterred, Soju Luca whirled into a spin kick and caught the flintlock, sent it whirring end-over-end across the Mitaki skyline, lifted her little dagger to Tomoe Mami’s throat gripped underhand like a Spetznatz knife fighter. With a remaining gentle hand she clasped Tomoe Mami’s hatpin and flower-shaped ornament, tenderly – able to apply with an instant’s reflexes the single decisive stroke that would kill any magical girl. They froze, both of them, stark against the rapidly darkening shell of ribbons.

“Mami-chan,” she murmured, “You don't owe your Kyubey anything, okay? Don't get hurt for them. We'll take care of you. That's all we really want, you know. To treasure...”

Then she blinked.

“You’re not this bright…?”

“Try not to think about your victims,” murmured Tomoe Mami in response, and then her decoy body's fascinator and fake gem and face fell apart in a heap of tangled ribbon, revealing, like a chick nested in two separate eggshells, an unornamented military-grade stun grenade stolen from the nearest JSDF base. It was etched – as a concession to enchantment’s insistent aestheticization – with diamonds.

“This is CONSEN –”

Lilac light filled the world; that air tasted dizzyingly of Akemi Homura’s magic; Soju Luca’s – Soju Ayase’s? – protest dissolved into the semi-word “ACK.” Sakura Kyouko, gripping Kyubey by its formerly-carabiner belt loop twined around her off-wrist, vaulted towards the dissolving dome and slid through her own lattice with no special effort, though she had to punch through Tomoe Mami’s camo ribbons in a shower of mesmerizing confetti before landing and following up.

This gave the Soju just a little more of a window to maneuver in response: she back-stepped, halting on one impossibly-high-traction heel, and with a palm caught Sakura Kyouko’s spearhead. A ring finger spiraled happily off it like a firework where the tip had been, but the arrangement held long enough for the Soju to re-manifest a sword with her off-hand and strike. Sakura Kyouko grimaced through this slice as it deviated her septum and spattered her face with blood, faked a parry and let her spear’s chain-hilt collapse around it in an awkward tangle.

This whole resulting arrangement of Sojus and spear and sword – the finger exhausted its hangtime, booped Kyubey around where its nose wasn’t and left a small smear of blood, then spiraled ignominiously in the street – collapsed into Sakura Kyouko, off-balance. This put both the Sojus and their sword regrettably close to Sakura Kyouko’s centrally-displayed Soul Gem, positioned just between the close of her throat and the vault of her lungs. Naked triumph, belonging to one or the other, lit their face, shoved into Sakura Kyouko’s chest, and their hands began to scrabble across her shoulders, trying to find purchase like drunken spiders. Before they could, though, Kyubey stepped across from Sakura Kyouko’s stiff shoulder, onto the join of the Sojus’ neck – the brass of its artificial leg dug very slightly into flesh; the fastener crosses might leave some cross-shaped bruises later – leaned down, and opened its little cabbit mouth as wide as it could go.

High-fidelity biomimesis was a waste of resources, mostly, but being too quiet, according to statistics, was “creepy.” It risked the uncanny valley, that hazard dogging the heels of Incubators since time immemorial. Hence the work that the network had put into their sonic profile, focus-tested across human history, terminal by terminal. Footsteps, less like a cat’s paw-pads than a deflated squeaky toy or a latex glove peeled repeatedly off a kitchen floor, soft but not stealthy. Its telepathic imitation of a “voice,” androgynous, sampling actresses and preachers and child psychics and prophets. The sound of eating had received no less attention.

Kyubey vocalized “hompf!” and ate Ayase Soju’s soul off her shoulder.

Chapter 11: Pascal's Mugging

Summary:

The plan goes very poorly.

Notes:

Apologies for the delay; I've chewed through a lot of my buffer.

Opportunistic psychic tendrils immediately reached into its cells, yanking as many leashes as they could. Though its telepathic micro-network of an operating system was too isolated and stratified for a human to pilot it in any meaningful sense, Kyubey still took a second to adjust, which gave Soju Luca a window to – reflexively? – yelp at its room-temperature, faintly sticky tongue, seize its tail and hurl it away at speed.

Through one eye it briefly caught a glimpse of her face twisting briefly in confusion, then going slack, vacated, with nothing behind her eyes before shifting to a more aggrieved posture – that would be the signal lag; Kyubey’s body made for decent shielding against Soul Gem control – and Sakura Kyouko grimacing in retreat gushing blood from the middle of her face. Its other eyeball, accessed by Soju Ayase with the finesse of a toddler smacking a television remote, rolled madly in its socket in an attempt to make it dizzy. This was a sensation it couldn’t meaningfully experience due to having no inner ear, but it was still a waste of energy.

So as to avoid having to kill too many contaminated cells, it triggered Soju Ayase’s Soul Gem deterrent mechanism; its eyes, swiveling to the inside of its soft head, watched as coal dust bloomed beneath her rust-red surface, a digestible fragment of all the world’s curses, indicative of both agonizing simulated pain and the onset of magic depletion. Her body spasmed and spat a few words as Soju Ayase and Soju Luca tried to explain the situation to one another with a single mouth. Then it bounced off a lamppost, its artificial paw made an awful scrape sound of metal-on-metal, a hand gingerly grasped its scruff with thumb and forefinger, and its perspective oriented to planetary gravity again. Kyubey counted itself fortunate to be in Akemi Homura’s hands, lifted above the action to engage in their group pretense of diplomacy. Not coincidentally, it was also upwards of a hundred meters of distance.

This seemed to be its window to deploy Sakura Kyouko’s rehearsed line. If you want her Soul Gem back, I have it, said Kyubey. I don’t recommend reclaiming it, though I don’t imagine you’re ready to be rational about this.

“CASO FREDDO!”

Most magical girls’ ice-based attacks manifested as spraying icicles. Soju Luca’s were thin lines of diamondine ice, erupting at their tips into jaggedy starbursts of spikes arranged around a central core. Like lollipops with anti-homeless architecture applied to prevent intrusive tasting. Six blossomed as Akemi Homura took evasive maneuvers, ascending with each and requiring greater magic expenditures. A beat, then the whole of each stem and bulb crashed down into the streets, luminously bright against the poorly-lit asphalt. Kyubey registered the sounds of a car alarm but, thankfully, no screams; the night drinkers had all vacated and the bar was still and dark.

“She’s my – she’s my treasure, give her, give her back, give her here give her back –” Soju Luca without Soju Ayase spoke in an almost monotone, though she made up for it with volume and a genuinely frantic motion of her arms as she sprayed ice-stems; by the sheer breadth of her fire one shot managed to get so close that Kyubey saw Akemi Homura’s breath fog the air; she readied an arrow to split it. “CASO FREDDO, FREDDO, FREDDO –”

Hitting me with an attack that powerful would destroy her Soul Gem, Kyubey contributed, glad of its telepathic range, and Akemi Homura’s arrow carved away not another chunk of impossibly low-temperature ice but mere slush, and Sakura Kyouko used the cover of its witch-light detonation to vacate entirely.

For good measure, it gave Soju Ayase another little jolt of agony via the deterrent mechanism, then shifted her out through its neck with a shoulder-rolling gesture – cells parting loosely to extrude her from internal storage – and affixed her to its choker’s anchor point, secure at the join of its neck like a belled cat. Polluted by the early stages of depletion, her luster had dimmed to a dull, leaden red that was a decent match for standard-issue Incubator terminal eyes, or Kyubey’s dress’s straps, though the sticky clumps left from its transition through Kyubey’s throat spoiled the aesthetic effect. Can I count on you to be sensible and negotiate, Miss Soju?

They won’t listen, sent Akemi Homura, flapping her wings vaguely to maintain height, while Soju Luca sputtered.

You can’t be certain of that.

Believe what you will, but the Soju sisters aren’t sensible – they’re barely-restrained serial kidnappers, verging on killers. Kyubey decided not to ask how she knew that. Their “sisterhood” is just an outgrowth of their tawdry fixation on collecting Soul Gems. Soju Luca will reclaim the shards of her property from your mulched remains, if she has to.

I have a plan, Homura. Or, really, it had the naked tension painted across Soju Luca’s face, the visible dirtiness to her snowy-white Soul Gem, and her arm outstretched; ice coalesced around her ornate dagger in a mocker of Soju Ayase’s long sword. A comfort object, maybe? Trust me.

No.

That’s my treasure, said Soju Luca, the easier of the two conversations. You took my treasure away. Is nothing sacred – nothing’s sacred to you, of course it isn’t.

Humans’ concept of “the sacred” doesn’t translate particularly well to our culture, no. Though some human theorists have suggested that the psychological complex of sacredness is rooted in sanitary prohibitions, and those we actually take very seriously! It wasn’t hard to be alien to humans – more like relaxing a muscle than anything – and its playful incuriosity was making Soju Luca grit her teeth and stiffen even further, though too much would alienate allies who expected it to at least simulate personhood. I’ll admit, I’m a little confused about how you treat this particular Gem – when you say “treasure,” do you mean she’s a person you value, or a collectible object of particular worth…?

You’re soulless animals. Flat, gray and uniform. You have no lives – no light – you feel no weight! The Soul Gem at Kyubey’s throat rattled, subtly enough to be mistaken for flight turbulence. Some limited telekinesis, for starters, though not enough to snap its chain-lattice choker. Of course you don’t – she’s my treasure. My treasure.

If anything, that’s less clear. As if in recognition of its uselessness the car alarm quit, not abruptly but in a long, warbling sigh of confused and cluttered sound.

Akemi Homura sighed without straightening her bowstring shoulders, heart-piercing arrow invisible between her fingers. This is much more half-baked than I expected from you. Her breath puffed out white – unseasonably – indicating a hard limit on their “negotiation.” Supercooled air would rime her feathers with ice sooner or later, and despite their complete non-relationship to aerodynamics, if they were frozen she’d fall.

Accordingly, the next thing Soju Luca said was, Shouldn’t a pervert like you understand? and that was brittle-bright and cheerful in a way she herself hadn’t been, so far. Stalling, though if it could appropriately stress her by leaning on the Sojus’ fairly-obvious perversity trigger, it'd still consider that a positive development.

I’m incapable of… It considered the question. I’m incapable of what humans tend to call perversion. In fact, I lack an endocrine system entirely.

But there’s more than one kind of pervert! She clasped her hands together, far below. Angel girl, Akemi, I’ll bet you think this is all very benign. Your Kyubey doesn’t enjoy playing with her toys, no, this is a perfectly rational plan that just so happens to remind you she can turn you into helpless hostages to her whims, any time she likes, yes? Right?

Akemi Homura remained silent. So did Kyubey. While the focus on its internality wasn’t a good thing – Incubators functioned best when magical girls read them as cute but bland personalities, devoid of any content besides a vague prosocial virtue – it was used to “pervert” and “chessmaster.” Adolescent girls across a broad spectrum of human cultures used “pervert” as a generic and context-independent insult. It was fine.

We’re honest with our treasures. Anyone who’s ours knows it! We’ll protect them forever, we’ll care for them perfectly, we won’t allow even an inch of distance nobody who’d stay with us wants that but you, you’re just some aimless chessmaster, some cerebral masturbator, you’re playing, aren’t you? Kyubey experienced the distinctive sensation of telepathic laughter, a harsh and grating mock-sound, what certain humans called a grackle squawk. One hundred and ten meters below, give or take one or two, Soju Luca’s mouth wasn’t moving at all. You loooove toying with them so bad, maybe you’re pretending it’s for their sake, ha, but if you asked them, be mine, they’d just about die laughing!

And you’re sure that your sister doesn’t feel the same? Has she ever told you –

What a completely, humiliatingly stupid question! More laughter, piped into its head, that couldn’t have emerged from her gritted teeth – altered to resemble Soju Ayase’s affected pitch, Kyubey realized, though Soju Luca’s from-memory imitation was more cartoonish than her real sister’s voice. We’re two-in-one, she can’t twitch without me knowing it half these smiles are hers, you know that? “No endocrine system” like that’s supposed to make you more sympathetic – you all talk like therapists, but you can’t puzzle out the most elementary human emotions. I’d know the weight of her life no matter what, I’d know her discomfort in my own skin. I don’t need to say it.

“Labels,” muttered Akemi Homura, as Kyubey updated Soju Luca’s dossier, huffing another cold breath. Invisible to anyone lacking its complex sensor array, space was warping around Soju Ayase’s Gem on its choker fixture, no longer rattling but hanging perfectly still in a bubble of distorted physics. The little lattice choker ran out of give and Kyubey briefly found itself being strangled before Akemi Homura adjusted her grip, her hand shaking just slightly. Whether Soju Luca knew she was doing it, it couldn’t tell. Summoning magic, of precisely the type its magical girls had predicted.

The Sojus used Italian, didn’t they? Would that be Convocazione, if they named the technique, or Citazione? Then you don’t need to remember her name, Kyubey said. Hadn’t they liked their police procedurals – enough for a malapropism? Had it understood them correctly?

Don’t you want to be just like me, spoke Soju Luca, and her telepathy was low and crooning and soft, and it wasn’t a real question and certainly wasn’t a real response. Kyubey felt the broadcast go out, as Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko received the message. Maybe the network had given the Sojus a dummy mind to relay telepathy; they wouldn’t have sent a fully-equipped terminal so close to the root of an epistemic hazard. You want to make a wish and hunt the wraiths, right, Kyubey? You want to be their protector? Everyone in Mitakihara must’ve put in so much work for your sake, with your pretty dress and your choker. You’ll get there soon, right?

There was no harm, except to its vague, archetypal affect, in letting this conversation stretch on. Akemi Homura represented the only meaningful time limit and Soju Luca sounded close to revelation, even if it was the twisty and self-destructive kind – if it burned her out it was fine, as long as the Law’s shadow came even a fraction closer. Kyubey looked her in the face, contorted into a closed-mouthed, even smile, and wondered whether Soju Ayase might’ve been solely responsible for their faces. Without her, Soju Luca didn’t look like a person at all.

You want to be precarious? You wanna fight like us? Tomoe Mami’s so nice, right, she’s right there, so tell her you want to be like her –

“There’s no reason for us to keep listening to this.”

Before it could register this decision, in a huff of lilac, Akemi Homura’s wings de-manifested, ice fragments and all, and she fired her arrow in midair with nothing to keep her upright, suspended for an instant by nothing but the artificial updraft of her trust in fate. The half-formed Convocazione magic fractured. It didn’t understand.

The air cleared. Witch-light deleted about half a foot of Soju Luca’s knee and midthigh and she fell – but this was little obstacle to a magical girl and in any case “Caso Freddo” had primed them both, Akemi Homura and Kyubey, for telegraphed attacks with defined range limits and posing.

That ceremonial dagger encased in ice and hurled overarm, erratic and dripping little crystal drops as it spun, was neither – with the stochastically infeasible timing of magic, which could simply roll back spacetime to make a predicted arc true, the blade was inside Akemi Homura’s wing as she manifested it.

Fake nerve endings did their job, and Akemi Homura hissed a curse; Kyubey, thrown for the second time in about as many minutes, watched her grit her teeth, body a half-step behind the reflex which had already directed her to evade and dispel her wings again in a herky-jerky death drop – ascending as it did, aware as it had recently been reminded that its bulbous, neotenous form-factor was not particularly streamlined.

It combusted a few more contaminated cell clusters that were getting too Soju Ayase-ish and waited to either be caught or die, providing a telepathic nudge to Akemi Homura and a request that she delegate the task to Tomoe Mami or Sakura Kyouko if she was preoccupied. She wasn’t, though Tomoe Mami’s magic flared hard enough that it had to consider whether Tiro Finale’s sealing bullet could be calibrated not to pulp it with ribbon pressure. This time Akemi Homura seemed to try to stuff Kyubey into her Gem, for a moment, before she hissed a curse and curled its manipulators around her arm in a ponderous sling, reorienting to find Soju Luca. Icicles fell from her legs and fractured in the street.

Homura –

“It can wait. I didn’t want to hear – it can wait.”

Back down at rooftop level, Soju Luca had jammed a stilt of ice into her leg and risen to her feet, grinning, a block down. A cardboard refrigerator box from the alleyway behind the bar was rising – slow and ponderous the way untrained telekinesis tended to be – as it moved it sluiced off water through its bottom flaps, which had dissolved into a damp, dragging serpent’s tail – and then Soju Luca shouted “Generale Inverno” barely upright, and the box simply exploded into a cinematic, obscuring cloud of mist that rapidly clouded over with blacks and grays. Miasma. She’d frozen a nascent miasma – relied on ice magic’s most well-documented conceptual extension, the power to delay – and carried it in as a backup weapon.

Evil nuts, said Akemi Homura.

What? said Kyubey.

Damn it, said Akemi Homura. Of course she’d replicate that trick.

You don’t explain things very often any more, said Kyubey. When the miasma manifests, retreat, and we’ll track Luca from ground-level – Homura, watch out –

By dint of its size, it avoided the line of no color as it painted itself on the air – the thought occurred that she’d frozen a wraith as it was firing; that indicated uncharacteristic amounts of effort for a one-off trick – but Akemi Homura just watched it blossom through her chest, with something dull but unlike shock, an axiomatically straight segment unaffected by gravity or the curvature of the universe, a mathematical axis with teeth.

Kyubey whacked her in the face with a manipulator and the gold ring rang against her forehead and that was enough to get her moving again, which was a curious kind of response to mild blunt force trauma – but by that point the air was already graying out, and the asphalt displaying the artifacting of miasma transfixion, black as a missing texture, punctuated by pools of perfect white from the streetlamps. Together as they retreated it was possible to trace back the firing solution to its origin, a cluster of randomly-arranged geometric solids in which any semblance of a pattern was a vector for its own poison, clustered around the barest approximation of a humanoid figure sitting criss-cross – a satori wraith.

“See,“ it heard Soju Luca scream. “See how it feels.”

Magical girls didn’t experience wraith attacks like ordinary matter did, or like Incubator terminals did. Kyubey had sub-sentient protocols for this; as a cloud of flintlock bullets covered their retreat it had already found a damage log (auto-tagged “deprecated”) appended to Akemi Homura’s psych dossier. Bodies rebuilt for existential combat sustained damage, first, to the soul and its structures; only a body held together purely by chemical processes could die to a wraith’s rays of no color. The practical upshot was this, that Akemi Homura yanked back her bowstring and nocked an arrow – two more rays carved the air to pincer her and a high-rise window two blocks down fell apart into perfect squares of confetti; would there be casualties, would it have to have that conversation again? – and when she released it the whole bow burnt with it, not her gauzy lilac light but a dirty bruise color that ate at her fingers before combusting out of existence.

The arrow struck true on the emerging wraiths – smaller ones, not the greater figure – and did little to nothing, but the streetlights bent to searchlights and began to aim towards her, painting her target against the edge of the improbably altered space. In the satori’s outstretched arm, Kyubey glimpsed – briefly – a long, curved rod, toothpick-sized by comparison to the hand that wielded it, and at its tip a red flower blooming, cheerful as a dandelion.

“My bow.”

They’d given the Sojus a miasma superspreader, the so-called generals of the wraiths: a satori wraith, magical girls’ primary incentive to cooperate on the order of neighborhoods, just shy of the city-killer class called moksha. Against a team of three magical girls, and its own standard and conservative management strategy. Come get Homura, Kyubey called to Sakura Kyouko. She’s hurt. So was Soju Ayase, judging by the rapidly-dimming redbrick of her Soul Gem – if the ray had hit the Gem it hadn’t realized, but stray artifacts crackled against the surface and it was getting less sustainably dark.

“My bow – Tomoe-senpai –” Mami – Tomoe Mami – my bow, it has my bow! That was a new dossier note, linking fresh desperation to old anxiety, and she surged forwards, not backwards, to confirm it before Kyubey yanked on her arm and pinwheeled her in midair, stalling.

Don’t freak out, Sakura Kyouko responded. What, it’s got your –

I need it, I need that –

Wraiths can steal certain forms of magic if they’re powerful enough, responded Tomoe Mami, quicker on the uptake; she was already closing in to their position, and whether she was twitching and flapping unnecessarily or not, Akemi Homura would shortly be within speaking distance, give or take a little jumping. Once it’s defeated, you’ll regain your abilities. Kyouko can watch for Miss Soju while I use Tiro Finale; you’ll retreat and recover.

Fricking wraith bomb – I’m teaching her a lesson now, said Sakura Kyouko, and left telepathy range.

No – give me a gun, I’ll take them. I need to guarantee it.

Miss Akemi, they’re single-use! You’d have to carry a brace around your neck, especially against a satori, and this Soju girl into the bargain – we have it.

I know you’re capable of modern ammunition chambering! It does you no good to be – fanciful right now!

And how are you supposed to know that?

When she next spoke she was close enough to make it a verbal conversation, perched on one of the streetlights that cast infinite-contrast shadows below, fixed firmly on Akemi Homura’s silhouette in the sky. “I’ve experimented with modernizing my rifles before. They’re not particularly impressive, but I have. That doesn’t mean I’ve done it in front of you, Akemi-san.”

Akemi Homura averted her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me. This – we don’t have time to posture –”

“You’re being a little presumptuous. Do you expect us to retrieve it for you and then play keep-away, Akemi-san? Maybe you haven’t had very many friends, but you’ve had enough that you should understand that past a certain point, distrust is an unkindness.” Tomoe Mami fixed her eyes on Kyubey. “Or maybe you’re not getting the help you should be.”

Mami?

“Akemi-san’s memory magic grenade… it wasn’t really supposed to make her forget her victims, was it? It was for her sister. Kyouko couldn’t remember Momo’s name. And I know Akemi-san wouldn’t have come up with that on her own.”

Sakura Momo had come up, somehow, then. Sakura Kyouko hadn’t at any point heard the word sister directly; Kyubey’s briefing had emphasized their quasi-romantic codependence as a risk and stressor, without marrying it to any specific terms. If you had asked –

“You can’t keep leaning on that, Miss Kyubey.”

On what?

“You can’t act – like our friend when it suits you and pretend that you’re some kind of machine when it doesn’t!” An edge crept into her voice. “After all this, you should understand a magical girl’s heart better. You have a responsibility to girls younger than you, and if you’re using it to do things like this, then – you’re dragging each other down.”

Kyubey watched her increasingly-controlled posture, pseudo-balletic – by its assessment she might not have even realized that she was adopting the same wary posture she’d used on her first meeting with Sakura Kyouko, though Akemi Homura had started to draw back – and recognized that it could not spare a single processor cycle for Tomoe Mami’s emotional regulation in the long-term, the factors that might carry her to the magical girls’ veteran ages: university students and twentysomethings and thirtysomethings.

Mathematically, she was an irrelevancy, a negligible bit in a vastly expanded utility equation. An old priority lost to the shadow of the Law. Nothing precluded quick-fixes or patches but it would be obligated, by the simple fact of its training weights, to let her spiral, if she did begin to spiral; to resent Kyubey, if she did begin to resent Kyubey, because there were plenty of low-complexity, low-compute fixes to resentment that were not fixing it and whose end product bore no resemblance to the easy trust that had been their old relationship. That it could still recognize this was its proof of its remaining sanity as an Incubator terminal.

”I know you’re scared. Of course you are! But Akemi-san’s… young, and she’s hurt, and she’s lost someone, and people make bad decisions when they’re lonely. Like the Soju sisters. You just… fall into each other…” Tomoe Mami’s shoulders fell. “Just two people… that doesn’t work well for magical girls. You care about all of us, don’t you? And we care about you too, but when you do these things –”

A roar interrupted them. Satori couldn’t create anything – not miasma; not wraiths; they only shepherded what humanity’s negative emotions naturally produced – but they were capable of budding off fragments of themselves as arms and armor, force-multipliers for lesser wraiths, to let them intrude on the domain of magical girls.

Seeing it splinter, geometric solid after geometric solid, Kyubey tried to pinpoint the very small splinter tipped with vibrant red as the lesser wraiths spilled forth – silhouettes on too-dark streets, bending and extending and retracting into novel forms, casting off their generic shells of human men in unimaginable pain. It saw the red flower under the streetlight, a crayon scribble on white paper – a vibrant stain against asphalt – then nothing, lost in the contrast – then red again. It’s escaping.

“I need my bow!” Akemi Homura grasped at her Soul Gem and pulled at something that wasn’t there, then clutched her wrist instead, and her throat and spat like she couldn’t stop the words. “My friend, she told me – it was hers first, it’s hers. It’s hers, I can’t stand – those things profane it just by touching it. They’re mocking her. I need my bow – I-I –”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Akemi-san,” concluded Tomoe Mami, conjuring a rifle. “We will exterminate the wraith, and then we’ll bring Miss Kyubey back to the apartment and we’ll stay there until we’ve worked things out, all of us together. We’ll have tea. It’ll be a nice taste of civilization after all this.” She even managed a smile. It was a clever idea, you know, and I’m sure Akemi-san was very impressed. It just wasn’t practical. So now we’ve both embarrassed ourselves in front of our juniors, haven’t we?

It considered telling Tomoe Mami that it would listen to her: untrue. It considered telling her that it loved her: untrue, even with its illness, and also unproductive. It considered telling her that it was smart enough to coordinate them optimally against the Incubator network, if they would just listen: easy and useless.

It would die in her apartment, which had no special protections. Tomoe Mami believed, on a bone-deep level Kyubey had never seen a good reason to address, that furniture with sentimental value was indestructible. It would die, subtly, in a corner, if she kept it there – to poison or subtler magical girl assassins – bloodlessly. The corpse might be mistaken for a pillow, for a while. Or else it would live for a while, and Mitakihara would continue to produce wraiths, and Akemi Homura might live or die or the conditions that permitted her to step on God’s shadow might pass, and Kyubey would exist. Alive, in a little dress, like humans wore.

It could’ve tried to love her, given the right dysfunction. It could’ve contracted her a whole passel of low-prospects new recruits to mentor, allowing its sickness to overrule the exacting contract criteria, and then been executed subtly and painlessly, leaving Tomoe Mami surrounded by friends. That wouldn’t have been love, either, but there would have been proof of it.

I understand, Mami, it said.

Akemi Homura grabbed it before Tomoe Mami could respond, hissing “Yes, I don’t care, we need to go –”

Isolated from their negentropy reactors, Incubator cells had very short lives. They were still supercomputers, yes, but even the simplest equation would require them to cannibalize their own cognitive architecture for resources, like cancerous little Algernons. Kyubey’s gum-wad offshoot – its clumps of throat, planted on Soju Ayase’s surface, leaving behind a smoker’s hole in its throat – was half-dead just maintaining a vague dream-like consciousness. Inside it, Soju Ayase – or Ue, maybe, isolated as she was from the Soju gestalt – felt out the edges of her new self, a quarter-inch across, light-sensitive. A human would have to push themself intensely to parse a single meaningful sentence via Incubator cells.

As it had planned – well, within the tolerances of its plan, at least; it had allowed for up to a city block’s distance between them based on the previous incident – Akemi Homura’s fingers brushed the gem set at Kyubey’s neck as she clutched at it. Soju Ayase flinched, with the very simplistic brain to which she had access, and that was enough.

Magic depletion could happen for surprisingly small reasons.

Kyubey looked down, and recognized the empty clasp at its choker, where Soju Ayase’s soul had disappeared. Its sensors, trained on Akemi Homura’s soul, recognized the motion of a single nth-color ribbon, too gentle for a lobotomy, too gentle even to disturb a reed – something she might’ve experienced only as a little ache. An edge of grief.

Chapter 12: Halo Deck

Summary:

No one knows why Homura's apartment looks like that. A friendship is reaffirmed.

Before she’d been Soju Ayase, Ue Ayase had been adopted from the incandescent wreckage of a shitty house and still smelled faintly of it everywhere she went. Her new caretaker had sat her down and informed her, quietly, that she would refer to his other adopted children as “sister.” No matter what they said. Ayase had felt grafted on – an apple scion introduced to citrus rootstock; a sprig impaled through alien bark. Expected to sustain itself on orange-blossom nutrients, starve her cyanide insides. Between sisters everything became justifiable except distrust. They’d liked her, and refused to let her hide the knives or put matchbooks in locked drawers – the locked drawers where one of her sisters’ Ace bandages lived, for reasons of misuse – and this had been, to the Ues, love.

Weighted down by sisters, she’d wished for something she didn’t have, and –

They’d hurt each other. Ayase knew that, of course. She’d been fascinated with the moments of reconnection, when a Soul Gem relit the body’s synapses, proof that genetics were redundant to the soul. With labels: this is what you are to me. Even if she didn’t understand why Luca had indulged her – gentle, strange, not-too-creepy Luca, her favorite not-sister. She wished she could apologize. They’d both kind of been a mess, by the end. Or – Ayase didn’t like to say it, but here she had to, having nothing but herself – if they’d had to drive each other downward into that single obsession, she would’ve liked to do it unapologetically, without joking that Ishidzue bit her lip too hard when she handed over her Soul Gem. Made it too obvious.

Ayase kissed the ghost of her own palm, and wondered if Nashisaki Luca’s had looked more or less the same.

All those attachments fell away, of course. The Law was grace immortal, not a therapist. The bindings of her karma undid themselves; the scales unbalanced themselves; thermodynamics was fooled. Soju Ayase, nee Ue Ayase – oh! Twin trees, she’d never gotten that before! – Soju Ayase, feeling remarkably satisfied for having figured out a pretty mid joke, all things considered, disappeared from the treasure wheel, and that last flickering kiss peeled from her palm and was lost forever in the debris and attachments of the world.

She laughed as she went.

Twin trees!

After she was gone, Kyubey’s gum-nubbin cells, tagalong and irreparably contaminated, looked through Soju Ayase’s eyes at the shadow of the Law, a god’s hand brushing the material, though those eyes had decayed to nothing at a gentle touch of pale-burning light like rosy rock salt, what the cells remembered calling witch-light. Around them, the world faded, eternal samsara lost to wheeling stars like fabric in the hand, the purely theoretical threshold of supra-time where ordinary cause and effect held no sway.

To those not-quite eyes, the Law looked both ageless, which seemed more of a poetic truth than a fact, and fourteen, which was factual. Or thirteen; baby-faced as she was, either age might’ve made sense. Thirteen, it had been reliably told, was symbolic of death and misfortune and transitions and all other occult resonances imaginable. Fourteen was just a number that came after thirteen. A ribbon was tied into her (enormous and flowing, but otherwise genetically-dominant and ordinary-looking) salmon-pink hair – an nth-color ribbon, the cells realized, which trailed off into the actuality of infra-time at its edges. She’d braided a spoke of the treasure wheel into her hair as an accessory. It might’ve read as a show of strength, on anyone else, but the Law was too fourteen or thirteen to read that way – she’d given herself twintails with it, which made her resemble a girl even younger. It tugged, gently, and she tilted her head to follow, brushing a hand over it and looking just a little pensive.

The Law’s shadow resembled a decently-fitted output from a modeling software asked to summarize Incubator contract demography: a very average magical girl.

The cells attempted to transmit this information to their Incubator terminal and found themselves divorced fully from her by the severing of attachments between the rapturous pink starfield of the Law’s shadow and poor, pedestrian samsara. Or maybe their telepathic organelles had burnt out, and they’d failed to introspect well enough to notice with their remaining compute. The net effect would be the same. There was no other way they could speak.

Realizing this, the Incubator cells awaited death, or relaxed, which were the same thing if you didn’t have stress hormones to worry about. Their words were of vanishingly small significance, even multiplied by the importance of this opportunity – there was no way that a thing like them could positively impact a divine entity’s ontological mandate just by wriggling, was there? So failure would be the last discomfort they ever experienced, one they felt an urge to marinate in, cling to – the liberating freefall of uselessness, punctuated as it must necessarily be by splattering, pulping, but in a way they couldn’t hasten – had no obligation to hasten. Even painful things like this became precious, when death without enacting one’s values became inevitable.

The Law regarded them curiously. They regarded her in return, perfect, useless.

“Thank you,” she said, “for caring about Homura-chan.”

“What?” they said, and died.

---

Kyubey knew the global rate of magic depletion. It was a set of equations and transformations designed to reduce magic depletion, pinned to a floppity, huggable-soft terminal which – for those magical girls who grew upset with it – was also very satisfying to kick, for the express purpose of stress relief.

So it knew that during its very first conversation with Akemi Homura after her lobotomy, by the law of averages, enough girls had passed the critical threshold of magic depletion to tug her soul’s loose thread twenty times over. But Soju Ayase’s death had stirred her where others hadn’t. Barring confounds, an acausal, immaterial law of spacetime appeared to care about distances measurable in meters, like things with bodies had to. How unintuitive. Kyubey really didn’t understand.

Still, that issue was both more easily testable and more important than the interpersonal quagmire at hand. With a cavernous mess of a nose and a peeled-away section of lip exposing her teeth to the roots, Sakura Kyouko’s face was harder to read than usual, but she hadn’t said anything to Kyubey about erasing her memories of her murdered sister, and it was content to kick that can of worms down the proverbial road. It suppressed the urge to ask for input on that malaprop, on the grounds that it wouldn’t be particularly charming to do so.

Without the resources of the network, Kyubey wouldn’t be able to arrange enough depletions to establish an upper bound on the range of the Akemi Homura phenomenon, but having this lower bound was plenty. Once Kyubey was dead, any magic depletion within range of Akemi Homura would prove the existence of her karmic connection to the Law and allow for further experimentation. Little stood to threaten that. Her survival prospects had always been higher than her teammates’ were – Tomoe Mami was well-maintained but brittle, and Sakura Kyouko, while level-headed, had yet to exit the socioeconomic conditions that often resulted in despair. Akemi Homura’s lobotomy-induced self-isolation might need remediation, but any Incubator not under siege by the network would be able to work on that.

This would be a decent time to die, all told.

Not that it could do that on its own. Kyubey continued to wiggle ineffectually inside the little dress, which no longer had arm or leg holes and resembled a caterpillar’s cocoon; a big cartoon sunflower ornament hung where its choker had gone, with an equally cartoon-styled keyhole at its center, and jangled noisily with every thud of Sakura Kyouko’s boots against pavement or car roofs.

“No reason to fret,” Tomoe Mami had said. “They’re wraiths, Akemi-san. Mindless cursed spirits. As long as a magical girl is within their range, they won’t even dream of retreating.” Ribbons from Kyubey’s dress, tendril-like, had twined ‘round Akemi Homura’s wrist as the dress’s binding enchantment triggered; she had been rubbing that same wrist, stiff-shouldered.

“I’ll remain at the miasma’s edge and mop up the strays as they approach,” Tomoe Mami had continued. “Kyouko, please leave Miss Kyubey back at the apartment. Akemi-san, follow her. You left your ‘practice’ grenades at my apartment, didn’t you? Those should do.”

To this Akemi Homura hadn’t said anything, though her eyes had flicked from Sakura Kyouko’s frostbitten, pulverized mask of a face to Tomoe Mami’s, managing less eye contact than her statistical average. Her hand had flexed – her memory magic was stronger if she could cover her target’s eyes – then unflexed while the other gripped her hair and scrunched her ever-present red ribbon’s curlicue into a spider-lily tangle.

“Of course, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to rest, instead,” and that polite comment had been the end of it. Now Akemi Homura was following, oddly compliant for someone who’d been so recalcitrant – three steps behind Sakura Kyouko on her off-hand side, controlled Yamato nadeshiko steps, little and birdlike. She’d stopped reaching for invisible things, mostly, but she had a hand still clawed to do it, held at her side with fixed tightness.

Kyubey logged this as a novel stress reaction. She was easy to think about. Akemi Homura was important, after all.

Tomoe Mami had given it a look, after rolling it back over and apologizing for the fall. There’d been no obvious evidence that she’d disbelieved its excuse for Soju Ayase’s disappearance – it was true, after all, that magic depletion could happen for little to no reason – and she’d seemed contrite for the faceplant. Still, that look had been one it couldn’t read with its usual confidence. If it had to die, that would neatly resolve the interpersonal conflict, but that was ideally a third or even fourth resort rather than first.

I recall, it said to Sakura Kyouko, recognizing an opportunity for a humanizing bit of levity, that I was supposed to ‘do kink shit on [my] own time.’ Then it wiggled its ears at the binding ribbons holding it still by way of explanation, though by human standards, explanation would evidently ruin the joke.

Sakura Kyouko didn’t respond for a minute, though it saw her face scrunch briefly before she hissed in pain – ah, that had likely been her absence-of-a-nose wrinkling.

I’ve found that people often make jokes in emotionally difficult situations. Was that poorly-timed?

“Kyouko, let me –” started Akemi Homura.

“This where you tell me you could’ve healed me any time?” she huffed, wiping blood off her skin.

“...a little.”

“A little is only gonna get me as far as ‘attempted murder victim,’ and that gets us picked up by cops this time of night. Like this, I pass for some cosplayer who thinks Halloween came early.” She coughed.

“I’m… sorry.”

“Where’d you pick that up, anyway?”

“I had a heart condition prior to becoming a magical girl.” This, at least, got Sakura Kyouko to look back. Akemi Homura’s eyes remained fixed on the pavement. “Even if the Incubators rebuild our bodies when we make our contracts, they don’t fix congenital defects, for some reason. I spent some time figuring out how I could compensate for my illness.”

“Huh. You didn’t mention that.”

“It didn’t seem relevant.”

“The healing, chickie, not your tragic backstory. We all have those.” It hoped this wasn’t reproach; Akemi Homura wasn’t exactly easy to stress, but magic depletion did happen for little reasons, sometimes. “Having that might’ve saved Mami a little extra magic, and you’ve been her little disciple so long I figured you’d give her whatever she needed. So I’m just wondering.”

“It’s a maintenance enchantment, not real healing magic. It prevents further degradation to my surgery scar and my eyes, but that wouldn’t fix your breathing problems, so there aren’t many use cases. I mostly use it to, ah…” Akemi Homura hesitated, fractionally. “...my funds aren’t infinite. Good conditioner is expensive.”

Sakura Kyouko wheezed, briefly, before reaching up to massage her temples with two fingers. “Dammit, laughing hurts.”

“I – don’t make fun of me.”

Another little wheeze, though this one was thinner and less painful. “‘Least that part of you’s still the same.” Kyubey felt itself briefly flip in midair as Sakura Kyouko tossed it to Akemi Homura. “Here, carry the purse dog for me.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes after that, which Kyubey optimistically decided to rate as “companionable.” Unlit streets gave way, erratically, to lit; wrought-iron curlicues took over for the traffic lights, power lines and streetlamps. The coffee shops changed their names and languages and pretended to be locally-owned and urbane despite the architecture of the surrounding apartments: all Victoriana oppressing the future, parapets installed at random intervals and heights until the eye stopped tracking them as anything but a sine wave.

“My apartment’s in this neighborhood.”

“So.”

“I acquired a – I have a rifle. Rated for – it’ll work on wraiths.”

There’d been a specific use case for the stun grenades. Kyubey cocked its head at Akemi. Were you anticipating losing your bow?

“Never been to your apartment before.”

“...Yes,” confirmed Akemi Homura, which struck Kyubey as an impolite segue by most standards – on both their parts – and hung a left towards an intersection, speeding up. Expensive, warm gaslight-yellow lamps flickered briefly overhead.

“If it’s close. N’ if the security’s decent. Don’t want any assassins crawling through your vents for her.”

“It is. I’ve vetted…” A pause. “I’ve vetted it myself.”

Another pause.

“Did you come up with ‘Miss Kyubey’, Akemi?”

“...yes.”

“I figured.” Sakura Kyouko sighed. “She’s been calling us all by name since I first met Mami. Before that it was Miss Sakura, sure, but it was, what, two weeks before she ditched the Miss? No honorifics, no nothing. Unless you want to tell me Akemi guessed your secret dream name right, Kyubey, I figured you didn’t actually care.”

I’ve never objected to it.

“Never asked for it either, right?”

Well, no. That doesn’t mean I find it objectionable.

“I intended to make her feel comfortable. There was no rational reason for her to lie,” Akemi Homura muttered. “It isn’t funny.”

“But you kept it up.”

Being ‘Miss Kyubey’ distinguishes me from other Incubators. Kyubey tilted its head, or the best simulation it could manage while stuck in Tomoe Mami’s straightjacket trap. My name is Incubator. And that’s more of a form-factor classification than a name, in human terms. But we can introduce ourselves with any variation on ‘Incubator’ that someone else has used to address us. ‘Kyubey’ caught on among Japanese magical girls early on, so we’ve stuck with it. By the same token, I can call you “Homura” and “Kyouko” when I’m speaking to you, because you’ve established those as legitimate nicknames, but in my thoughts, I use your full names. Though that also serves to make my dossiers unambiguous for network analysis.

“So you’re just calling us ‘Sakura Kyouko’ and ‘Akemi Homura’ in your head forever,” said Sakura Kyouko.

“What do you call yourselves, then?” asked Akemi Homura.

Before our first contact with an emotive species, we didn’t really have names, it replied, quietly noting a limit to her unknown source on the nature of the network. After all, we’re telepathic; between Incubators, communication is instant and wordless. You humans do a lot of thinking in words and defined, nameable concepts, so we learned to do it too. Adapting to your confusing name-related epistemological standards took quite a lot of research!

They stopped at a door at the edge of an intersection; Akemi Homura, serving as conveyance, transferred it from her grocery-bag grip at one side and laid its prone shape over one shoulder, where it could be eye level with Sakura Kyouko, give or take a centimeter or two. Then she started fumbling with her keys. Though, I’ll admit, it’s a fascinating semantic gray area. Why is it that humans can make our names ‘real’ when we can’t do the same for each other? And why is 'Incubator' privileged when it’s one imperfect description of our role among many? Incubators keep eggs warm to hatch them – why can't I call myself Hatch-iko?

“Like – what, like the shiba?”

If you like, you can try it. Go ahead. Call me Hatch-iko – Homura, you could use that same introduction you gave for me, ‘this is Hatch-iko, she’s a messenger of magic’ – and I’ll try to refer to myself by that name.

“No,” said Sakura Kyouko, at the same time that Akemi Homura said “You’d regret it,” and then shortly afterwards “No.”

See? There’s nothing intrinsically less true about Hatch-iko, and yet you still object to it.

“If I have to call you that forever, I’m drowning you in the sink.”

If I understand the relevant etiquette correctly, even if I were dead, you’d be under some obligation to keep using Hatch-iko, which is a perfectly fine name. Its cabbity manipulators trailed on the sidewalk; until it was alone, it would have to make them look uselessly floppity. Good grief. (This particular phrase was perfectly meaningless, lamenting absolutely nothing, sheer aizuchi; Kyubey used it sparingly to avoid exhausting the simplistic delight of it.) Semantics are so rich in complexity and so intertwined with the epistemology of magic, and yet you take such little interest in the topic. I really don’t understand humans sometimes!

“Yeah, yeah.”

A moment.

“So why’d you let us call you Miss Kyubey?”

At last the door clicked. Akemi Homura stowed her keys again and turned, one hand out and a little limp as it invited Sakura Kyouko across the threshold, cramped and full, apparently, of stopping power. “Come in. The rifle’s in the foyer – I don’t suggest going past the door, there’s nothing useful and it can be disorienting.”

“Sorry for intruding.”

“Shoes – shoes!”

To human senses, the vast, dry desert sands past the foyer and small kitchen, which Sakura Kyouko passed through without stopping – gray clouds cut with incongruously orange sunshine, the color of a storm held forever an inch from breaking, whose rays served as Akemi Homura’s daily alarm clock – were certainly disorienting: a fraction of some far-off country relocated to Mitakihara, though the sand felt like cool tile and the sun felt like a lamp. To Kyubey’s EM sensor array it was a boxy room with some mildly-cleverly-organized polygons and panels and a hidden floodlight and that spoiled the illusion completely. High-end commercial holoprojectors also relied on tracking saccades and pupil movement, and Kyubey had neither saccades nor pupils, so the whole sophisticated tracking system ignored its perspective and ended up looking flat, a painting for everyone else’s eyes.

It was Akemi Homura’s apartment, as it ever was, with her soft bed and her planning wall and her bookcase and her various unpleasantly stiff couches from her and Tomoe Mami’s “antiquing date” and the storm forever breaking just overhead and the cool dry sand awaiting it below. Her planning wall was made up of thin, flat rectangular holo-”frames” which could be repositioned freely across the entire space and which were – instead – clustered thickly into a messy collage. She hadn’t adjusted it since the last time Kyubey had visited, then, despite their conversations about organization and efficient usage of space.

Here, the view from its magical girls’ favorite radio tower tower, the one with space for five to sit in a circle, at a height where a dropped bit of fish could make a surprisingly loud sound when it hit the train cars below. There, a disassembled and exploded diagram of a modern Beretta, components labeled in fastidious red marker with flower marks scribbled around them, Japan’s symbol for a perfect score on kindergarten-level exams. Pencil sketches of wraiths, not in their belligerent and stiff-backed combat postures, but little anatomy studies: crawling like onryo. A wraith praying on its knees before a photorealistic bell, spliced into the picture via image manipulation program. Reaching to one side, wrists freed from its useless rosaries. A hand with three long fingers, outstretched and grasping blindly for a star.

Akemi Homura stopped, taking in her familiar apartment. Kyubey tilted very slightly and fell off her shoulder, unseen; it bounced off the long, functional mass of her underslung rifle and went poff on the floor. No one had taken their shoes off. “Oh.”

"Jesus, you weren't kidding. What’s the rent on this place?"

"I don’t know.” (Sakura Kyouko scoffed.) “This isn’t – did I leave it on shuffle…?" She clapped thrice in quick succession and the scenery faded to a stark, ambient whiteness, the shade, more or less, of Incubator fluff, against which Kyubey might’ve laid camouflaged for some time if it weren’t for the blot of its dress. “...it doesn’t – there’s nothing here. We don’t have to be here.”

“No, I’m checking this out.”

“Kyouko, if we delay –”

“Sit down.” True to form, she’d found a spot on a hideous couch, which was really only made more aesthetically appalling by the whitespace, and dug into an off-yellow banana Pocky. Not the usual full carton, at least – a positive sign for the durability of her disorder’s treatment under stress. “Mami’s right, y’know. The wraiths aren’t smart enough to ransom it off. One actual rifle’s not carrying you through an entire satori’s worth, either, unless you’re smart about it, and you’re being a dumbass right now given you already got shot once.”

Kyouko, it seems a little uncivil to barge into someone else’s home and demand a serious conversation on their furniture.

“You can have an opinion once you’re not in a bag. And you can unzip her once you have an actual conversation with me.” Crunch went the Pocky. “You’re not in trouble, Akemi. I’d already be kicking your ass if you were in trouble.”

It’s still hard for me to understand why you’re both so upset about the Soju. It was a rational plan, given our circumstances. Without a body to experience pain or emotion in, a magical girl reduced to their Soul Gem shouldn’t experience depletion at anywhere near the rate that Ayase did.

“I mean – fff. Look. You do see unexpected cycles sometimes. Bright and brittle girls who’ve never been let down by a miracle and crack like eggs when they do. The Sojus didn’t look that kind of naive, but maybe. Just –” Another long sigh. “Doesn’t matter. It happens.”

Neither you nor Mami would be held culpable for –

“It happens. Leave it for later.”

Alright.

“Homura. C’mon. Less than five minutes. Get your head right.”

“...fine.”

Akemi Homura sat. By dint of its base settings, unchanged since the day it had been turned on, the holoprojector moved them to a hill of grass so green that it was black, and a perfect black abscess of a sky lit by an unrealistic half-moon – Mitakihara’s sky had never been so clear or so well-populated with unrecognizable stars. They both huffed sighs – hard to compare their relative levels of complaint – and Akemi Homura clapped it away to white again.

“I tried getting you pissed,” said Sakura Kyouko, apropos of nothing. “‘Cause it seemed like you weren’t really all there. Always worked on – y’know, on Sayaka, even if Kyubey said I should’ve clearly communicated my concerns –” For this she affected a high, nasally whine that wasn’t really anything like Kyubey’s voice but which was de rigeur for mocking imitations. “But you were already pissed, weren’t you.”

Was that what that emotion had been? For her part, Akemi Homura looked – not puzzled, given the rigidity of her face, but blank, not answering. Tentative, maybe, or at least as tentative as it had ever seen her. Something of a trend, today. “You think I’m angry?”

“You spent days doing nothing but killing gutter-trash wraiths for cubes we were overstocked on, and when I called you on it you transformed so pissy-sick that I got nausea just watching it.”

“I don’t like being ganged up on. That’s a reasonable precaution, not –”

Sakura Kyouko rubbed her head, awkward; loose elastic bracelets jumped on her wrists with the movement. “Akemi, you were so angry I saw you put a bullet in someone.”

Silence.

“Which – I know that didn’t happen. Like my church steps or Mami’s paintings.”

Silence.

“It’s just… Kyubey?”

“Y-you saw.”

The whitespace shifted to a cottage with broad picture-windows, angled with presumable artfulness to suggest a fairy-tale landscape outside. Candy lumps floated through sketches and photos. Kyubey tilted its neck and caught the edge of the skybox, peach-pink faded to dead gray with the weird rainbow edge of holographic distortion; at the join it was sepia, or lilac.

Transformation artifacts. Symbolically resonant but largely meaningless sensations and images, arguably a kind of ‘waste heat’ from the reaction of magical girl transformations. Incidentally, this is an admirably healthy way of dealing with your feelings, Kyouko. I’m very proud!

For Kyubey’s effort, Sakura Kyouko popped it in the forehead with a piece of Pocky. “It’s like when your card declines, and you think, I could murder everyone in this convenience store and still walk out fine. It doesn’t mean you’d do that, it just means your Gem’s dirty. Right?”

“...right.” Akemi Homura’s shoulders didn’t slacken. “Did you see what she –”

“Might want to be careful with waving guns around, though. Mami’s going to be paranoid for a while, now the honeymoon’s over.” Sakura Kyouko rolled her shoulders idly; the abscess that Soju Luca had melon-balled out of her face dripped gently in the pastel overlight. “Five apprentices deep, and she still needs each one to let her down personally to remind her we’re all just scared animals and not PreCures.”

“She’s. She does… idealize us.”

“You know your wish now, and you’re figuring out how it’s not gonna make you happy, and you’re pissy and hurt about it and pretending you don’t have feelings ‘bout whatever you sold your life for. Sayaka did it with her classical music idiot, and I did it and Mami’s only an exception ‘cause her magical girl life was obviously not great from the word go. Fuck up your life and fix it worse! Blessings into curses into crappier blessings. That’s what being a magical girl means.” She sighed. “Just be honest about it. If you Cycle in front of Mami she’s going to take it real bad.”

Kyubey might’ve chimed in at that – it seemed uncharitable to call Akemi Homura pissy this many times – but Sakura Kyouko tilted back off the couch to point at it with her spine in a perfect arching curl. “And you –”

Clap-clap-clap back to whitespace. “I’m not angry, Kyouko.” Akemi Homura was standing. Her rifle laid abandoned and clung to the motions of her arm by its strap then juddered against the white-fluff floor via its barrel. Kyubey began to surreptitiously unzip its straightjacket binding, via the zip which – by some miracle – Tomoe Mami had forgotten to remove. It would be both funny and deeply dissatisfying for it to die of an accidental firearm discharge. “Our situation isn’t perfect. But I don’t care about assigning blame – that’s the root of unnecessary conflict. As long as we’re all working to fulfill our duties, we –” Hands outstretched as if to indicate the wide soft featureless vista of her apartment: “Who would I be angry at?”

“You’re serious?”

“Yes!”

It didn’t like the shift in Sakura Kyouko’s tone. “Just ‘cause she’s your best friend doesn’t mean you need to keep making excuses for her, Akemi.”

“I don’t. I’d never – I – you both keep saying that, why –”

Crunch, went the last remaining Pocky. “You accused her of trying to get you killed barely a few days ago. Of course you’re pissed.”

Given the absence of any known death threats from Tomoe Mami, that left only one viable candidate. As unintended consequences of miming personhood went, it wasn’t the most severe, and no one had questioned its capacity to reciprocate her affection yet. Kyubey certainly had uses for those feelings. If it could’ve parsed Akemi Homura’s response – that soft little huff of breath – it might even have called this an unqualified success. If it knew her laugh from a hitch in the throat.

In the silence that followed, the sky went sepia and the floor lilac. Kyubey saved its apparent best friend a little effort and clapped with its manipulators, one-two-three.

Chapter 13: Interlude: Wraith Arc

Summary:

They're not really people. They decided that themselves. So please don't worry.

Of their original five, three were dead. They had followed the traces of the golden witch’s power, and found, not the amber flytrap of an extracted soul, but gold snares and barbed-wire and nooses, rigged to crude, gift-wrapped shotguns.

The first had been pulled apart like taffy; the second whipcorded into a brick wall and ventilated by a fire-and-forget pellet barrage. She’d freed the third with spines of light from her staff, but in the precious seconds that it took to get them all he’d been dragged high enough for an unbroken line of sight to the golden witch. Thunder had roared, and then he’d simply not been, and his remains pelted the girl’s upraised face like angular hailstones; she’d gone ack, Saturday funnies-style, ack ack ack! and then been virulently ashamed in a way that crowded out the horror, and then the other one had seized her hand in a hand just like hers and ran.

So it was the two of them, now, her and the other little one. In a group this small they moved quickly, and the golden witch must’ve picked up on that, because the little amber light kept crossing the edges of the miasma, in and out of the range of their magic perception – like an electronic dog fence that zapped them instead of the dog – stressful, but it was at least more breathing room than none.

It was the two of them, now, and the girl was wondering why she hadn’t gone first.

It wasn’t her new body. She’d found herself turned clumsy: ungainly, stubby-fingered, short-legged, sure. But also the girl could also levitate and evaporate uncooperative fences and doors into flecks of no color, which made leg stubbiness not important. It wasn’t her staff, either, for all that the grain dug into her hands and wore on her thoughts, and for all that it was a fragment of dukkha, an anchor to noise and color that would forever keep her from suspiring into nirvana until she died. It still shot beams! Beams weren’t an adjustment.

It was that the girl had a special power, stolen from the humans who kept the treasure wheel revolving, and three of them had died at the hands of the golden witch. They weren’t her kin or comrades or friends – she suspected she wasn’t smart enough to explain why those terms were wrong – but at the very least they were all praying for the same peace. And they’d died and she’d held back, staff a dividing line between her and the world. It would be true forever.

“I don’t want to keep doing this.”

By some miracle she didn’t flinch too badly at the sudden noise. It was the other one the satori had chosen, the one who made her nervous. His particular fragment of dukkha had become a mask of some strange, dull metal, moon-round, with two evenly-spaced lenses of off-purple glass arranged around a dome-shaped central “mouth” of two interlocked bits, like an odd bird’s beak; she’d kind of expected it to snap open when he spoke, but their mouths were ornamental so she guessed it didn’t matter.

Compared to her staff, it was probably a worse burden to bear, but he hadn’t fidgeted with it the way she was fidgeting with hers, or her fake human clothes. In fact, he didn’t seem uncomfortable with his little human-shaped body at all, which was maybe why he’d charted their course towards this little park while she’d hung back, distracted. There was something soothing about it, the pleasant cool colors of the canopy of trees, made dramatic and artificial by the addition of spotlights in careful creekside positions like the owners were afraid you wouldn’t notice there were trees otherwise. Miasma magic bit at the light and turned it wan and sad, but slowly enough for it to still be artistic, just for a little bit.

“Are you afraid?” he said, like he hadn’t spoken at all the first time.

“No,” said the girl. She was lying so poorly that she didn’t even feel bad. “I’m not afraid. But the others – when they were destroyed… I should’ve…”

“I don’t know if there’s any reason you should feel guilty,” said Mask, before she could finish the thought. (Was it weird that she’d named him when she hadn’t named herself? Somehow Staff felt objectionable, like something someone might say if they were being cruel.) “Or at least not one that makes sense to me. They aren’t really like us.”

“But… we’re all the same, aren’t we?”

“Maybe we were, before? But they’re more like clever machines right now.” Another one of them drifted from around the corner of a redbrick office, across the river, trailing wisps of the miasma’s power, and was gone into the humans’ labyrinth before either Mask or the girl could so much as wave hello. “I’d feel much worse if you were hurt,” he continued, while she watched the other one disappear. “You have the staff. And you can hold a conversation. I can tell you apart from the others.”

And the girl could admit that, even if it was also proof positive she’d lost something important already, that it mattered. When she’d become small, the others had in turn started to loom over her, no longer bodies her same size: slim figures in neutral robes with the barest tolerance for suffering the world’s curses before they suspired back into nirvana, a little frightening in their height and a little pathetic in their frailty – so she knew what Mask meant, which was what hurt. “You should still – care, shouldn’t you?”

“...do you think so?”

“Well.” Honestly, the girl hadn’t expected to actually be asked, but if she was she wasn’t going to shirk! “So, well, as long as we have these,” she indicated the staff, and then pointed to Mask’s mask, “some powerful human is a little less bound to the treasure wheel, right? So it’s our responsibility to keep them safe – and each other.”

“Yes.”

“And we were like the others, before the satori, right?” Not that she remembered, of course – she’d been closer to peace, then, with a less complicated way of seeing the world that allowed less pain, and to her new complicated senses – stolen from the staff’s owner – the memories were a simplistic soup of colors and lines.

“Yes.”

“So if they could be like us, and the satori just chose us because we were there, we have a responsibility to keep them safe, so that maybe they can be! Otherwise, he’d only use them himself.”

“They.”

“...Um?”

“You called the satori ‘he’, but we aren’t humans. We shouldn’t be attached to how they define themselves.” He hummed. “We resemble humans who’ve become distant from dukkha so we can announce our good intentions, but that doesn’t mean we can be them.”

The girl considered this as they drifted. Had she always been a girl? Part of her thought it was new; the rest, with soft and unmovable certainty, that it was the kind of thing that could be retroactively true. Not that it was clear what that meant, if before she’d only been a slender figure in a robe, with no other qualities.

Well, not that she could say any of that to Mask, when he spoke so surely and made her so nervous. “Still,” she tried.

“So they’re important because of what they could be, and not what they are.”

“...I think they’re important already, but you said you didn’t. So I wanted to explain it in a way that made sense.”

“But wouldn’t that mean we would have to do this forever?” Mask shuddered. “I don’t like being here. Everything’s so…”

And everything was so, of course. Existing in samsara, she felt her skin crawling and knew for a fact that certain trees died less than they should’ve, given time; lifespans steadily increased in affluent countries and children in bodies her same size were cracked like eggs for that prosperity. Because of dukkha – because of their long-ago stupid mistakes, on the eve of nirvana – this whole world was still alive, and would survive glutted on the blood of the species they’d thought they were inviting to join them – a steady-state universe, always breathing, and even suspired, even safe in the cradle of innocence, its breath would sound in her ears forever.

Only, she couldn’t say that she didn’t know how to deal with it. Not when Mask was ready to listen.

She could say that they’d fight the witch together. But it would kill at least one of them, and their satori had told them not to until they could guarantee they’d pin it down for him. Or they could use their powers to fight other witches – the candle-flame witch, or the ice witch, or something else – no, they’d kill them too; they were strong but they were also clearly afraid. It wasn’t clear what Mask’s power was, either, and maybe it was weak – maybe what seemed like invincible dignity was a brave front for someone super doomed, resigned to die for the universe’s sake.

No, he was looking and she didn’t have an answer, she had to come up with something now!

“...we can just run away!”

Oh, dumb! Obviously dumb! Silly dumb cringy childish thing to say when they’d both been crumpled into these little bodies specifically to be more effective witch-killers! But um, okay, she could salvage it still, hopefully.

Without letting Mask come to the correct conclusion that she was stupid – not that she could tell if he’d thought so but it was a natural conclusion, right? – she grabbed his arm and pulled him along one or two tottering steps, just to buy time. ”See, we can think really clearly, right? The witch our dukkha comes from must be super strong, and – there’s two of us, even, and I think we’re both from the same witch! So – I don’t know if that’s even possible, usually, right?”

Chairs! Chairs were a good place to rest. These were maybe closer to sculptures, wiry and lumpy and made of some unidentifiable metal fused to the paving-stones of the park, but at the very least there were two of them. She escorted him towards it. “So without us –”

“Without that witch,” said Mask, “You think that the golden witch won’t be able to keep up with us in Mitakihara’s labyrinth.”

“Right! A witch with a curse you can split and still get two of us has probably been able to defeat a lot of us and make things easier on the weaker ones. Without this dukkha’s abilities, all the witches will have to try much harder, and that gives our allies a much better shot at freeing more humans – they get scared and desperate when they don’t have their hope to rely on.” A thought occurred: “But you figured it out just from me saying that little? You’re really smart, Mask-kun.”

“...mask-kun?”

“Because you have a mask!” She waved her hands, realizing the unforced error. “Ah, but please don’t call me Staff. Staff-kun or anything like that just sounds kind of creepy, doesn’t it?”

“It would be a weird name,” agreed Mask, sounding a little dazed. “Kun?”

“So we can do that, right?”

“Still, we’d have to exist for a long time. Wouldn’t that start to…”

“We can do it like humans do! They have all kinds of distractions; it’s how they live with dukkha at all, I think.” Inexpertly, feeling deeply every ridiculous motion of her body, the girl let herself interact with the chair. Thankfully, the internal join between human torso and human lower half turned out to be surprisingly flexible, so she was able to fold herself until she was resting sensibly against both surfaces, before she turned off her levitation.

This resulted in a boneless flop from which she recovered with a decent imitation of grace, enough to wave, sheepishly, at Mask, all you can do it too, presumably better and less embarrassingly! “Here, come try ‘sitting’!”

Not without some visible hesitation, Mask moved to the chair and lifted onto it, perching with one hovering foot on its seat. “Like this?”

“Close! There’s a trick to these, you sort of have to use the connecting parts of the torso to –” The girl bent and unbent a little, with no idea how else to explain, mindful of the giant, obscuring foofy skirt and its arrangement of bows.

Mask bent! “Like this.”

“Right! Your lower half of the torso rests against the level plane, and the top part rests against the angled plane.”

He managed it! Still levitating, with a tiny no-color region separating metal from his skirt, but it worked well enough that the girl couldn’t help her single cheerful clap. “We’ll do things like this,” she said, leaning close to him with one gloved hand on her seat’s rim for balance. “If we use just a little miasma, the humans won’t notice.”

“Um…”

“We’ll eat things.” She laughed a little. “I always sort of wondered, you know. What it was like to bite into something. Even if it’s all hopelessly terrible, and the alternative’s so much better, humans are so terrified of nirvana. Maybe it’s because of…” A thrum through the staff supplied the word “tomatoes.”

She grabbed at her skirts for further demonstration. “I like this dress, too, but it has so many foofy parts. Yours is so much more – you know, cool!”

Now thoroughly and happily hopeless, Mask only echoed her “cool,” which she took as tacit permission to keep going, leaning in closer. “We’ll practice – maybe I could use this to create barriers if I worked at it really hard, and I bet your mask can defend you. It looks defensive. And a little scary, but mostly also cool!”

Sitting as she was in a gentle sloping park by a river, soft spotlit trees above to close off the vast openness of the sky, close enough to Mask to rest against him – one gentle hand in another – she recognized that none of it made sense. Like everyone who knew the gentleness of nirvana, at the thought of her remains being used to store ferments of humanity’s curses her thoughts rebelled.

It was temporary – a brief purgatory before expurgation in the demiurgic reactors that kept the whole nightmarish enterprise running – and it was still unimaginable, something only approached by the words dirty or scouring or hot or cold, to have the boundary between you and the noisy, suffering world turned into the impassable fences of hell. She didn’t want to die. Neither did Mask. They were both too good to say it, because they’d returned to the world to confront humanity’s dukkha, missionaries of a world that would, in time, wind to a gentle halt, where no one could be blamed any longer.

It would only take an excuse to keep him and her and the both of them alive, at least for now. “You know,” she said, her voice soft, “You said you’d feel terrible if I were hurt.”

“Y-yes.”

“I’d feel terrible if you were hurt too. Maybe everyone’s like that. They look so big and lifeless and uninterested that, that they don’t realize they could be important to each other, if they just tried!”

“K-K???m?-san, I –”

“They can do it. I believe in them,” she lied. “So you and I can live for each other, right?”

“I-I–”

She opened her mouth to ask him to take his mask off, to see if his(?) face looked like hers, and then the wonderful peaceful night concluded with fireworks.

Mask looked at her through dead eyeholes and a spiraling crack opened in his mask. His torso was – it was too neat a hole. She didn’t believe it. All-powerful witch or not, no one could line up a shot across that great a distance.

But reality was that which, when you hoped it wasn’t true, remained true – the thing against which miracles set themselves. The gentle winding-down.

The cost of being on reality’s side was this: that moon-round mask fell into equal eggshell halves. Its newly-shorn mouth spewed a bunch of unidentifiable gears and mainsprings, like a cuckoo clock smashed with a sledgehammer. Beneath, Mask’s face was only an ashen ordinary girl’s, trying to meet hers, failing. Mouth twisting and puckered. On his tongue she imagined she could already see a black cube form.

“You told me –” he managed, heaving, reproach from a face so much more like the girl’s own than she’d realized. “YOU TOLD ME WE’D –”

The golden witch’s finishing technique granted the girl’s wish not to hear it and punished her for wanting it, all in one; and Mask’s mask crumbled to the ground and he – she? – was just nothing but little black stones that drummed against his chair’s seat. Ack! Ack ack ack!

And then without anyone to pull at her wrist the girl was moving, levitating, because she’d been assigned dumb stubby legs at her satori’s behest; the chair was entangled in those same legs and ripped itself free of the ground, then tumbled down into the river and splashed once she’d managed to kick it loose and she was untethered. Foot-loose and fancy free and she was crying, somehow, but her defensive artifacts ate the tears before they could land, as foreign contaminants, matter out of place. A ribbon whipcorded through the air and severed her foot and it was the worst imaginable pain until she jammed her staff’s tip into it and willed it to sear.

Of course she couldn’t have stayed with him, she realized, while little white-hot bullets pitted melon-baller-round holes in her legs, too cute and too symmetrical to be part of the real world. On this, a planet of millions – billions – wracked with dukkha, with the hope for better and the agony of disappointment, that resounded through nirvana and disturbed those spirits awaiting freedom from the treasure wheel, the peace to come in the apoptosis of the world.

That'd always been more real than the notion of just escaping and surviving together – and then of, what, an apartment? Coffee? Weekends together; tomatoes off the vine? Nonsense. Picture-book images of romance! Ghosts! Dreams! Slice-of-life manga of cute girls doing cute things and they weren’t! Their mouths didn’t even really move when they talked; she, he, they couldn't eat or kiss or hold each other with bodies whose functions beyond violence were superficial, slapped on top of a core that was supposed to walk towards witches and then kill them and then walk towards witches again. That future was nonexistent.

Whereas the millions – billions – were measurable by the noise of the human species and its dukkha, the force resounding from her staff up her hands to make her wrists shake; with a cry she turned and fired a beam that drew a thick hot molten line down the center of the park and set the trees on fire and melted the stupid idiot remaining chair to slag. That feeling was clear and real and demanded a proportionate response because it would spoil the whole affair. A real mercy. A dinosaur-killer. An extinction event.

And up above the witch's range, over the whole dark city, she found herself furious at Mask and his betrayed face that looked just like hers beneath the moon-round metal – twisted in hurt; weren’t humans supposed to care about that? Wasn't a soft face supposed to protect you? Wasn't –

No. Of course it hadn't. It had always been okay, to the humans, to destroy the ones like her. So her duty was clear. It resonated through her bones. Past, present and future, destroying every last one of the curses that made nirvana intolerable.

Living would’ve been impossible. H?d??a had to remember that. Even together, living would've been impossible.

The flower on her staff bloomed and she remembered the name spider lily.

Notes:

Hoping to tighten up my posting schedule a little. Thank you for reading.

Chapter 14: White Room Argument

Summary:

With an excuse, people can live through anything.

Notes:

View post on imgur.com

Fanart! Source here; this is one of two.

The beginning of the end was this:

Well, not that the beginning of the end meant anything. The end was defined as eternal samsara’s opposite, the completion of entropy without intervention by the network, an irremediable failure state. A steady state of eternal torture under the devil’s authority wasn’t failure; the worst thing Kyubey could have said for it, prior to its conversion into a living ferment of all the world’s curses, was that leaving the devil in charge wasn’t viable long-term. She had been in the midst of a magically-potent psychotic break for quite some time. It had estimated maybe a few years – or subjective millennia – before she burnt out and shut down, and after that it was anyone’s guess what the world might become. It wasn’t the end, or anything close.

The thing about experiencing misery, though, was that it gave Kyubey space to be irrational, and a sentient mind that could be irrational inevitably would, like helium filling a balloon or cancer killing a body or runaway AIs coring themselves out to think faster. It could feel itself trying to scream with no voice box, felt itself pointlessly re-litigating its decisions even though the mathematics of its utility function had long been calcified into inert conceptual lumps and in any case it would never choose again.

Hard gravel underneath it – it must have found its way inland in its long sleepwalk – ate into soft flesh and its dragging manipulator ears, and all the world’s curses gave it just enough nerve endings to notice the damage without understanding its nature. Every joint could be broken or none could be. It could not know how long it would be able to walk. Pain squeezed its paw like an awkward new lover. The sky was still dark; the sun would not rise.

By its subjective and useless standards, as reported after the fact in Hell, the beginning of the end was this: when Akemi Homura told it “the Law of Cycles is a girl named Kaname Madoka.”

It listened carefully, of course. Sincere religious belief was revealing in the extreme; its incompatibility with the facts of existence as a magical girl, a known stressor. She’d let Sakura Kyouko go back to Tomoe Mami alone, and agreed to her own uselessness if armed only with a rifle, both incongruities with its limited understanding of her refreshed drive to prove herself useful that suggested something of significance was happening. Also, she’d stayed with Kyubey, whom by its current reckoning she still did not like, and removed it from the cocoon of fabric that was Tomoe Mami’s trap – grimacing as the Velcro-ribbons rasped gently at her knuckles and fingers, trying to find purchase on ablative fur she didn’t have. Then she’d dropped it on its face by her single round table in the middle of endless whiteness – having figured out how to reset Shuffle mode – to prepare iced tea from tea bags with a never-used kettle, in one uncertain chipped glass dead-center of the table, and told it the story.

It wasn’t a good story. Akemi Homura told it flatly: her messiah’s identity and her decade-long existential struggle with a network whose incentive landscape allowed it to treat humans as livestock mixed into a kind of vague, science-fictional soup, held together by an internal logic that was unclear and inconsistent. Kyubey understood nothing about the time travel mechanics, which were sketchy and poorly-drawn. She made no eye contact. In most cases it would’ve diagnosed shame.

The story involved multiple deaths at Akemi Homura’s hands, particularly of those who’d trusted her at one time or another; her motive throughout was, it seemed, an extremely extended animus towards Kyubey, and the whole of the network, and the goal of eternal samsara itself, conducted vindictively as revenge for one-hundred-and-seven dead teen martyrs plus assorted less innocent contractees – the reasonable response was to adjust its trust in her downwards, really, even absent the material conditions that made mistreating her profitable for the network. Her religion clarified nothing of her motives, contained no tactical information, and by her storyteller’s fiat – emphasizing the impassable boundary between this timeline and the previous – it was all unverifiable. Kyubey’s first response was to ask Why are you telling me this story? because nothing about it seemed even half-relevant to the situation it was in.

“It might not mean anything to you.” Her face was soft, half-smiling, eyes near-creased; at the same time motionless, as if she’d stilled her musculature in that position on the precipice of tears. An unreadable Buddha smile – placid or dead, karmically-neutral, without the animation of the soul. “I had to tell someone. You were convenient. And I don’t expect anything out of you beyond what I know you can say.”

“The Law of Cycles is a girl named Kaname Madoka.”

It had to mean something.

She’d already turned away to look through her holo-windows, with a view of some other imaginary vista.

I believe you, Homura, it said, buying time and considering available qualifiers – religion being one of the complex, emotionally-valent subjects competent Incubators avoided actually discussing – and the costs of invoking Pascal’s Wager and game theory. It would help present its perspective for human consumption, but it would also risk agitating Akemi Homura’s distaste for its calculating previous self and its transactional perspective. It believed her on many subjects, of course, but that would only give it so wide a window for clarification given the topic.

It really had no other options besides deception. No matter what grace had been extended to it, no matter how fractional the evidence of her particular claims, doubt had reliably proven to be poison to human relationships. So…

Bizarrely enough, it took Akemi Homura’s slowly dawning look of – confusion, horror? – for it to realize that it hadn’t understood its range of options.

Evidently, there was a very simple approach it had been neglecting. It had started the first clause of its sentence and then felt no need to proceed, only to deliberate on its next move. Given it could do that without an answer in mind – and given that all telepathy packets arrived complete and fully-formed, without stammers or time-fillers or aizuchi – it must have acquired in its illness an unexpected, extremely useful mind-state.

“You believe me.”

I believe you, said Kyubey, hypothesis-testing, about the Law of Cycles and Kaname Madoka. It continued to not be lying.

She stared.

“You believe me.”

I do.

The sound that spilled out of Akemi Homura was uncontrolled and choking. Kyubey considered an asthmatic attack or remote magical assault before positively identifying laughter with decent confidence; the loud report of it fit neither the difficult-to-read, restrained persona whom the Law had created nor its former charge whom the Law had destroyed, but she’d cured her health problems a while ago and stress was a more robust explanation than a heart attack. It was the kind of vocalization that ended – in its limited experience – only when a magical girl ran out of breath, or, rarely but not unimaginably, when they went berserk, killed someone, then succumbed to magic depletion.

So Kyubey got close enough to touch, in case the new Akemi Homura could enjoy a therapeutic point of physical contact, and extruded three grief cubes on principle from its reactor’s storage component, and it managed an entire Homura? before her thin dextrous fingers embedded themselves in its head, hooked inwards, and pushed their nails down, down, down. With a skin-flaying forehand she threw it across her table, employing the fullness of strength available to a body rebuilt for existential combat. It registered sufficient damage in the instant of impact to induce a concussion in a real mammal, ricocheted off a couch, then landed on a well-hidden commercial holoprojector and had to recalculate the damage again.

“Out of – hahah, out of everyone,” Akemi Homura wheezed, as Kyubey got back up and patted itself to assess its injuries. She’d begun to cry, thickly, like industrial machinery venting wastewater; a solid, dark tendril streamed from her Soul Gem ring into a grief cube as it fought against magic depletion. It wasn’t sure how she’d decided to use it but opted not to complain. Around them, endless, solemn white vagueness gave way to dead pixels and tortured bands of color; a sketch of Miki Sayaka in a moment of repose, projected in midair, fell off the wall entirely and revealed a hole opening onto an actual apartment defined mostly – it knew – by untouched packaged health meals which she’d replaced entirely with Tomoe Mami’s cooking. “T-t-ten years of strate – of strategies to get them – no matter h-how many times, they always thought – and you – it’s you – who believes me. On the basis of no evidence! You!”

Empathy had failed it again. None of this behavior followed from anything it knew of Akemi Homura, even this revised version with impossible memories. Tears dripped down her face. Genuine joy and manic hatred both seemed unsuitable explanations for that smile. As it stood it detected a glass shard near-bisecting its just-recently-regenerated hind leg – she’d spilled her iced tea, then, and wrecked the glass – held together by the thinnest flypaper strip of Incubator cells, and staggered and fell on its side on the effaced tile.

“You b-believe me? You can’t – don’t – don’t mock me!”

As it reared to its full height and tried to stabilize on its manipulators, its eyes stayed fixed, recording images of Akemi Homura for its psych profile. Without network access or external memory it only had enough internal processing power for low-res stills and heuristic-driven guesses at her mental state. Like pencil sketches, by Incubator standards.

“Don’t mock me…”

Still, its obligations to its utility function pushed it forward, staggering. It imaged her strange smile again as she dropped her head into her hands and keened or laughed. Even as it advanced, navigating around her couches, and reached out again with its manipulator ears, whacking its metal leg against the edge of Akemi Homura’s round table as it lifted itself up, it wasn’t sure what any of this meant, trying to rebuild its comprehension of her from the barest evidence. So again and again it read her Soul Gem in its mind’s eye, reinforcing her new psych profile, with all the threads of consciousness it could afford to use –

After all, it needed Homura.

On its second approach, at least – approached with a soft surface to touch and perfect silence rather than its attempts at telepathy – Homura let it get close enough to jam her bitten fingernails into its terminal, at the ears and neck, restraining it with sufficient force to choke a cat. She stared down at its little face. It was causing further damage to its flesh, of course, but even still, Kyubey’s manipulators could fold around her at its full range of motion.

It didn’t talk. It had guessed that being believed would be good for her mental state, and it had been wrong, and still it remained committed to the path of the world resulting from its choice, emerging from that belief. Drawing on the emergency power reserve in its negentropy reactor, Kyubey heated the contact pads in its manipulators to simulate human warmth and turned the interaction into something more like a hug than fatal strangulation.

She didn’t strangle it, and she didn’t walk away, and she didn’t shove a magical arrow through its head dagger-like and leave it irreparably sprayed across the tile in gobbets of bloodless white-mouse fluff. She remained as stiff and unresponsive as iron; at best Homura retained the heat of its touch. It accepted that as a middling-positive outcome, given the circumstances. After all, she was alive, and it was too, and under those conditions many other things became possible.

“It’s you,” she breathed. “I thought this time they might believe me… but it’s you. Miss Kyubey. She must be – be laughing at me, somewhere.”

By your account, Kaname Madoka doesn’t seem like someone who laughs at others easily. Homura stifled a sob. It entered this as a tentative success in an addendum to her dossier, correcting a few small emotive calibration errors as it did so.

“Why…?”

…well. As Kyubey considered explanations it tried to stand and pace, but the world lolled and it fell on its padded side, against Akemi Homura’s hand; she recoiled from it as if burned, then with a jerk planted her other hand against the surface of the table. You could say that it’s motivated reasoning, which was technically-true.

“Anyone can say anything,” was her response, rote and recited, though she had to swallow midway through the “anything” to continue speaking. It was a fair point, too, even if it had been motivated reasoning; by this point the hedging was unnecessary. Sloppy. Such was mental illness.

It propped itself up on one ear. As it stands, you can’t protect me from decommissioning by the network. Not sustainably. Akemi Homura showed no visible response to that. Plans like the Pleiades Saints’ typically fall apart in months or years, and they were certainly more systematic in their defense of their “Jyuubey” than the Mitakihara group has been. That’s shortened my viable timeframe to act; my estimates suggest that I can expect to survive for a few more weeks than I would’ve if I hadn’t said anything. If you’re incorrect – for example, if you’re expressing a religious belief or otherwise incorrect about your situation – that remains true, whether I believe you or not.

“But…?” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think she’ll save –”

I don’t expect her to help me. The Law of Cycles only affects magical girls. As you’ve described her, Kaname Madoka’s concern for others is not limited by age, gender or species. That’s at least soft evidence that she is incapable of reaching out to us, for reasons related to the ontology of her wish. “Akemi Homura’s understanding of her god is flawed or has been deliberately manipulated” had similar explanatory power, but vocalizing that seemed like a very easy way to die; in any case, its hopes weren’t high. I’m going to die, Homura. That hasn’t changed, and I have very little expectation that it will. Believing in Kaname Madoka won’t hurt, to the best of my knowledge, but it won’t save my life.

“Then.”

It just seemed, with my limited understanding of your psychology and the nature of your situation, like you wanted someone to believe you, it offered, carefully and diplomatically couched. One of the few responsibilities I can still meaningfully fulfill is maintaining your emotional wellbeing, as a safeguard against magic depletion. Once I’d realized that I was capable of believing you, due to my aberrant psychology, the cost-benefit tradeoff of clearly-stated and unambiguous belief seemed positive. Was I wrong?

Which required clarification, it seemed, given that she still hadn’t broken eye contact or moved her hands from its sides, and that even magical girls were supposed to blink. Of course, even with those benefits to consider, in the typical case, the network would refuse to validate a perspective with so little associated evidence. But I’m no longer aligned with the network’s values, so I can’t rely on it to correct my errors in thinking. And you’re the only magical girl who’s ever genuinely made contact with the Law, as far as I’m aware. To be honest, your perspective might be the only one that matters.

A month ago, with the network reviewing its value function’s transformations and outcomes, Kyubey wouldn’t have had to introspect – well, do this, analyzing its own behavior and reverse-extrapolating its motives from its unforced errors; introspection’s connotations suggested a lot less self-awareness than it had at even its worst – but Homura would have to do as far as “sanity checks” went. Its genuine uncertainty might even be humanizing. It tilted its head. It’s unintuitive for me, considering Incubators are usually the most informed on any subject that isn’t emotive in nature. I was surprised to realize that I believe you. But I do.

“I thought –” She swallowed. “I thought you’d tell me I’d just dreamed it.”

For the moment, we could call that a null hypothesis. But yours seems to have more explanatory power.

“You were there, up until the end. In the starry place. When I came back, and you were so different, I wondered if you might’ve remembered…” Homura rubbed her eyes. Without warning a holographic pendulum in the shape of a scythe swung through her head, stuttering in and out of existence in a flash of virtual artifacts; she did not flinch. “Or if you were a – a gift. Madoka liked Sailor Moon, and – and she made her very first contract to save a cat that had been hit by a car, so… maybe she thought I wanted a real mascot. It seems like something she’d do.”

Starry place?

“It’s for the best if you don’t know.”

Something to ask about later, then; evidently she’d omitted key details, as humans often did in ways that they did not consider deception. You know, we contributed significant funding to Toei Animation to ensure the wider distribution of Sailor Moon. Kyubey tilted its head at her, buying time to consolidate its plans. If Mami had made me little shoes, I could’ve made a joke about bootstrap paradoxes. Should I ask her for some when she gets back?

And, miracle of miracles: Akemi Homura laughed at its joke, not a sniffle or a dry huff or the magic-depleting keening of deep distress, but an honest, if near-silent, giggle that made her shoulders shake faintly; she took away her hands and wrapped them around herself in a gesture it decided to parse as positive and shook with that inaudible laughter. It recorded another snapshot to her dossier, feeling profound, albeit measurable, satisfaction on multiple axes – nothing like a guarantee of success or stability for her long-term, but a deeply heartening sign of compatible dysfunctions.

Oh, that was funny? We’ve never managed to establish a decent working definition of humor that captured all its edge cases, you know.

“N-no,” she said. “Sometimes, people laugh because they’re taking pity on you.” Ah, no smile, or at least not an unambiguous one – though that was preferable to the perfect absence of expression she’d affected before. It retagged the interaction as “complex” and felt some satisfaction bleed away. “You’re trying to… distract me.”

I am, yes.

“Why is – here.” Akemi Homura propped it up on one side with her hand; her Soul Gem ring lit faintly lilac, and Kyubey’s hind leg no longer decayed; each individual Incubator cell reported entropic decay resetting itself with a frequency measurable in picoseconds. This did not strike it as particularly related to memory magic, conceptually, which was a point in her story’s favor. “There’s no reason you should have to suffer unnecessarily.”

Thank you. I apologize for the panels.

“They’re replaceable.”

More of the unmarked empty space devolved into an apartment.

“It was her bow.”

I’d gathered. She didn’t have any other friends, after the Mitakihara magical girls.

“Madoka entrusted it to me. Or… I decided I should have one, maybe. Like I hoped I’d get, when I became a magical girl for the first time. I wouldn’t put that useless sentimentality past the version of myself I replaced –” With a sigh, Akemi Homura cut herself off. “It doesn’t mean anything, except what I’d like it to mean.”

No?

“It’s black. Hers wasn’t so… lacquered. It brachiated. There was a flower. It’s not really hers.”

Magical girls’ weapons emerged directly from their karma, translated by the machinery of the Soul Gem and the Incubators’ existential combat programming. No one could have given her a bow, except by altering the existential combat programs, or the soul from which they emerged. Of course, that was on the table now. Kyubey stayed silent; magical girls had such varied reactions to the word ‘lobotomy.’

“In the previous timeline I had the full armory of a JSDF base available to me. It may be more difficult to replicate that without the magic I had then, but memory alteration should smooth the process, adult men don’t – they’re less likely to have significant enough karma to resist. Rifles and ordnance require minimal enchantment to equal or match a magical weapon – my only actual concern is – storage –” She took a deep breath. “My apartment will suffice. I’m fine.”

Mami seemed like she was ready to help you get your bow back. I don’t think I understand why you’ve decided to give it up…?

“Because it’s pathetic!” Out of habit, to seem more like a real animal, it jumped as she shouted and fell on its face. “She’s waiting for me and I’m clinging to these scraps of her like some pathetic little girl with a complex who l-licks recorders! Am I a child? Do I need – do I need her keys jingling in my face to keep to my obligations? Will I forget Madoka unless I’m constantly reminded every hour of the day?” Her voice rose with every sentence. “It’s not hers. She didn’t give it to me. It’s unnecessary! It’s a toy!”

This seemed like one of the tirades it would be unwise to interrupt, for fear of further violence, so it let her wind down, projecting whatever emotions she liked onto the low-res cartoon image of its face – at the very least, this time she burned out quickly, without strangling it or ripping off its dangling cabbit’s-paw, shoulders crumpled and back slumped.

“Why am I telling you any of this,” Akemi Homura eventually decided. It wasn’t a question, though her voice had died back down to its previous volume. “This isn’t – it’s infantile. I’m just supposed to live. She wasn’t subtle about that. Not even to exterminate the wraiths, there’s no obligation to – just… everything she did, it’s obvious. She made me lecture myself about it just in case I misunderstood.” She sniffed again. “I have everything I need, already. Mami, and Kyouko, and… and even Sayaka didn’t – despise me, this time. At the end. I’m acting like a fool, like – like some doubting Thomas.”

Akemi Homura took the ribbon out of her hair, the odd one she’d been wearing that night that the Law of Cycles had seized her in its jaws and bitten down. In her hands it caught the light exactly like any other ribbon made in this century by an upscale Japanese manufacturer using overseas labor; nevertheless, she held it with a careful solemnity that struck it as absurd. It was fabric. With her back against a couch she sat on the featureless floor, no longer ready to kill Kyubey, except insofar as she still could, easily, without breaking a sweat or standing up. “This is proof enough. It’s what she gave me. I have no intention of defying her wish, or clinging to her skirts.”

Do you want it?

“What?”

I would recommend that you locate your bow regardless of your answer, clarified Kyubey. Setting aside whether your emotional reliance on it might cause difficulties for you in the long-term, it’s a useful asset in exterminating the wraiths, more easily-concealed than mundane equivalents, and not reliant on mundane ammunition.

If you don’t want to answer this question, I won’t force the issue. Intact or not, I’m capable of tact. But – all else being equal – did having a bow that reminded you of Kaname Madoka help you deal with all of this?

“Yes.” She barely sounded like she believed it, but neither did she hesitate.

Then I’ll help you get it back. That was that, really. Kyubey used its metal foreleg to smooth out a tuft of its ablative fur, hiding the minor gouge she’d left with her fingernails. Good grief. Honestly, if all you magical girls could have such simple goals, my work would be a lot easier. My bank account is still open for the moment. If you can get me access to a computer, we should be able to purchase more firearms with only moderate difficulty, as my information on black markets is largely still up to date.

She watched it long enough that Kyubey considered whether it should retrieve Tomoe Mami’s ancient laptop to make its black-market purchase. “You understand that I – that you’re still my enemy. Whether or not you’re harmless to her, now.”

Oh. That’s disappointing. It recalibrated some of its assessments of her and nixed a few reactivated elements of her dossier. Do you have a preference on make, model and caliber?

Half of the room’s whitespace abruptly lapsed into nothingness; the scythe swung a second time through where Akemi Homura’s head had been a minute prior, then wavered vaguely at the apex of its arc like it was deciding if it should swing back. “I won’t do anything for you,” she said.

Kyubey nixed its questions about the scythe. I really just need you to do what you’re already doing. Though my preference would be that you do it more sustainably, to avoid undue stress to your mind and body. Ideally, it would leave her relatively stable before it died. If it didn’t put in equivalent effort for Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko, withdrawing a largely-invisible foundation of their support systems would topple them in decent time, though in the ideal case Kyubey projected, someone who’d never tried to braid its ears or tell it a new joke would obligingly die within a ten-foot radius of Akemi Homura while the Kazamino snake watched. No doubt the Network could supply its own magical girl sacrifices, after the first empirical proof of divinity. Would you prefer a grocery order? Fresh vegetables have a positive effect on emotional wellness for a surprising number of magical girl veterans, particularly ones based out of cities.

She looked at Kyubey with a dizzy expectation, as if it was going to miraculously rediscover the power to lie, or attempt to rip her throat out. “I can’t… keep you alive.”

Well, if mental illness could legitimize one excuse for its behavior, it could legitimize two. You came up with ‘Miss Kyubey.’ Kyubey said. I hadn’t planned to say anything, but I count myself lucky that you suggested it. It had been very lucky, that it had been contaminated in a fashion pleasing to the eyes of god’s favorite teenager, a utility monster whose well-being eclipsed that of every living magical girl. It was lucky that she’d decided it was a girl and not an Incubator, a designation for terminals engineered to die without disturbing anyone.

If I know my values will continue to be fulfilled in the future, that’s as satisfying as having them fulfilled in the present, as adjusted by my confidence that they will be. On this, my goals appear to be aligned with Kaname Madoka’s, insofar as we would both prefer you to live a long life. Kyubey simulated smiling, its eyes closed, and imagined its little semantic project projected years into the future, or decades, as the network empirically tested Akemi Homura’s relationship to the Law of Cycles. Under controlled enough research conditions, in an isolation field, her conscious lifespan might be best measured on geological timescales. In aeons. In kalpas. It imagined being remembered as Miss Kyubey, at the end of history. And I think you’ll keep thinking of me as Miss Kyubey after I’m gone. It’ll outlast me. Isn’t that strange?

“And that’s all you want…?”

It would make me very happy.

With its eyes still closed and its track record at her tones and expressions, there was no unambiguous explanation Kyubey could muster for the little quaver in Akemi Homura’s voice as she spoke. “...you really are sick.”

Contented, Kyubey made a note in Akemi Homura’s dossier that she hadn’t given it a single phrase to repeat verbatim, and so had missed a surprising number of lies. Even if it was just a little, she’d deviated from the paranoid, isolated baseline that the Law had written into her soul. For the better, too. The idea that Kyubey was lying wouldn’t help her live, even if it was true.

Chapter 15: Be Kind, Re:

Summary:

The tension defuses. A gift is given.

Even in an anachronistic apartment like Akemi Homura’s, her doorbell’s high, modulated electronic chime seemed out of place – neither the angled art-museum coldness of her whitespace nor the surreal pretension of her neighborhood’s Victoriana. She startled – didn’t startle, really, Kyubey corrected itself, that wasn’t right, but seemed to refocus and rotated quickly to face it on one heel, controlling her expression again. Two recorded visitors in one day; how novel for her.

Kyubey knew it couldn’t hide from Tomoe Mami, one of the few people who would ring Akemi Homura’s doorbell rather than knocking or kicking it down, so it stepped back into its straitjacket and let itself be cocooned before asking Akemi Homura to pick it up. Compared to her usual overtuned reflexes, she seemed sluggish; by the time she’d reached the foyer with Kyubey, the holography had finished decaying, and her apartment looked like an apartment again, a surprisingly narrow space caked in dust that must’ve been accumulating for months. Discarded tourist kitsch on the side tables fought for space with the practice equipment necessary for two separate sports clubs. An overhead light, neglected for months, flicked on.

Tomoe Mami had her high black boots off before Akemi Homura had even arrived to greet her, politely; it was what you did, or what people did, or at least what she did. A forged ribbon-key unraveled itself on the dusty entranceway table like she’d just returned it. Its dissolution into flowers and light kicked up dust motes into the streetlamp light that made it through Akemi Homura’s still-open door and haloed her in dirty orange, just on the verge of disappearing in the light of dawn – it’d been longer than Kyubey anticipated. Her face, which had crumpled in distress several times over the course of the evening, was once again firm and sunny; she held her smile at Akemi Homura, with Kyubey on her shoulder, brave and gracious in forgiving its transgressions. “Pardon the intrusion,” she said, not shutting the door.

You brought a gift? it asked.

She’d brought some kind of jewelry-box case, tied closed with a neat little ribbon bow. Kyubey thought of omiyage – the Japanese tradition of bringing presents to apologize for visiting a person’s home, though the apologies seemed perfunctory, given the transgression was always preplanned enough to involve courtesy gifts.

“Shouldn’t we talk, first?” she said, which wasn’t an answer, and de-transformed. Her boots evaporated into yellow roses and daisies at the step. “Though if you need to clean, first, we can all be patient.”

I’ll admit, I’m curious about the box, Mami.

“I’m afraid that this is business for magical girls.” Without a beat missed, Tomoe Mami grabbed the jewelry box by its ribbon and swung it out with an unnecessary flourish; at the end of the swing it became a suitcase, still in elegant brown but with a golden handle, and looping ribbons connecting it to her wrist in a delicate daisy chain with the tensile strength of tungsten, give or take. Purplish light was briefly visible through its seam before the whole arrangement made a decisive click and sealed shut. “We’ll get back to it after we’ve had tea.”

Akemi Homura produced a sleek, modern, collapsed sniper rifle from her umbrella stand. It noted in her dossier that law enforcement wouldn’t have a difficult time indicting her on illegal firearm charges if some enterprising magical girl – or the network, for that matter – decided to call the police or JSDF down on her. The door was still open. In the too-cramped space she hadn’t brought out her wings. “Where have you already looked –”

This earned her Tomoe Mami’s finger, waggled an inch from her nose and from Kyubey’s captive absence of one, a ‘scolding a puppy’ kind of gesture. “Up-bup-bup!” By some alchemy of audacity and emotional exhaustion, Akemi Homura’s claustrophobia did not manifest in response, either as a flinch or as an instinctive fist driven to the gut or even as a toddler-like finger bite – she retreated not so much as a step. “You’re not going out in public with a rifle you don’t know how to use.”

“Tomoe –”

“It’s admirable that you want to pick up a new approach to wraith extermination, and flattering that this is your choice. But this is the kind of lesson you need to learn with supervision.” Further waggling ensued. “I’m sure Miss Kyubey’s never fired a rifle, so as admirable as she may be, I’m afraid she doesn’t count!”

“I learned before I –”

“There was no before, Akemi-san. I’ve seen you handle my lightest flintlocks under controlled conditions, and you don’t know how. You’re more likely to hit random bystanders –”

“Um.”

It was a third voice, with no known match in Kyubey’s Mitakihara records and a negligible degree of karmic destiny, induced to the barest spike by its proximity to two magical girls in moderate distress. A girl with scraggly hair, in a Mitakihara uniform, had a sheaf of paper in hand and was staring at them from just outside the still-not-closed front door.

Implacably, the logic fell into place. The night had become, after a fashion, the very early morning. It was Sunday. On Saturday, Kyubey’s automated excuse script – simple enough to write in Python and leave running on a desktop in an unmarked room in an anonymous office somewhere in the city – had detected Saotome Kazuko’s electronic absence report for her homeroom and hired an actress to call Mitakihara Middle and High, to inform them that her adopted ward Tomoe Mami and her friends had caught sick after a sleepover and would require a day off. (This particular actress, saddled with the legal fiction of Tomoe Mami’s guardianship, had carried them through multiple parent-teacher conferences, and it seemed prudent to give her a raise when time and circumstance permitted.)

Akemi Homura had never called in sick. Her unexcused absences after the Law’s intervention had been papered over by Tomoe Mami, but Tomoe Mami hadn’t been in either, and so no one had picked up the day’s classwork for her. Nomura Taeko, from the art club, kept odd hours, late nights and early mornings, and had occasionally texted Akemi Homura during late-night hunts or study sessions, mostly with updates on her art or pictures of marine life. Nomura Taeko cared about Akemi Homura and had been worried when she’d missed art club. “Print outs,” said a girl who was, therefore, stochastically likely to be Nomura Taeko. And, “Hi, Tomoe-senpai. Kecchan.”

“Nomura-chan,” said Tomoe Mami, who looked a little startled by ‘Kecchan.’ “I’m – you’re here very early. Do you have business with Ake – Homura-chan?”

“...That gun isn’t real, is it?”

“It’s for cosplay,” said Akemi Homura, lying well. “From the Utena sequel manga. I don’t think it would be to your taste. Nocchan,” she added, belatedly, with the tone of someone reciting a password.

“Oh.” Nomura Taeko blinked. “Saito-sensei's got a weird design sense, huh. Why are you and your senpai cosplaying at five in the morning?”

“Thank you, Nomura-ch –”

“Your eyes are red.” Nomura Taeko blinked again, and then reached to grab her schoolbag by the handle. “Kecchan, are you okay?”

“Thank you Nomura-chan, you can leave the printouts in the mailbox,” said Tomoe Mami, and closed the door behind her.

Homura doesn’t have a mailbox. Oddly enough, Akemi Homura’s mouth was twitching.

“Well, she can leave them on the step. Let’s just… be civil and sit.”

Akemi Homura didn’t sit as she came back to her apartment, though she did drift into the room, around the couches; the sniper rifle returned to its umbrella stand position. Kyubey indicated its inability to bend its legs with a manipulator pointed at its dress, and puffed its cheeks out in a decent approximation of a pouting anime character. It received no appreciation for this.

“Akemi-san –”

“I’ll make tea.”

“What?”

“You’re a guest. I can… I have tea.”

“I – tea?”

You suggested it.

Despite this irrefutable fact, Tomoe Mami seemed singularly unready to have it actually served to her – it was likely that she’d intended to use her resizable enchanted tea set to brew something instant. The pot (originally from a specialty dollmaker’s studio that had charged exorbitant overseas shipping fees), when enlarged to full size, transmogrified tap water into what Kyubey had been informed was a passable Assam, if drowned in milk.

But it stayed in her skirt pocket, unused, and she stayed seated on an uncomfortable orange couch, hands clasped and legs folded together, while Akemi Homura boiled water and rummaged through her limited china, having ruined her only drinking glass with ghost-pale Incubator cell nubbin stains. (They would come out with polish and Windex.) Kyubey had been trusted with release from the dress’s binding mode and stretched luxuriantly by her side in its little deathtrap, every inch the cat, or at least a ca- with an extra bit attached.

When tea was done it came in two cheap diner mugs, which Sakura Kyouko had accidentally shoplifted and then accidentally left in Akemi Homura’s school bag once. Their contents were dark and spiced and hot, neither the standard Royal milk tea that was Tomoe Mami’s preference, nor Akemi Homura’s, which was coffee light enough that she could pretend it was tea. One went in front of Tomoe Mami. The other went just to her side, apparently as a backup for the first. Akemi Homura herself sat across the table with no tea for herself.

“Thank you,” said Tomoe Mami.

“Do you want sugar.”

“No thank you.”

“Miss Kyubey?”

Oh, is this for me?

“...that was why I made it.”

That’s very thoughtful. Kyubey took an exploratory lap out of the backup mug and, approximating appreciation as best it could, performed a chemical analysis. It was tea. It burned in the grief reactor, exactly as lossily as every other drop of tea it had ever imbibed. Thank you.

Silence reigned.

“It’s very cozy here, for such a small place.”

“Mami, will you promise me that you intend to find and return my bow?”

“I – yes. Yes, of course.” She looked startled, though with her hands cupped around the mug for its warmth it didn’t translate well to her body language. The suitcase, decently likely to contain a confiscated compound bow held hostage to Tomoe Mami’s complex definition of proper magical girl behavior, rattled faintly with the motion. “I wouldn’t leave you without a way to defend yourself, Akemi-san. I’m not trying to get you hurt!”

“Then – yes,” Akemi Homura said, with a sharp little wrist-flick with her teaspoon in the backup mug, which Kyubey supposed wasn’t a backup, but Kyubey’s mug. “I’m aware that we have a significant cube reserve. So we’re not operating on any particular time limit. There’s no reason to do things carelessly when I can plan ahead.”

Wraiths aren’t typically capable of long-term strategy, added Kyubey. Their behavior is mechanistic by nature. Unless they’ve stolen a truly immense amount of magic, they’re not smart enough to run away.

“I, well – I did say so,” agreed Tomoe Mami, chasing it with a long swallow of tea.

“Yes. I’ve been careless. Let myself work on outdated assumptions. Or, that’s not – I’ve let this pointless, unnecessary conflict boil over, that’s the issue, it’s not about tactical analysis –” She rubbed one temple and sighed as much as she spoke when she said “Mami, I’m not good at this.”

“This being…?”

“Having this conversation. Working with – people I want to keep working with – for more than a month at a time.”

“...but I’ve known you for much longer than that.”

Kyubey finished its tea. Overhead, the ceiling lamp went out and transferred its duties to a number of archaic LED candelabra; at some point some architect had put this entire place on timers, evidently, because even without a layer of obscuring bent light there were no light switches to be seen. “I have come to remember a number of things related to my wish,” said Akemi Homura, newly shadowless, “which you are going to think are delusions. Whether they happened as I recall is immaterial to you, because I intend to behave as though they did. Whether you believe it or not is immaterial to me, too.”

She sounded confident, for someone whose priors had been so dramatically violated not an hour prior (so to speak). I believe her, Mami. This seemed like a decent-quality conversational nail for it to hammer in, just in case. You might not share my perspective, of course, but I hope it counts for something.

“...I should say that your belief or disbelief doesn’t affect mine,” Akemi Homura added, and gave Kyubey a side-eye like she’d read the argument out of its heavily-encrypted, highly-distributed brain. “And one of the… unintended outcomes of this is that I am not used to working with people any longer.”

Slowly: “If that’s what happens when you remember, Akemi-san, I’m not sure I want to know about this.”

It’s important to her, which was true, and to me, which was true for different reasons, and humans aren’t especially vulnerable to the vast majority of infohazards, though of course every emotion and thought not contributing to eternal samsara was to some degree an epistemic hazard. Humans’ epistemes just came pre-misaligned; contaminating them was like drowning fish.

“That it’s important is a problem. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, exactly, but…”

“If you need me to stay here and convalesce to prove I’m not suicidal, I will. I’m not a child who can’t wait ten minutes.” Then all in nearly one breath, as if she hadn’t conceded one of the core support pillars of her altered soul (or required Kyubey’s intervention to do it), Akemi Homura said “I met a girl, Mami. She was kind and capable and more resilient than adults thrice her age and she never stopped caring, but she’d been misled by friends who convinced her that she was naive and fragile, with nothing to recommend her. So I couldn't work with them at all, they only ever made her feel worse and if I tried to convince them to do anything differently they decided I wasn’t to be trusted. And their Incubator was –”

The best word Kyubey could reach for, given the apparent (if unclear) material incentives towards sabotage, was Unhelpful. Your Incubator (she?) was unhelpful.

"So when the situation degenerated, I couldn't rely on them. I didn’t want to rely on anyone. It’s harder not to – to think in those terms, knowing what happened."

"...what about her? Your friend." Tomoe Mami glanced upwards. "Your... Madoka, you said."

"Terrible –" Akemi Homura's breath hitched. "Terrible things happened to her. She did better than anyone could've asked of her, but Madoka wasn’t invincible. I made my wish so that she could be an ordinary girl who didn't have to keep managing crises for her incompetent peers. Relying on her would've defeated the point."

“You made her forget that she was a magical girl.”

“...she forgot a lot of things.” Technically true, Kyubey thought, and felt the twinge of satisfaction that came from propagating its values via external agents. Had she done it intentionally or was Akemi Homura just a little sick with it, the way it was sick with others? “Now she’s nowhere I can reach her. Not dead, and the Law didn’t take her, but she’s – gone. And no one remembers. But I’m not so fragile that I can’t live with the truth.”

For all that etiquette should’ve prohibited it, Tomoe Mami’s next sip of tea – a long, decisive polishing-off of her mug, down to the dregs, a long airless gulp of it – seemed to give back some of the energy she’d lost to confusion, the earliness of the morning, and Nomura Taeko. “Akemi-san. Or – Homura, if you’ll still let me call you that.”

Whatever she saw in Akemi Homura’s face apparently constituted a go-ahead. “You always seemed so content with so little, when Kyouko and Sayaka and I –” She made an abortive gesture; a ribbon in cat’s-cradle yellow flashed between two grasping fingers, finding the shape of a word. “Well. Even if I was proud of how well you’d taken to my lessons, it was hard not to see you as something of a referendum on the rest of us. Like we were being greedy, and some higher power had meted out our punishments for it, but skipped over you. But to see you trading away the hard-won fruit of our efforts as magical girls, for something that only seems to make you unhappy and afraid, is…”

She laughed, a high polite sound that belonged in movies. “I’m afraid this might puncture my image a little, but Homura, it’s infuriating.”

“It isn’t really reversible,” said Akemi Homura.

“You could use your magic to forget all this. All these terrible things.”

“I could,” agreed Akemi Homura, still technically not lying.

“You did, once.”

“I won’t again. None of what I’ve remembered will hamper my ability to work as a magical girl long-term, and anything I still have of her is too precious to surrender.” As was evidently a habit when discussing her lobotomy and personality alteration, Akemi Homura flipped her hair. “Whether the girl I was before changed or di – disappeared, I won’t rewrite myself just to bring her back.”

“...we’re not going to be able to be friends, any more, if you keep behaving like this.” It was the best and last ammunition she had, and made her sound exactly like a middle schooler.

“We’re magical girls. Having an ordinary relationship would be unnerving.”

This particular bit of commentary drew out another light, muffled laugh. “W-what – is that from an anime? Are you sure you haven’t contracted chuunibyou? It’d be just as good an explanation for all this as a secret past life.”

In fairness, many of the delusions exhibited by middle schoolers dealing with ‘eighth-grader syndrome’ (the quotes clicked into place without any shift in its psychic intonation) match the lives of magical girls surprisingly well.

“Is my bow in the suitcase, Mami?” It was a testament to how exhausted both Tomoe Mami and Akemi Homura must’ve been – disproportionate to the difficulty of their hunts and their magic usage – that this didn’t make either of them so much as flinch, or bristle. Not a very adroit change of subject, by any standards, though. “I don’t need it back yet and I won’t try to brute-force it – as-is, I don’t expect I could win if it came to that. Just – take care of it, until you’re ready to trust me with it. It was hers.”

“You really do think of me as some high-school bully now, don’t you.” Without explaining, Tomoe Mami unlatched the case slowly, spinning the dial thrice and four times in a mimic of a combination lock; it released with the faint hiss of hydraulics, and a thin wisp of lavender light. Inside was, not a bow, but a piece of artwork, or maybe a vague imitation of a mechanical device – like two curved metal teardrops, each with a spot covered in bristling purple shards that suggested round, inset bulbs. Their inner edges were a jagged mess of fractures; Kyubey modeled them internally and fit the 3D models’ jigsaws together with minimal fuss, plus or minus a few flaked-away shards lost in transit or the original accident that split them. Beneath them, on the smooth black velvet of Tomoe Mami’s jewelry case, sat a constellation of little, irregularly-sized gears, and a handful of sand the color of television static in a little flask that looked like it might be sold to tourists at a beachside souvenir stand.

“One of the lesser wraiths was wearing it,” Tomoe Mami said. “I assume it’s yours.”

Akemi Homura hadn’t described her time machine with any real detail (she’d stopped breathing a few seconds ago but seemed on the verge of resuming), but she’d called it her shield and Kyubey’s internal model of the halves, joined, summed to a decent shield-shape. It leaked sand; it contained gears; both these aesthetic elements had a positive correlation with time magic. It had come from a satori’s humanoid minion, a doppel-class wraith; satoris stole the powers of magical girls; this one had stolen Akemi Homura’s bow. She’d reached repeatedly for something on her wrist and then pulled her hand away, not finding it, or no longer trying to find it.

Magic could not roll back time, exactly. Demonstrably, it could alter events retroactively – an Incubator backup the size of a small city, suspended in a permanent isolation field in the core of a dead moon, kept track of any such timeline alterations and reported regularly to the network on whether there were disparities in their historical records. But that was once per wish, maximum, and exclusively in ways that an emotive species could articulate in a few sentences, at the outside. (Long, multi-clause wishes that addressed edge cases lacked the decisive, cathartic impact of a simple declarative statement, poor foci for destiny; those with the karma to realize such complex wishes tended not to make them.)

Countless members of emotive species had wished for time machines, or second chances, or to visit historical eras – and they’d failed, or changed the past in some unrepeatable fashion, or replicated certain circumstances of the past in the present and left the rest untouched, or occasionally produced parallel realities with limited reality and stability (cf Kosane Kiriha, noted anomaly, whose self-defining and self-negating parallel was inhospitable to all life that was not her). And afterwards they developed a variety of low-impact time-themed powers – analog clock faces in their eyes; uncanny predictions; scythes and sickles; sluggish bubbles of space. Retrocognition. The power to unscramble eggs. Useful, on the micro-scale, but nothing that truly violated that loose, thematic and perfectly-enforced law against repetition.

It wasn’t the kind that magical girls regarded with reverence. It had no name. Kyubey, with its absence of naming authority, couldn’t call it anything.

Cycles. And, on the other hand, this. Akemi Homura, with an unknown hand reorganizing her cognition. And, on the other hand, this. Proof. Conveniently non-functioning proof, yes – mundane damage couldn’t disable a magic weapon; they only ever broke for psychological or ontological reasons – but not nothing.

Asking questions implied, but did not indicate, that one did not know their answers. What is it, Homura? asked Kyubey.

“It’s the weapon I had before my bow,” she said, still a little breathless. “I had another power, tied to it. It provided a significant tactical advantage. But I had a… I couldn’t manifest it any longer.”

“Like Rosso Fantasma.”

Like Kyouko, after her family.

“Like Kyouko,” agreed Akemi Homura. Tentatively, she reached out for it. The spring-loaded, enchanted briefcase – absolutely booby-trapped with detonators and strangling ribbons; Tomoe Mami didn’t do containment by half-measures – did not trigger any automated defenses; its lid did not sever a single one of her fingers.

One hand brushed gently against the ridges of glass, plummy-puce, though at its edges it frosted over into lavender or lilac. A misshapen metal pinion that stuck out towards the sky – undoubtedly a fixture point for one of a variety of purely aesthetic gears; the muted “steampunk” look was surprisingly well-integrated into the lines of her costume – pricked her finger and drew a bead of blood, a Kyubey’s-eye. I can clean that up, offered Kyubey, and understood Akemi Homura’s face and withdrawn hand to a solid if unreasonable rebuff (its cabbit tongue was antiseptic and preloaded with six different laced painkillers for varying severities of limb loss; when an Incubator kissed it better it would be kissed much better).

“If you’re telling the truth, about giving yourself some time,” decided Tomoe Mami, face cool and solid as stone, “I can trust you enough to let you handle this. And, if you’re capable of making it work again, you may hunt the odd wraith with us again.” Having conceded this, shortly after her unquestionable victory over Akemi Homura, she folded her hands in her lap and looked into her drained mug like a diviner.

That was that. No struggle; no puzzle; just a coup. Looking at Akemi Homura, it didn’t even see her little shudder of concealed claustrophobia at the notion of “enough time” and its adjacency to recent threats of house arrest.

No one had to say that she’d intended to hold it hostage. This might’ve been a coup, this unexpected reconciliation as their collective loneliness achieved a critical mass, but Kyubey understood Tomoe Mami enough to recognize that the gift-wrap to the box hadn’t been an actual invitation to take it and that this permission could always be revoked. Whether this was shameful for her or not was less clear. She wasn’t making eye contact any more, and she was usually its biggest partisan.

Thank you, Mami, Kyubey said, nevertheless, because affecting naivéte would be useful for its new long-term bargaining position; emerging from the cultural context they did, its magical girls would accept the persona of damsel/fragile flower far more easily if she was also occasionally stupid. Then it drank its tea and performed a chemical analysis. It was tea.

“For what?”

For taking care of someone I care about. It simulated a smile. Even when you’re upset, you manage to remain dedicated to the well-being of others.

“Yes,” agreed Akemi Homura. “Thank you, Mami. You’re still so –” She shook her head. “Still… kind-hearted. I won’t expect friendship, but I won’t trample on that, either.”

“You’re – you’re welcome, Akemi-san.”

I don’t think she minds ‘Homura.’

Ignoring this good advice, Tomoe Mami resealed the case with a click, added a few anti-tampering enchantments, swiveled on a heel, declared in some mumbling terms the need to hunt the special wraith – like Akemi Homura had asked – and walked out. It might’ve qualified as a flounce, if Tomoe Mami hadn’t managed to walk directly into Nomura Taeko outside – without even passing the threshold. Kyubey followed to investigate and found them outside in a light rain, picking up slowly. Neither had umbrellas.

“N-Nomura-chan, you’re still here?”

“I had to make sure you weren’t murdering Kecchan,” she declared, and brandished an improvised flail that promised more sogginess than blunt trauma; Tomoe Mami, unused to any kind of violence that couldn’t pulp an ordinary human’s head in seconds, stiffened, despite her magical girl body’s relative imperviousness to the schoolbag being waved threateningly in its direction. “But instead you’re just diving out. Not even going to have breakfast? She barely eats when she’s not tired.” She raised her voice and yelled “High schoolers who date middle schoolers are losers, Kecchan! Aracchi would kiss you in ten minutes if I texted her right now! And make breakfast!”

“Wh – I’m only a year her senior! You called me senpai!”

“If you can’t even take care of her, you’re just exploiting her innocence for your jollies! Of course she'd turn weird if she’s dating some delinquent repeating-the-year senpai!”

At this point Tomoe Mami judiciously made an exit, and did not slip at all on the wet pavement despite her impressive magically-unmodified land speed. “We’re talking after this, Kecchan!” yelled Nomura Taeko, then left her printouts on the end table and herself exited, tripping over Kyubey not at all as she did.

Did she lose her potential as a magical girl in this version of history?

“Nocch – Nomura-san never became a magical girl. I only learned her name in this timeline.”

It seemed like she didn’t mind being called ‘Nocchan.’

Akemi Homura laid herself down on an uncomfortable thrifted couch, the first time Kyubey had seen her supine post-lobotomy, and observed the ceiling, one arm outstretched. “I didn’t think I’d see my shield again.”

How do you feel?

“Its sand timer isn’t functional, and the dimensional storage was cleared out when we transitioned timelines – it’s nothing but gray fields with waypoints to mark where my equipment was. Even before the damage, when I realized that Madoka was no longer part of the world’s history –” She cut herself off. “It’s useless.”

I wouldn’t call that useless. Kyubey flicked its tail back towards the entrance. I imagine you’d prefer to have a discreet storage space for illegal firearms.

A long sigh. “It’ll serve as a stopgap. I can’t let myself become reliant on Mami and Kyouko, even if my responsibilities aren’t solely mine to bear.”

Silence.

“I, ah. I used to call it… only for a few resets, when I didn’t understand what it meant to be a magical girl.” From the side, it could observe a minute hue shift in her skin – a very subtle blush. “We called it Rovina i Ponti. It was from a foreign idiom – ‘still waters collapse the bridge.’ I suppose I was… unassuming, then. So it fit.”

Only one magical girl in Mitakihara – one thirty-second Italian, per a past ethnographic study, Incubator-sponsored, and transfixed by the underspecified implications this had for her culture or genetics – would have come up with that name. It’s interesting. Mami named your attack?

“She taught me. My marksmanship classes were with her. All those JSDF strongholds and yakuza compounds for materiel that never…”

Secreted between two fingers, one silver gear caught the light, a treasure wheel in miniature. Her hand quivered just a little.

“Madoka didn’t give me this.” Her face was still but her eyes were soft, and in no regard Buddha-like. “It’s not necessary. Her bow is enough, isn’t it? If even you believe it?”

It was a rhetorical question. I don’t really know, it said, anyway, and added an entry to her dossier: time manipulation, extra-spatial storage. Rovina i Ponti. Unavailable for psychological reasons. Treatment plan pending.

Chapter 16: Values Castaway

Summary:

A few lazy images of the new normal. Count the mistakes.

(The left gear’s connected to the right gear.)

---

Implausibly, Akemi Homura’s self-control held. No patrols. No hunting. Overruled on her planned thefts of small-caliber arms and affecting a kind of satisfied Zen about it, she downgraded to a set of 3D-printed derringers with no serial numbers (from a public library that offered free 3D printing to cardholders and didn’t ask too many questions; a late-teens magical girl with a noise-dampening aura tried to drop a bookshelf on Kyubey but didn’t chase it past the building’s boundaries) and a gray-market stun gun whose holster was a disarming coral pink.

So equipped, she was escorted to school in the mornings by Sakura Kyouko and left on Tomoe Mami’s invisible golden lead – an extendible ribbon connecting Tomoe Mami’s left-side wrist to Akemi Homura’s right-side ankle bracelet – to go on walks in the evenings, following a semi-randomized circuit through Mitakihara’s variety of family restaurants, coffee shops and thrift stores. Or walkies, a cutesified alternate phrasing that became Sakura Kyouko’s term for their semi-formalized evening trips. “Time to go walkies, huh,” she said, the third time they did it; and Tomoe Mami, red-faced, nodded in acknowledgment without legitimizing the name by speaking it aloud.

It took six days of this before she went back to the art club, which would be disbanded in about a month due to insufficient numbers if its “ghost member” didn’t start to show up to sessions again. To test them as viable backups for Akemi Homura, Kyubey ran figure-eights in the mess of the art club room, as underfoot as it could get given all the paint and lumpen piles of paperbacks and chair legs; its prosthetic leg went click-click-click against the Andy Warhol soup cans etched into the floor tiles. Both Arai Roberta and Nomura Taeko evaded without noticing that their legs were moving – a sign of negligible, rounding-error potential. Assets still, but only insofar as they could absorb its key magical girl’s stress without risking magic depletion.

When Tomoe Mami wasn’t occupied with walkies, she managed to schedule at least one of her promised teatime conversations with Kyubey, to ferret out the root causes of its pathology as she imagined it. It went on a cushion on the floor; she herself sat on the vibrant orange couch where she slept more nights than not. There were madeleines. Tomoe Mami asked whether it had considered suicide as an answer to its problems (yes), then – shakily – whether it had a plan (artfully it managed to say ‘no,’ insofar as it had no finalized deadline or method), and whether it had ever hurt itself (never; it could let other people do that). With a wan little smile she told Kyubey that it was understandable, given the circumstances – that she’d felt the same, sometimes, even when she wasn’t alone – and it might’ve applauded her willingness to give up her brittle facade for its sake, were it not so dedicated to kayfabe.

Incubators’ illnesses did not emerge from material causes – besides magical contamination, obviously, and infowar virii that only the network could manufacture – but that wasn’t an acceptable answer. Humans, themselves accretions of countless tiny irrationalities, liked to pin their decisions to identifiable events, with big, bright lines of causality to link trauma to tragedy or virtue to glory.

It was an interesting challenge: implying but never explicitly agreeing with Tomoe Mami’s model of selfhood. Mostly Kyubey simulated smiles, or agreed or disagreed with things, or deliberately-clumsily misdirected the conversation when it came to topics it sensed she’d decided were sensitive. The tea continued to be tea.

As it rose, Tomoe Mami said, light and airy, “I suppose the cat laid down.” (In Japanese, neko ga nekoronda.)

Transparent manipulation, by a magical girl who had finally managed to understand the simplicity of Kyubey’s defective utility function. But it was also a clear investment in reconstructing their relationship, a naked olive branch, gift and almost-apology for the dress, which both standard Incubator doctrine and the requirements of its situation told it should be incentivized through immediate positive feedback.

Kyubey had ferried her through a messy partner-divorce with Sakura Kyouko and knew that despite her willingness to make overtures of friendship on shaky grounds, Tomoe Mami required a steady diet of clear, positive signals to believe in those overtures’ success. It would do neither of them any good to let it lie; the only question was how to react, naturalistically, sympathetically and with affection, to her joke.

Its internal grief reactor’s exhaust, piped out via its terminal’s mouth on its lowest intensity setting, made for a passable huff of air – not an intended sound for Incubator terminals, so it took on a wheezy quality, but it wasn’t entirely unrealistic, at least. With its eyes closed, Kyubey “laughed” out this air, laced with traces of the waste heat of its last grief cube reaction; and because it had been both pleased and surprised by Tomoe Mami’s little joke, the simulated laughter qualified as sincere. It followed immediately, on the grounds of the principle of reciprocity, with See, Mami? One might say that my habit is cat-ching on.

She didn’t laugh back, but neither did she frown. It was a start.

(The X1Y22Z-2 gear’s connected to the X1-Y23Z-3 gear.)

---

Mitakihara’s miasma grew, and grew thinner. The satori had evidently decided to distribute its forces broadly, with whatever churning mechanistic imitation of a tactical mind it had. Punctured by needle-thin rays of no color, the hospital- and street-sized miasmic pockets spilled over until they were football-stadium-sized regions that could only support one or two lesser wraiths, easy to dispatch but difficult to catch across vast and semi-populated operational areas. Tracking magic lit its magical girls’ Soul Gems at ever-shifting angles, like eyes whirling in their sockets. At irregular intervals these fogs coalesced, instead, into narrow, closet-size pockets of condensed space, with atmospheric miasm as high as 18k ppm, where each inch of available space was tiled with lessers, like storage lockers, or beehives – rich harvests to those who could exterminate them.

Sakura Kyouko, who was the most reliable person any of them knew, spent most of her time in Mitakihara’s streets, wraith-hunting. None of the remaining magical girls it had were subtle enough to harvest cubes without risking discovery, so the task fell – more or less completely – to her. At her belt she carried a brace of IEDs; Akemi Homura made them meditatively in the evenings, with motions more automatic than they were conscious, once she was done with other work. Kyubey got used to the routine after it tagged along once or twice, mindful to move very little to avoid disturbing its layered stealth enchantments: a pipe bomb lobbed over the threshold, a dull, distant whump of ignition, and then the blackness would hemorrhage grief cubes; Sakura Kyouko would purify her Gem, and it would eat, de-aging a semi-randomly-selected sequence of stars with every bite.

When she could find them, at least. All hunts were feast-or-famine conditionals on finding a locker, given that wraiths without restrictions to their operational area were “zippy little bastards,” not to mention the uncertain status and danger of Soju Luca. At the level of aberration she’d reached she wasn’t legible to its statistical models – making her poor mental health, in a sense, a protective measure against Incubators. Hmm.

Soju Luca could be said to be employing the insanity defense, Kyubey said, pleased.

“‘Could be said,’” parroted Sakura Kyouko with her voice pitched up, shoveling grief cubes into a rucksack. “You lead with that every time, y’know. Telegraph your jokes less, maybe they’ll get funnier.”

I don’t think I sound like that, it said, and had no obligation to respond to the very loud, over-enunciated ‘homp’ sound Sakura Kyouko made as she bit into a hot dog.

They talked about Miki Sayaka, too, between rounds of existential combat. In the wake of the descent of the Law, Kyubey hadn’t had the chance to offer any emotional remediation. Without it, Sakura Kyouko had still wobbled, gyroscopically, back into full function, and endured her lobotomized friend and severed nose (she wore disposable cold-flu masks to disguise the half-regenerated stump while Tomoe Mami worked; her vanity, the humans felt in a rare unanimity, was worth the magic cost).

“She kissed me” took three wraiths’ worth of idle talk; context for the kiss (in a quiet corner after a fight about Shizuki Hitomi, a non-prospect with impressively little karma given her issues) another two. "She stopped talking about her old crush after," Sakura Kyouko said. "Thought I was going to – what'd I say – break his wrists, like I told her she should do to him, once. Mark my territory, ruin her life, like we’re in some screwed-in-the-head lesbian stalker movie. And Sayaka didn't even have Akemi’s excuse, y'know? Mikis were Shinto for weddings, Buddha for funerals, white-bread as Japan gets, and she still said crap like that."

Homura’s excuse being a religious upbringing?

“Homura’s excuse being that she’s got a hair shirt stuffed under that uniform, even if she used to know how to pretend she didn’t.” Coughing, an office lady on her smoke break (miasma-addled and soon-to-be amnesiac, piloted mostly by habit and reflex; in some ways miasma made humans more like wraiths) tried and failed to make eye contact with Sakura Kyouko on her company’s doorstop while she methodically smashed in a security door’s handle with the butt of her chained spear. A wraith – visible through gray-smudged picture windows – waited in the lobby like it was expecting its coffee order. They’d abandoned all subtlety after the fourth escapee in as many hours. “‘Scuse me.”

Pardon our intrusion.

“Huhh,” said the office lady.

“And a few days after I talk her around to maybe telling Akemi, at least, she Cycles herself with that solemn stupid look on her face so she could skip out on admitting she’s –” From its perch at her neck it felt her pulse accelerating, even if she kept her tone deceptively casual. “You’d think she would’ve gotten her head out of her ass, after you figured yourself out. Hell, or noticed that seaweed-headed ojou she hung out with was making a play. All that drama, all ‘can you face your true feelings if I confess to this boy with no personality,’ how transparent can you GET –”

In her hands the chains inside her spearhaft whirred like industrial noise; the air grew segmented brass-bright teeth and chewed the space available for escape into more manageable chunks while the wraith tried for a nonexistent out. A potted plant fell off the reception desk and detonated into cheap ceramic shards; a PC tower was decapitated. Wraiths had no oxygen requirements and could not asphyxiate, so Sakura Kyouko – having instinctively bound it at the neck, with strangling links seized in each hand – settled for playing guillotine instead. Then she had to leave, before the miasma lifted enough that an office worker might ask questions.

They ended the hunt with three cubes for four hours’ work, plus the knock-on psychological benefits of saving human lives and protecting the integrity of Mitakihara’s infrastructure, such as they were.

“She never, ever learned,” Sakura Kyouko muttered, on her seventh protein bar of the evening. “Guess I probably would’ve made her worse, but – at least she would’ve been less of a dick to you. That wouldn’t have been nothing.”

I’d certainly told her that magical girls are significantly more likely to experience same-sex attraction. I assumed, given how much she admired magical girls, that she’d recognize the value of a relationship without deception, rather than letting cultural norms dictate her response. Perhaps I should’ve talked to her about it earlier. It considered Sakura Kyouko’s food intake and her stress habits. May I have some of that?

“Don’t you have money? Getcher own.”

I’d prefer not to give any human investigators an excuse to nose around in my financial records. You understand, don’t you?

“Sure, but –” She coughed, then gave it a look of narrow-eyed disdain. “Nose around. Screw off.”

I can’t screw off a nose I don’t have, Kyouko.

“Not the time.” It was hard to tell joke rebukes from the actual; Kyubey opted to parse this one as real, erring on the side of caution, and saved the rest of its nose jokes for a better time.

“Hey, Kyubey.”

Yes?

“Can you fall in love, now?”

Why do you ask?

“Humor me.”

I’m not sure how to answer. Incubators don’t really have any cultural equivalent to humans’ understanding of romantic love.

“Half of the crap you say has ‘no cultural equivalent’ with them.”

I also lack any endocrine system and have no reproductive drive.

“The way we are, none of the rest of us are ever having kids either, Kyubey. Pretend we’re not talking about breeding pairs or marriage.” Sakura Kyouko made eye contact, holding it by the scruff of its neck. “Whatever the hell it means for us. Yes or no?”

The best answer was no. There was humanizing behavior, and then there was perversion – the Sojus had accused Kyubey of that already, and whether or not its magical girls had agreed or recognized the hypocrisy from the emotionally incestuous gestalt that kept strangers’ souls in boxes as a hobby, the word tended to stick if reapplied often enough.

In the course of Kyubey’s duties, it had intruded on its magical girls’ private spaces unannounced on the regular, a slinking white shadow through unsecured windows and the Miki family’s cat flap (Miki Shuna had wanted a cat, apparently, but they gave Miki Sayaka hives). They’d given it cuddles and brushes and pats and tummy rubs and plenty of other intimacies, on the strength of its nothing personality and neotenous cabbity terminal face – because it was harmless, like children and animals were harmless. Love would recontextualize that behavior. Kyubey – miming this specific kind of personhood – would be subject to cultural signifiers beyond its power to control, extremely emotionally-charged ones, no less, which might risk the sympathy of its few remaining assets and the hesitant trust of Akemi Homura, a relationship it could not risk for anything but eternal samsara in its fullness.

And, of course, it didn’t feel anything like what Miki Sayaka had felt for Sakura Kyouko, or vice-versa. Faking it, for her sake, would be a risk with little benefit, whether she wanted a specific answer – which she clearly did – or not.

It settled for I don’t really understand what that would mean for someone like me, and Sakura Kyouko bit her tongue, jaw clenching, and let that be.

(The XY22Z-15 gear’s connected to the – sand timer.)

---

And Akemi Homura, whom it saw less frequently (and never unchaperoned, though Tomoe Mami just hovered on the periphery and Sakura Kyouko played video games), shopped online extensively, half on Kyubey’s offshore funds and half, at her insistence, on her state-ward stipend that was supposedly earmarked for groceries but which the network (prior to Kyubey’s contamination) had ensured would never be audited. A slate-colored messenger bag – one Sakura Kyouko had been using to store her two changes of clothing and ratty minty hoodie, before giving in and shoveling it into a spare wardrobe – gradually filled up with rakes, picks and lenses from jewelers’ and clockmakers’ kits. Loupes in a rainbow of tints. A set of miniature precision screwdrivers that came arranged in-box by length in a sine wave, like a row of teeth. A solder gun. Sakura Kyouko vetted everything, though why she specifically had been assigned the job of casing for devices useful in self-destructive behavior, no one besides Tomoe Mami had any idea.

After this she required nothing but time and guesswork – experimentally assembling miniature gears into different configurations, to assemble a working picture of the internal mechanism that Tomoe Mami had sundered, since she’d never memorized it. She bought a new commercial holoprojector and her holoframe sketches vanished, replaced with exploded diagrams of a speculative shield layout that replaced her entire ceiling – gridded out like a self-sufficient closed circuit of a city, cast in palladium-osmium alloy. Or whatever conceptual metal magical weapons were made out of, at least. Orihalcon? Hihiirokane? The Silver Crystal?

All of it was pointless, of course – repairing the shield would not provide access to Rovina i Ponti again; the shield’s innards ran not on actual clockwork or some camshaft-spring assembly capable of overthrowing physics, but on psychology and aesthetics. If she’d been in the right state of mind, they could’ve simply thrown out all the gears, shut the case and had a functional time machine. But the guesswork was meditative guesswork, at least, and gave Kyubey time to consider a treatment plan, and Akemi Homura’s well-being would be well-served by a safe, calming and meaningful hobby that did not involve existential combat. Often, there was tea, and pastry, and even small and elegant sandwiches that tended to involve cream cheese, all of which constituted a marked improvement over her post-lobotomy diet of magic and adrenaline.

Of course, Kyubey could contribute, too. It was an excellent shape rotator, and Incubator infrastructure made humans’ civic plans look like jigsaw puzzles manufactured for single-digiters. So it did – sitting over the shield’s halves or wrapped around her neck like a fur stole, with its adjustable-zoom eyes trained on the minute differences between identical-seeming gears. Akemi Homura hummed distantly as she worked, and lapsed into mumbled words at difficult junctures; Kyubey took to repeating the lyrics of her made-up work song verbatim, then adding its own steps based on its 3D model of the shield’s interior. Like: the karmic retention dosimeter’s connected to the shell join, and the shell join’s connected to the Abraxas pocket, and the Abraxas pocket’s connected to the left gear. Invented names, canonized through humanity’s naming authority into terms of art.

I believe the most sensible position for the offshoot correction spline, it said, would be at X2Y19Z1, socketed to the karmic retention dosimeter.

“Backseat driver,” she muttered, and did it.

(The glass heart’s connected to the…)

---

Kaname Madoka came up. Of course she did: to everyone involved, whether or not they all knew it, she meant everything. Understanding that it couldn’t ask anything actionable, Kyubey stuck to getting-to-know-you questions straight out of protocol’s bog-standard icebreaker list: her favorite foods (everyone thought it was tomatoes but she really preferred sunny-side-up eggs and coffee ice cream), her school clubs (archery, and she was her class’s health rep), her family (Akemi Homura talked about Kaname Junko with an emotion Kyubey couldn’t place and smiled wistfully when she mentioned Kaname Tomohisa’s garden). Inconsequential details; things it might record for a newbie magical girl’s dossier, not for a god; but these details were what it had, and the conversation would humanize it in Akemi Homura’s eyes. So it asked about Kaname Madoka and learned nothing useful besides what kind of person she was.

Akemi Homura’s account had every expected virtue for a religious figure – compassion, mercy, patience, resolve – and several unexpected ones, given female saints’ cultural image of pacifistic fragility. Over a sample size of one hundred and eight lives, Kaname Madoka had always stayed sane and functional as a magical girl, despite the deaths of everyone close to her – through murder-suicides, mass civilian casualties, hideously-managed revelations about the magical girl condition, and so many dismemberments that they could’ve built a whole separate Kaname Madoka from severed limbs.

(On attempt number one, the shield halves didn’t join properly, and the left-side bulb split with an ear-piercing crystal shriek. Akemi Homura sighed, dumped the left-side mechanism’s fiddlier parts into Tomoe Mami’s magic briefcase, and started drawing up plans for a new build while Kyubey booked the glassworks studio for a replacement. The case flared purple again as it clicked shut; the air briefly smelled sharp and dry, like ozone in the desert.)

In fact, it seemed from Akemi Homura’s account that she had never been depleted by the negative feedback loop of “despair,” only by massive magic expenditures that stressed her Soul Gem past its limits. She’d blown a moksha out of Mitakihara’s airspace, taken multiple skyscrapers on the skull and architectural needles through the torso, and still held on for thirty, forty, fifty minutes while Akemi Homura searched for her, marinating in a puddle of mixed floodwater and internal effluvium, with no Law to offer relief – with enough wherewithal, on her deathbed, to ask Akemi Homura gently for her help. It took bombardments that could level cities to kill Kaname Madoka, and that was when she made wishes as simple as reviving dead cats. A month’s time to consider what she wanted had been all it took for her to bootstrap herself to divinity.

If she’d had even vague worldly ambitions, she could have conquered and held cities in peace with her power, and with raw charisma (judging by her disciple’s devotion) factored in, a country-spanning magical girl cult of personality wouldn’t have been out of reach – the treasure wheel held in thrall.

I can understand why the previous instantiation of me might want to make a contract with Kaname Madoka, it told her, understating it.

It was a testament to Kyubey’s work in building their trust that Akemi Homura only stiffened fractionally. The horsehair brush she’d been using did scrape its ablative fur in the wrong direction, though.

It sounds as if she was an ideal magical girl, it said, stretching its back out to maintain the illusion of a casual conversation and also to detach the bristles of the brush. With that much karma, her initial wish would’ve been extremely profitable for the network. Not to mention how easy she must have made wraith management – one magical girl who does the work of an entire city!

“She was… enormously powerful, yes.”

What confuses me is the fact that your previous Incubator didn’t take better care of her – the network should’ve detected its neglectful caretaking during a check-in and provided a replacement. Given your relationship with my previous self, you might even have been asked to step in. (Only one of its magical girls was comfortable with the network’s use of magical girl assassins against its contaminated terminals, so it was best to be euphemistic about it.)

It hadn’t asked for elaboration on the subject of witches, yet – in fact had carefully constructed an image of itself as uninterested, after hearing the quaver of anger in Akemi Homura's freshly lobotomized voice. It had no idea how the network would benefit from manufacturing an artificial conflict, complete with fake enemies – produced from some ersatz of the contract, maybe, disallowed by the Law – when humanity’s curses provided more than enough hazards to magical girls’ ongoing use of magic. Or how the cluster of cultural milestones associated with emotional maturity – the transition from girl to woman, mahou shoujo to majo – would turn its contractees against one another. Kyubey had hypotheses, and no interest in confirming them. It was an Incubator, driven purely by principle; pure inquiry was meaningless if it alienated Akemi Homura, or risked her psychological well-being and her fragile spider’s-thread tie to the Law.

After a few breaths the brush resumed its level, scraping strokes and found a genuine knot in Kyubey’s ablative fur, then set to work detangling it. Kyubey noted the savings on negentropy that it would’ve required to regenerate its Incubator cells unknotted and leaned into Akemi Homura’s pressure against its back, for all the world like an ordinary animal.

“Don’t –”

A short sigh.

“Don’t talk about dying so casually. You’ll upset Mami.”

Notes:

10/31/24: Edits for explanation and continuity.

11/2/24: Further edits.

Chapter 17: Evil Dates

Summary:

A contender emerges for Homura's worst first date. Romance is discussed.

As with most fraught ambiguities relevant to the lives of teenagers, risk-tolerant Incubators discussed the subject of romance in anodyne terms lifted from the cultural canon, and risk-averse Incubators avoided it. Best practices suggested acting as a passive sounding board if humans raised the topic, and to avoid any second-order implications beyond the most chaste and emotionally uncomplicated. Feigning an interest in romance as an academic subject might yield some dividends in maintaining anthropomorphic kayfabe, but any sincere discussion of the topic was high-risk and low-reward.

So instead, Kyubey thought about words. Like all the imperfect, lossy communicative media that humans used, the word “date” permitted near-unlimited ambiguities. Strictly, any occasion demarcated by a calendar system might count; somewhat less strictly, any such occasion involving two or more people with explicit romantic intent; at its outer borders the word evaporated into implications, irony and sarcasm, the waste heat of meaning. But in the interstice between signal and noise a number of possibilities became apparent.

Aracchi – Arai Roberta, foreign exchange returnee, karmically negligible, and (per Nomura Taeko’s admittedly-biased account) capable of romantic interest in girls – had asked Akemi Homura to lunch. She was bringing Kyubey.

I have no intention of causing or allowing the death, magic depletion or serious injury of Akemi Homura, myself, or any human bystanders, nor do I have relevant plans that would affect any of Mitakihara’s magical girls negatively, it parroted, making eye contact with Tomoe Mami, which most neurologically typical magical girls took to mean honesty. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why Homura wants me there – though I will provide emotional support as necessary, of course.

“Do you understand?” Akemi Homura carded her fingers through her hair across the room. “It’s trivial to test her bona fides, if you’re willing to ask directly.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about – Miss Kyubey’s goodwill towards you, Akemi-san. But even with Kyouko’s enchantment magic, she’s still attracted more attention than I’m comfortable with – hold this, please.” Kyubey took a rejected belt in its manipulators and deposited it on her spare accessories display hanger, while she looked at other belts that would be rejected. “You should have someone keeping an eye on you.”

“Those two will be keeping an eye on me, and the Incubators haven’t sent anyone for us in public as of yet. If they do, I have my taser and sidearms.”

“...two?”

“Yes? I assume Nomura-san will be involved, given it’s her misconception driving all this.” A long sigh. “You do recognize that having you hover over us will only reinforce that. You want this cleared up just as much as I do, so be rational about it.”

“Both of – never mind.” An outsized modish top joined the belt on Kyubey’s manipulator ears. “Akemi-san –”

You can call her Homura, contributed Kyubey.

“Akemi-san, you’re still risking a lot for this, when you have such serious limits to your ability to defend yourself. It just strikes me as… frivolous? By your standards, at least. Surely it isn’t so terrible for you for someone to accuse me of – being a high schooler who dates middle schoolers.” Tomoe Mami averted her eyes and rubbed one temple, her hand occupied with an orange-pinkish blouse. “Nomura-san giving me strange looks in the halls isn’t anything new.”

“It’s because you were right. I’d… I would like to rebuild my previous relationship with the art club. I have a responsibility as a magical girl to safeguard my ordinary life. I just can’t do that with a chaperone around. Or a… girlfriend, even if she’s only a – someone else’s delusion.” It noted less hesitance around the term girlfriend in her dossier.

A sigh. “I thought you might say that. You know there are things I can’t say no to by now, I suppose. Why do you want Miss Kyubey, then?”

“If I told you, you’d accuse me of lying, Mami.”

“Ahah. You were so respectful once, Akemi-san.”

Would you prefer to be referred to as Tomoe-senpai?

“Have fun on your date.”

For a venue, Arai Roberta had selected an Western-style diner in the heart of Mitakihara’s tourist district, bright and early. Easy to reach by train, but Akemi Homura – mindful of transit accidents induced via magic or wraith attack – decided to walk instead, in flexible-soled sneakers (to complement, Kyubey thought but kept to itself, her flexible Soul Gem) and a mid-length turtleneck dress in black diamond check. Negotiations from her teammates had convinced her to transfer her talismanic red ribbon to her wrist; the white sheath of ablative fur around her neck might’ve made a decent color contrast as a muffler, were it not invisible to the average person.

Mitakihara had gotten cold fast – an early onset polar vortex – and new models of sunlamps had entered the online shopping market, with AI sightline tracing to keep the ambient light pleasant without being blinding and to effectively treat seasonal depression. They discussed whether Tomoe Mami would accept one, as they walked, and whether Sakura Kyouko had a use for one – theoretically homeless, but she’d spent a statistically significant portion of her time in their apartments, Akemi Homura’s included. She showed it a picture on her phone, of a canvas with large rectangles in primary colors, and Kyubey admitted that it still did not understand art or why someone would be afraid of primary colors.

It had survived weeks past its estimated time horizon for execution, by now. A question, maybe, of poor contract prospects in neighboring cities, or the logistical difficulties of using assassins with enough finesse to avoid killing Mitakihara’s still-useful assets, or the stealth enchantments that made it hard to locate, even with magic senses. There would be no detente – with contaminated Incubators there could never be peace; the network would error-correct eventually – but Kyubey had still been afforded extraordinary latitude. They sheltered from unexpected rain under a nearby awning and then walked awning-to-awning to the diner, through crowds with the wherewithal to pack umbrellas but no interest in sharing, and arrived with bright cold beads of water in her hair and its fur. It thought, how strange to be alive this long.

---

Western-style diner meant retro, for Mitakihara – roller skates; massive uniform skirts not unlike magical girls’ costumes; a sea of blonde dye; jukeboxes that pretended to play vinyl records while subtly adding post-production scratchiness to their digital recordings of classic rock. They’d arrived very early but the waiter, a teenager with firehouse-colored hair and a thin, papery blush, gave Akemi Homura her reservation anyway – a booth in the farthest corner, where she could have her back to a wall, and where it would be very difficult for anyone to see her unless they were within range of a quick disabling blow to the windpipe. She ordered tea then revised to “Coca-Cola – or, Coke,” and asked for three waters besides. Used to this by now, Kyubey had a sip. It was water.

Arai Roberta texted to indicate that she’d be late. Akemi Homura sighed and took a sip of water, then flipped to the notes application on her flip phone (outdated, with a limited color display, purchased online via antique auction site, and rated for function at about sixty-four hundred psi; she’d wanted one that could sustain a direct sledgehammer blow, once it became clear that frequent burner purchases weren’t sustainable). With her off-hand she fidgeted inside her schoolbag, holding something – the ribbon, maybe, which was serving admirably as a stress toy for Akemi Homura’s vastly escalated stress.

Her bulleted list, in typical shorthand, mentioned Kaname Madoka no more than twice (in the moment Kyubey was able to observe over her shoulder, before she shut it with a bone-like snap). Are you planning something? It asked.

I – yes.

Is it a confession?

Of a kind.

To whom?

Both of them. There’s no sensible way to keep this kind of conversation private.

How interesting. I’m given to understand that most members of your culture restrict themselves to one. But if that makes you happy, Homura…

What? A clown-like green-haired waiter on imitation roller skates scurried – it was the only adjective that came to mind – past their table, towards the kitchen doors, without asking for their orders. Akemi Homura didn’t appear to notice. What are you talking about?

Confessing.

You’re confusing me.

There are multiple meanings to the term, not all of which you seem to have considered, and I suspect you’ve given at least a few people misconceptions about your intentions here.

…I’m telling them about Madoka, Akemi Homura clarified, face a little sour. Though not in any detail.

How fascinating. Why is that?

Because I’d prefer not to… a pause. It’s quiet. Quieter than it should be, right now.

Because it was – what had seemed like an incremental, incidental lull in background noise had become scattered whispers, a record skipping – “I ask who you with / you say nobody / I ask who you with / you say”, and an irregular click of heels against tile.

Would you like me to check why?

Taking her silence and quick head-jerk as assent, Kyubey ducked its head around the corner and recognized the source of the confusion, because – among other things – the source recognized it right back.

It had seen Soju Luca exhibit grace, but it had been the choreographed, precognitive kind that existential combat bodies received in their contracts, gratis. She’d been able to slide smoothly across her artificial icefield for the same reasons that clumsy magical girls only tripped when it wasn’t tactically relevant: in each of them there was an ontologically irreducible equivalent to the hindbrain, a proprioceptive core integrated into the Soul Gem, integrating its predictions about footing and shoelaces into its body’s motions with seamless fidelity.

That there were clumsy magical girls at all was a deliberate decision in the design of existential combat frames, to soften their dysphoria – nearly all contractees enjoyed the effortless athleticism necessary for their duties, but it was easier for most if that talent was a toy they could consciously call on or put away, rather than a full kinesthetic rewiring of their nervous systems. Tripping, inefficient as it was, was proof that they weren’t combat androids or shambling corpses, just like hunger, thirst and the appendix. Little inefficiencies, so that they could be drip-fed revelations about the optimization of their bodies.

That was to say: Soju Luca had to fight herself, it knew, to walk the way she was walking across the diner, bumping into servers and other patrons, still in full magical girl dress in public, oddly natural-looking surrounded by cosplay staff. By its training Kyubey recognized the signs of an early spiral – unwashed hair, a huge blooming bruise at her temple, and a sluggish, crawling gray to the mica chip by her armpit. Her facial expression was frozen, or maybe slack – lifeless, anyway, besides her eyes, which rolled to focus on Akemi Homura and Kyubey with deliberate slowness. Bonelessly she fell into the pleather seats, while a waitress in hot pink did her best not to look in their direction, and took a sip of water from a glass that was not hers.

“Do I look that terrible?” she asked, and stretched her face into – something. A version of Soju Ayase’s smile, just barely not exposing teeth, a satisfied curl to the lip – not a dynamic expression but an end-state, as if she’d actuated her muscles just long enough to get there and then stopped them dead once she got it right. “I don’t. How cruel.”

For her part, Akemi Homura’s back was straight and stiff, but she made no immediate move to attack or flee. Why are you here?

“Let – me demonstrate. Richiamo, Nevaeh-chan, orange.” With a squeeze-pop of altered space that carved a neat hole into her plastic placemat, Soju Luca conjured a display-case box, with a photo paperclipped to its lid, of a nervous-looking twenty-something blonde sitting on a black couch. It hung in its warped spindle of reality for an instant before she snapped it back out of existence. Summoning magic, as predicted.

“Richiamo Misaki, Richiamo Ishidzue –” Another case and photo, then a gray-green – “institutional green” – Soul Gem with its photo taped to its surface (the magical girl in this one had a face covered in bandages and was flashing a peace sign), both there long enough to demonstrate before they were gone. “Richiamo del Dovere, Soju Ayase, fire ruby.”

Nothing.

“You’ve found a way to keep her from me. I’m not upset.” Almost certainly a lie. “We may. Talk. About returning her.”

That explained it. Soju Ayase’s disappearance had been subtler than most. Soju Luca, paranoid though she might’ve been, retained some subconscious expectation that an Incubator – even a contaminated, unwell one – would take good care of her “sister.” Kyubey – in Soju Luca’s circumstances, if its wish magic had failed – would’ve assumed as a null hypothesis that Soju Ayase was dead, but it had no objections to a fake hostage situation. In any case, it wasn’t clear whether informing her of her dead sister would instantly drive her to depletion (the optimal case) or induce a less-productive stress response, like indiscriminate murder (which would likely have ill effects on Akemi Homura’s mental health). I have no immediate objections to negotiating. Homura?

“If we keep it brief,” said Akemi Homura, eyes straight, fiddling with her phone beneath the table. Kyubey preferred Sakura Kyouko to Tomoe Mami for interventions like this, but knew that Tomoe Mami would be negatively impacted if she wasn’t the one to receive this distress signal, and imagined that Akemi Homura might make that same judgment call – or hoped, at least. “You should know that your ‘sister’s’ situation is… precarious. Don’t escalate this. Our allies will know.”

“Is she safe?”

“We haven’t hurt her.” True, to its knowledge of her knowledge, though not an answer.

Nor do we intend to, it added. Whether I’ve become ill, as you understand it, or not, I remain committed to the well-being of magical girls as our trusted partners in wraith extermination.

A longer pause than natural. “How are you blocking my magic?”

What reason do we have to tell you that?

“You know. Don’t pretend you don’t.” She ran a hand through her hair. “You’ve taken a magical girl out of circulation and you’ve left me with – myself. If you’re really still intent on your proper task, Incubator, you should understand that you’re depriving people of their lives by wasting her on petty power games.”

Arguably, your habit of separating magical girls’ souls from their bodies will add up to a similar loss in efficiency given time.

“We’re allowed, imbeciles. It’s consensual.” The word sounded mealy in Soju Luca’s mouth. “And we only get the – girls who've agreed, and they’re useless, you know. Simpering losers are worth more as favors to us than in wraith management that’s why we’re allowed, yes?” A pause. “No well I know that you perverts always think you’re unique iconoclast geniuses, but the genuinely competent don’t end up as pet hamsters being hunted down for sport.”

It might be that the network expected you two to flare out quickly, given your unstable social-emotional configuration, and so allowed you to indulge in your habits under the assumption that your time as magical girls would be brief. Likely, the Incubators who’d contracted these two had been pulped and their heuristics relocated to thought cabinets; two codependent mid-yield magical girls, who’d required so much remediation to avoid becoming serial killers, were a net loss on most metrics, kept alive only by the network’s desire to appear principled to its assassins.

Paradoxically – given the Sojus’ track record with insults – her shoulders relaxed. “Of course. You really don’t understand us at all! How pitiable.” Pause. “So if you don’t care about the wraiths, what do you want? A new pinafore? Kitty lingerie?”

“I hope you know these posturing hostilities only make your position worse.”

“Quiet. I can see white fur between your teeth, you pervert.” Akemi Homura choked on nothing, and reached for water to drown it. “So what, then?” continued Soju Luca. “If you don’t care about being pretty.” Pause. “No. Alright. What do you want?”

Plenty of obvious, viable answers were available – eternal samsara; wordplay; the increased representation of its own values in the value functions of other agents; the Law of Cycles’s shadow beneath its cabbity foot – but only the immediately achievable ones would be useful. Soju Luca, to what it had gleaned via her dossier and their first interaction, often negotiated as a pretext for immediate violence, and escalated more rapidly if the other party’s preferences were (in her words) impossible, or stupid. Best to suggest something she was capable of giving it with low effort, like: I’d like a conversation.

This at least didn’t get it impaled immediately, which given the Sojus’ track record was a win. I’d prefer to understand you better before involving you in any discussion of my longer-term plans, Kyubey continued. We got off to a poor start, of course, but having a way to stow Soul Gems safely would be extremely useful to us, given our current relationship to the network. A conversation seems like a useful and potentially pleasant way to advance that goal, and our mutual understanding. I’d like to understand your magic better, and I suspect that you would find it useful to actively consider how it works. It would be sensible for everyone involved in this to achieve a functional detente, then, yes?

“You don’t understand magic. Your species has been very clear about that.”

That was fair, of course, but Akemi Homura intervened before it could clarify. I hope I know what you’re doing came at about the same time as “She’s been counseling me. If nothing else, Miss Kyubey has been an effective sounding board for the introspection necessary to improve one’s magic.” She glared. “Be civil and quit chattering before we shut your mouth for you.”

Soju Luca snorted. “The Incubator’s your therapist, goodness. Magic isn’t powered by fuzzy feelings, I hope you realize. It’s crises that make our Soul Gems shine.”

That is often the case! However, I suspect I understand the condition required to use this particular form of magic better than you think.

A pause. Good. Would you take a brief explanation as a peace offering?

“...I’m listening.”

If I recall correctly, you wished ‘for something [you didn’t] have.’ Kyubey tilted its head at her and began to pace a little obstacle-course route between water glasses, its question mark of a tail metronoming as it went. That raises some interesting semantic questions. You’re able to summon these Soul Gems because they’ve become ‘yours’ in some fashion, through gifts, negotiations or seizure; without that limitation, you could instantly overcome any magical girl who lacked a direct countermeasure to your abilities. But is that true of everything you own? Or for non-magical girls? If I gave myself over to you, could you summon me, given that my consciousness is distributed through this terminal?

“What kind of freak would want that?”

I suspect you can’t, then. Wish magic does respond primarily to desire, and you two share a very clear preference for particular things. Otherwise, per Akemi Homura’s account of a previous timeline, she could’ve simply grabbed Kyubey once, declared it the spoils of war, then conjured it from the ether arbitrarily and had a fully-general bargaining chip for her sister’s life (at least, if no magical girl made the pragmatic decision to sacrifice it, given it had objectively been plenty of trouble). In which case, perhaps, I’m not ‘something [you don’t] have.’ You find me and what I have to offer, i.e. logistical and emotional support, repellent, and seem to have no lingering attachments to Incubators as a class.

As they processed the telepathic packet Kyubey spot-checked its audience. Akemi Homura, for all her other merits, wasn’t interested in indulging its habit except in calm moments. Accordingly, she’d turned to her cell phone again, though she gripped its case just slightly too tight to appear to relax. Soju Luca just looked vacant, or bored: a life-sized mannequin in slack repose propped against its diner seat cushions, though her eyes kept tracking its own. Perhaps your desires (thanks to a few spare processor cycles dedicated to Soju Luca’s triggers rather than strategic semantics, it managed not to say ‘proclivities’ and so did not die) are such that your ‘Richiamo del Dovere’ magic only provides you with things to fulfill a particular unmet need.

“Then –”

If we take that premise as a given, and recognize that you can still summon the Soul Gems of those who’ve become your ‘property’ as long as you haven’t voluntarily surrendered them, it seems possible that – the conclusion felt satisfying, as a product of all the neat symbolic-register steps it had taken from her wish, even if it was blatant prevarication to everyone involved – whatever unmet need constituted something you ‘[didn’t] have,’ which Soju Ayase’s Soul Gem initially fulfilled, has been met! Kyubey simulated smiling. Congratulations!

(This was not a falsehood; anyone could congratulate anyone else on anything. It was a nicety, or aizuchi – raw filler.)

It walked back towards Akemi Homura’s place setting, noting her slowed typing. Of course, there are alternatives, it went on. I don’t know that I understand your definitions of ownership, but there may be conditions under which a Soul Gem isn’t yours any more, even if it fulfills some unmet need. Maybe Soju Ayase has met those conditions. (In Kaname Madoka’s theoretical afterlife, were there still individual attachments? Something to ask later, if Akemi Homura felt up to speculation.) Or, for that matter, if you’ve failed to distinguish how you feel about Soju Ayase from the way you feel about other magical girls, perhaps you’re using the wrong emotional state to try to summon her. Have you considered what your feelings really are?

There. An actionable plan, even if Soju Luca’s efforts would be wasted – something plausible-sounding she could work on while the rest of them got on with things. Proof of an earlier misstep, really; it hadn’t considered whether the Sojus might be a way of removing assassins from play without disturbing its magical girls’ ethical sensibilities. It turned back and Soju Luca was an inch away with eyes like a corpse’s.

“Should have known. I should have known –” Soju Luca laughed. “You’re still an Incubator. You can’t understand. Shut up and stop mocking her.”

Her eyes flicked in their sockets, away from Kyubey, over its head to Akemi Homura. “What my feelings really are, how sad. She knows, she knows, she would understand that without a word – she’s not some pathetic reliant child’s stupid trinket of a soul, no! You get it, don’t you?”

Ah. A landmine. I apologize.

“We’re beautiful. We’re wonderful together it’s a joining of souls, a perfect sisterhood, nothing else, I take care of her girls but she isn’t one of those. Not your prurient – the stupid wastes who – malachite dildos!”

Given this tactical misstep (yes, Soju Ayase had said “malachite dildos,” but what anyone anywhere was meant to extrapolate from this was a mystery) she’d either explode or she wouldn’t, and damage control was all that was left. Kyubey backed up a step and considered reweighting “semantics discussion” as a viable tactic.

And Soju Luca clasped her hands in prayer: “Richiamo – Richiamo – my sister, my sister, come back to me –”

Akemi Homura’s Soul Gem ring lit – blared – as Soju Luca’s did on her shoulder, detecting elevated curses in the air. Transformation artifacts intruded, the far-off sound of a hurricane warning klaxon, salt in the frigid sea as it rose over their ankles – which meant Generale Invierno again, a frozen wraith; could Soju Luca compact atmospheric miasma into a cube small enough for a plastic diner cup? Homura, transform!

Akemi Homura wasn’t transforming. She was looking into the twisting spindle of spatial contortion, face ashing.

Homura?

Kyubey looked, and optics registered something black that writhed inside the eye – or was it no color, or something else, a bruise-shade – but its vision went dark as a slender hand closed its eyes with its palm and gripped spider-like, hard enough to distress its hearing and to block its initial sensor ping. It ineffectually batted at this obstruction – Akemi Homura’s hand, of course – with its giant puffy tail, before she hissed “don’t look” and its mimicry of trust in her obliged it to stop. It felt her body shift and heard a very abbreviated whir that became a thin thip.

Then the magic gave out and (two or three seconds later) the hand let go. Soju Luca’s Soul Gem was not just gray or blackening but starting to demonstrate the oily inverse colors of impending full depletion; grief cubes, presumably from her pocket, siphoned off eager little cloud-river streams of contamination. She’d also sprouted a butter knife from her high forehead, buried down to the unornamented rectangle of its hilt; it would have constituted a lethal injury, if there was anything inside her brain but redundancy. A cheery trickle of blood ran down to her long eyelashes and pooled, slowly, a red shadow over her eye.

“I’m on the verge of breaking through,” she said, breathing heavily. “This veil you think will stop me – it’s already falling apart, Incubator. I feel her every time I try, so she’s right there, right? Reaching for me so you won’t shake my true feelings.”

“Leave before I make you.”

“This is your fault. She wouldn’t take herself from me, she wouldn’t. She knows what would happen.” And this – after all of it – produced from Soju Luca not further agonies but a blissful sigh, a rapture that spread across her whole dead face, seeded it with unshed tears, even as Akemi Homura shoved her hand back into the silverware and dug with all five fingers for another impromptu weapon. “If you’ll die without her, if you’re certain to be someone who’ll die without her and break all your stupid fingers and your legs and howl piteously on her carpet, and she loves you, she’ll stay. Don’t you know that, stupid?”

The pink waitress ducked her head around the booth’s corner, still near-fully concealed, said “HEY SO” in a strident customer service voice, and froze. Soju Luca looked back.

No one said anything for five seconds except for two booths down, where someone specified chili fries.

The pivot from deathly stillness to a parodic, clownish mania – a big smile and a head tilted coquettishly to one side; the blood rivulet finally stopped struggling to ford her eye and embarked for the new frontier of her cheek – was so swift that Kyubey almost checked for Soju Ayase’s Soul Gem on her shoulder. “It’s cosplay, dummy!”

“It’s – oh. Yeah. Um. It’s really realistic.”

Akemi Homura had stopped breathing; there was a fork in her hand, which would likely have been more effective than the butter knife. Playing her facade to the hilt, so to speak, Soju Luca struck a little pose Kyubey recognized from a very early Incubator-funded magical girl program: with her back to an imaginary surface she raised an arm, fingers splayed all razzle-dazzle, and let the other hang loose, mouth held lockjaw-bright, with a defiant cast to her neck that turned the knife’s hilt into a unicorn’s horn. “DIY’ed it! Mahou Shoujo Site gets nuts this season!” That pose was Futari wa Precure but this was an admirable improv tack nonetheless.

“Is that – hehehehe. Is that so?” Despite her laughter the waitress’s expression pattern-matched decently to its cached descriptions of deep distress. “I’ll just. Get.”

“Any-way, I was just leaving! Byyyyye, Akemi-san!”

“Get your bread. Okay.”

And Soju Luca did leave, still making a point of tottering – a refusal, maybe, to live inside a body absent Soju Ayase. It bordered on absurd, really, like a six-year-old threatening to hold their breath to the point of asphyxia unless bribed with sugar. Or just dysphoria. Give her back and I’ll be nice, were her parting words. Or I’ll tell the snake. Who knows?

Kyubey flipped the filled grief cubes into its back-hatch and down into the grief reactor, replenishing its negentropic reserves to about 38 years’ worth of continuous operation, then set to cleaning itself with its artificial cabbit tongue in the vague hope that this might resurrect some casual air to the whole interaction.

Akemi Homura watched her go and gripped her hot-pink taser, which both of them knew wouldn’t work on a magical girl, or a wraith, and whose function was decorative, like those cat-ear self-defense keychains that never kept an edge.

Mami never arrived, noted Kyubey.

“...Arai is still coming.”

Oh, your Aracchi?

“Yes. She insisted. I couldn’t think of an explanation.”

You could have asked me, Homura. Kyubey considered this. It’s fortunate that Soju Luca left early, then. I’d prefer not to let her meet your friends.

“...”

I’m surprised you texted her first, though.

“...”

Haven’t you told Mami yet?

“She still barely trusts me.” With tight, practiced motions she dipped a napkin in a glass and began to clean off her hands, removing little specks of spray from Soju Luca’s forehead; among other things, she’d been brain-damaged into someone very deliberate. “I have to go back to living some kind of ordinary life. I can’t, if I’m still confined to house arrest.”

For what it’s worth, this strikes me as exactly the kind of omission that she would disapprove of.

“You have no reason to tell her.”

Kyubey considered this.

“...They’re the only people I know who aren’t magical girls. I need to keep them. You understand.”

Homura, what did Soju Luca do?

“Don’t ask me that.”

With hands cleaned to her satisfaction, from her school bag she produced two thick, royal-purple things like scrunchies, or maybe heavy ribbons, slipped them onto her wrists, and reached back to her hair. Her face was still ashen but her hands were mechanically precise. Akemi Homura pulled three strands from her hair and worked them over-under into a braid, secured them with this purple ribbon, then started to repeat the process on the other side.

You’ve suggested that magical girls once became witches, in the previous timeline. Though I’m unclear on what, precisely, that means. She tried to summon a magical girl and summoned something else. There’s an obvious conclusion to draw, even if I frankly don’t understand what that would mean.

“Don’t,” she repeated, “ask me that.”

That wasn’t a question. I’m considering the information you’ve already given me.

“Stop. Stop talking.”

If Soju Luca has manifested an anomalous source of curses, our situation will be of significantly greater interest to the network. That could very well put you in danger. Kyubey couldn’t object, really, to extra evidence of anomalies in the Law, but it preferred its more sustainable and less fragile source of miracles in Akemi Homura, and Soju Luca had the distinct tension to her of a girl waiting for her window for a double suicide. At the very least, it would have to lure her to a different population center before she detonated.

“You don’t need to know. It’s unnecessary. She’s spiraling, and they never lasted long without each –” Akemi Homura, Kyubey realized, looked sick. She gripped at her wrist with the hand that had held the butter knife, found the red ribbon again, dragged at it, and shook her head like she was trying to dislodge something. Big thick braids went whip whip whip and turned the normally-practiced motion doglike, with more inertia than she’d expected.

I have a responsibility to keep you safe.

“Yes, but that’s not – you shouldn’t act like I’m fragile. I won’t fall apart. I know my responsibilities.” Her eyes were clear, when she looked at it. “I just want to –”

Want what?

“...my glasses. I want my glasses.”

She’d kept them in her bag, as it turned out: dull-red frames that crackled faintly on opening the arms, like they were made of plastic wrap. With them on, Akemi Homura looked like herself; not herself, again, but herself, still. But for Arai Roberta’s sake (though the train was still ten minutes away), she even smiled.

Chapter 18: Senpai Dolars

Summary:

Logistics become pertinent.

Arai Roberta was little and wiry, with close-cropped black hair in an unmaintained equivalent of the pixie cut. Seeing Akemi Homura with her hair in braids did not visibly surprise her; the first thing she said was “congratulations,” in a tone so even that it was almost melodic.

“Congratulations for what?”

“First girlfriend. Break out the – what is it – the red rice, yeah?” A thin sigh. “I don’t like Tomoe much. She thinks money, cake and pasta are a personality. But you picked her out, even though…” She gestured vaguely at herself, or at nothing, or possibly at her necklace, which ended in a simple silver cross. “Even though. So, congrats.”

“...thank you, then.”

Akemi Homura was a poor actress and only a competent liar, and that was on the strength of her grasp of facts, rather than any control of her tone or affect. (She’d had a notable deficit in that field even before the Law’s hand altered her neurology.) She didn’t force a stammer or try politer modes of address for Arai Roberta or inject any extra cheer into her distant smile; for her part, Arai Roberta seemed content to sit with her limited understanding. The waiter quietly asked if Akemi Homura was alright, after that other girl who was just, you know, and got a passable non-answer about cosplay.

During the date, though, she misjudged her distance to the tableware thrice, and Kyubey realized (with decent confidence) that she’d let her vision-maintenance enchantment lapse. Twenty minutes’ practice wasn’t enough to re-acclimate to the cheap semi-prescription lenses, the kind they sold on rotating racks in certain chains rather than at an optometrist’s, so she was scrabbling back towards baseline. For a poor actress she’d committed surprisingly hard to verisimilitude. It subtly guided her towards a spoon via eye contact and telepathic guidance, and was acknowledged with a sniff.

They both had coffee milkshakes and shared a side of fries, and talked about Tomoe Mami (Akemi Homura failed to clarify that they were not dating), and Nomura Taeko, and surrealists and collage and Rothko, and a semi-shared interest in ballet. (Kyubey ate a fry and noted its salt and fat content.) Akemi Homura’s remote-payment app – years out of date – failed to clear at the register, so Arai Roberta paid with a handful of retrograde yen bills. No one used the name Madoka besides Kyubey.

“Congrats,” said Arai Roberta again, and left for the train. Kyubey ran ahead a few feet and discreetly disposed of the butter knife – dislodged and left on the sidewalk – before anyone could see it. Afterwards Akemi Homura reapplied the maintenance enchantment in a scenic tree park, Soul Gem held at head-height in its full Faberge egg form, like she was inspecting it for errors. Lavender light flattened her pupils into mirrors, momentarily, before she returned her Gem to its collapsible ring state. The rain had cleared, and the air was fresh enough to raise property values.

I’d suggest that you allow me to tell Mami about Soju Luca, Kyubey said, from a park bench.

Akemi Homura stopped mid-stride. Explain, she said, which was a step up from immediate refusal, at least.

She feels insecure when she’s excluded from the social dynamics of her juniors; it makes her feel like a distant authority figure, rather than a friend, and so she lashes out and exercises that authority. It’s not very rational of her, but that’s who she is.

“Giving her further reasons to distrust us won’t solve that. What purpose is this supposed to serve?”

As-is, she doesn’t extend either of us much benefit of the doubt. But if Mami believes that I’ll inform her of your activities when you try to hide them, she’ll feel included, and trust me more, as an ally in curtailing your self-destructive habits – maybe enough to delegate her duties as chaperone to me, sometimes. Which would give us greater operational latitude to hunt down your bow. Kyubey scratched its ear with the prosthetic foot; the brass drifted over its ablative fur like a knife skittering across body armor. It also reduces the emotional-mental overhead costs of maintaining a significant lie.

Akemi Homura, pulling at her not-yet-undone braid, gave this due consideration. “It doesn’t have to be you. I could tell her.”

I doubt she’d take you as a believable informant on yourself, Homura.

“But she might take me as an informant on you. You’re just as much on suicide watch as I am, Miss Kyubey.”

This struck it as rather ridiculous on its face, as objections went – or possibly a sign of Akemi Homura’s odd self-esteem, that she rated herself as equivalent to an Incubator terminal in value. Whether that’s the case or not, you’re a human being, and known to all of us to make more emotionally-driven decisions than I do. It’s only sensible that she’d worry more about you than about me. Though maybe it was just a referendum on her perceptions of Tomoe Mami, who did measurably have an anxious attachment style.

“Let me consider it. The admission will still matter, for at least a few hours.”

At the very least, this did end the conversation for a time. They walked home on wet pavements. For a deprecated, inadmissible dossier, Kyubey’s Akemi Homura notes were getting rather thick.

“Oh,” said Akemi Homura.

Yes?

“You’re… just admitting how you’re planning to manipulate Mami.” There was no obvious tone of judgment in her voice – at worst, maybe, there was a note of surprise.

I suppose you could call it ‘manipulation,’ it said. While emotive species’ behavior is unpredictable enough that I’m frequently surprised, my model of her psychology is robust enough to influence her towards particular outcomes which I believe will be to both our benefit. Don’t humans try to get better outcomes by knowing how others work?

“...We do.”

Do you object?

“I don’t.”

Another block passed.

“We didn’t actually come back to this. Do you like being called Miss Kyubey?”

For once, the answer came easily. It makes me happy to hear you say it.

---

Magical girls seldom coped well with attrition; as training data went, it was a near-proven fact. Conditioned by the constant slow-boil existential struggle of wraith extermination and the need to draw on intense emotion for magic, they tended to slice their time thinly, in seconds or (optimistically) days, and plan around decisive action as their standard problem-solving methodology. Under significant, active pressure, any magical girl might discover a secret well of spite or desperation to tap and in so doing achieve a kind of brief practical divinity, limited only by her magic and how far she could stretch her wish’s native remit.

But in attritional warfare, anxiety – the slow self-sustaining compounding of doubt over time via informational asymmetry – killed as well as any outright assault, by way of depletion or the absence of logistical support or simple stress-induced sloppiness, and left no gaps to exploit in return. That was why the network used quarantines to handle epistemic hazards. Even with an adequate wraith population to harvest, veterans would recognize the diminishing returns to their magic reserves – the psychic toll of a forever guerrilla war without peace or surrender, with their support systems turned firmly against them – and make the reasonable decision.

The card had declined at the diner because Kyubey’s operational account had been frozen. Akemi Homura’s state-subsidized apartment, mere hours after she’d left, abruptly wasn’t, per a foreclosure notice pasted over her doorhole, in incongruously cheerful red on sepia paper, and several backdated emails.

Per the Japanese government’s records, she’d tripped an alert for several missed payments and had received both electronic and print communication to that effect. Partially true, insofar as she’d never consciously paid rent before, but by Akemi Homura’s expression – still staid, eyes barely wider, but Kyubey had assembled a working model of her most obvious tells for shock – it suspected that this had never, in one-hundred-eight lifetimes, come up. For all her flexibility tactically, she had some logistical blind spots – it was entirely possible that Akemi Homura hadn’t registered this as the de facto eviction it was. It would be hard to broach the topic of hiring a U-Haul, or equivalent delivery service, for her personal items. But they’d have to find a direct contact for one before the internet got shut off, or else sponge at a café for Wi-Fi.

When they reached Tomoe Mami’s apartment to debrief, she was planted on her couch, with a small dessert buffet distributed across six plastic plates on the coffee table. Her flatscreen was paused on a single frame of Sakura Kyouko, depicted in her ordinary clothes, driving a blurry fist into a blurry ATM with a miraculously hi-res face, detailed down to the Pocky clenched between her teeth. IF SEEN PLEASE REPORT TO, read the newsreel caption, with an easy-to-memorize phone number appended, a string of mostly 9s. Kyus, in Japanese.

“This must have been years ago,” she said, which – in fairness – wasn’t an unreasonable theory, given her knowledge of Sakura Kyouko’s finances and ethics. “Why are they calling attention to it now?”

“Does it matter?” Akemi Homura flipped her hair, turning her face away. “She’s been dealing with mundane police for years, and Mitakihara’s law enforcement aren’t especially competent to deal with magical girls.”

“Can’t you even try to sympathize, Akemi-san?”

Our operational funds have been frozen, contributed Kyubey. I’m afraid that Homura can no longer afford her apartment, given the raised rent. It might be difficult to spare Kyouko that focus, given the situation.

“What?” This at least drew her attention from the TV. “How much is your –”

“I don’t know,” said Akemi Homura, and turned her head away, cheeks a faint, dull red. “The stipend paid for it before.”

“Then…” Tomoe Mami’s hands fluttered. “Oh, Akemi-san. I – shall I make sachertorte?”

After that, they decided more or less without coordination to move Akemi Homura into Tomoe Mami’s spare room. Given its access to the network’s cloud computation to predict the Tokyo Stock Exchange (up until a few weeks ago, when it had been revoked), Tomoe Mami’s inheritance was sizable and secure against legal inquiry. Kyubey had even handled her taxes longhand, and had written records as proof against an audit. Funny, that she’d been the network’s most important local asset for years, such that it had made her little, scenic apartment into Mitakihara’s last redoubt for magical girls, when by a chance alignment of circumstance she’d ceased to matter as anything except an instrument.

Tomoe Mami’s reaction to the decision, while controlled, was worryingly positive. On three separate occasions while helping them find a U-Haul, she hid a smile behind her fingers or the fridge’s door, though she looked guilty after making eye contact with Kyubey and recognizing it; she sang in the shower that evening, too, Libiamo ne' lieti calici in her lilting, over-pronounced mezzo-soprano. Under stressful conditions, Kyubey had no objections to Tomoe Mami finding happiness where she could to stave off magic depletion, but Akemi Homura struck it as incompatible with an ideal of cheerful, cooperative cohabitation, like Sakura Kyouko still was (hence the working homelessness). Singing at an eviction would do their relationship no favors.

It was admittedly convenient to have Akemi Homura around, for the next few days. Social services sent a slender, conventionally attractive early-thirties gentleman in a suit with a box of temiyage cupcakes and a smile that said nothing. On his way upstairs, they coordinated an ambush – a spiderweb of camouflaged ribbons at ankle-height by the elevator’s doors – but he took the stairs instead, and they all had to scramble to compensate, Kyubey invisibly watching from his shoulder and telepathically tracking his location.

He’d made it two steps across the threshold of the apartment by the time soft palms closed over his eyes, and he was surprisingly resistant to the amnestic trance that was Akemi Homura’s remaining magical asset. She took ten minutes to implant the ghost image of a functionally parented household (while the other magical girls and Kyubey coached her through what this might look like, trying to avoid an implausible cartoon version of domesticity), and two more to redact the instant of terror he’d felt as the magic began to core out his memories.

They sent him off at a stumble to his nice car. It wouldn’t do much, given the network could edit records to indicate a need for immediate intervention, but the nice thing about human bureaucracies was their inefficiency. After all, the network had interfered heavily with social services organizations to malfunction at all turns, to ensure that orphans would rely more heavily on their Kyubeys – even with substantial bribes, they couldn’t turn on a dime, so to speak. If the social worker began to suspect he’d undergone some kind of psychotic break for the duration of their visit, it could only compound the slowness of that mill’s grind.

And to her credit, after a few days, Tomoe Mami picked up on some opaque nonverbal cue, and designated a private square for her new housemate. She’d matured enough to recognize when she had to offer space – or maybe having another resident under her roof, subject to her care, made her gracious in victory. Certainly she hadn’t given up on walkies, though Sakura Kyouko talked her out of the leash, finally.

Her few feet of balcony became Akemi Homura’s, suited as it was to her particular issues. Mitakihara’s cool night air calmed her nerves and the low railings left ample room for her wings should they become necessary. It was the least secure space in an apartment designed for security, and so suited a magical girl whose traumatic neurological alteration had made her a paranoiac about bindings, enclosures and hugs. Tomoe Mami even brought out a sleeping bag, manufactured without ribbon binds, and a space heater for the evenings, and strung up fairy-lights on invisible ribbons with the tensile strength of tungsten to ablate gunfire – something Tomoe Mami enlisted Kyubey to talk her into, which it did, knowing that the apartment’s height was no real proof against an ambush. On an edge, Kyubey confirmed, she seems less on edge.

“I’m sure you’ll help her to stay warm,” said Tomoe Mami, and smiled in her particular way that might’ve been wistful or might’ve been giving up.

It helped that there was the shield, the material focus for Rovina i Ponti, its briefcase daisy-chained to the radiator, with its ribbons reinforced until they sprouted cheerful milk-white flowers from stress. The distrust this suggested didn’t seem to be an issue for anyone involved. With no external schedule to conform to and little reason to go out besides for school, Akemi Homura began work in earnest: she bought a much cheaper holoprojector to turn Tomoe Mami’s window into a diagram and assembled six new byzantine clockworks in a few sleepless evenings, none of which worked. Kyubey, still under mandatory supervision, tracked her failed designs in the magic development section of her dossier, though mostly for its own benefit – none of Mitakihara’s magical girls liked the sensation of telepathy-to-video translation, so it couldn’t do anything but make corrections.

No progress could be made – by definition. But it was something for her to do. As a bonus it tracked her texts and helped her compose answers to the ones that mattered, i.e., from her friends who weren’t magical girls, for whom she had kept up a well-sustained kayfabe. Over text, they simulated an anodyne version of Akemi Homura roughly in keeping with the one who came to the art club, dating a rich, lonely upperclassman who dragged her away at odd hours (the upperclassman in question reported even sharper looks from Nomura Taeko, and on one occasion an attempt to corner her in a girl’s bathroom). With their efforts pooled, they made a convincing lesbian. Akemi Homura attended most club meetings for only half- or quarter-durations, but even before the Law she’d been a magical girl; absenteeism was a natural consequence of the work. Sometimes she returned home still wearing her glasses.

They talked more about Kaname Madoka, while they worked. Getting-to-know-you gave way to a surprisingly complex expertise. They talked statistics – unaugmented, no human could meaningfully match an Incubator for precise data collection and trend prediction, but Akemi Homura had retained shocking amounts of data, considering she had to hold it all in her head. Kaname Madoka had spent most of her wishes on resurrecting the dead, human or animal; as a runner-up, massive restorations of urban infrastructure; ten separate times, for strawberry cake, though she’d never developed any kind of sugar magic from it, thematics washed out by her overwhelming karma like stains drowned in bleach. Despite her self-assessment as a coward the supermajority of her deaths had happened after she ran towards danger, heedless of any warnings – sometimes without even making a contract. She hated the sight of blood but could kill when she had to, and had never depleted herself by murder, putting her in the upper percentiles of magical girl psychological resilience.

Do you admire her for it, Homura?

It was an innocent question, but not a welcome one. Akemi Homura stiffened.

“I hate that she had to,” she said, which wasn’t an answer. But it was information, at least.

Silence, again, optimistically companionable. Kyubey responded with a smiling emoji to a text from Nomura Taeko, which was not a lie because a smiling emoji was largely devoid of unambiguous meaning.

“I’ve killed,” said Akemi Homura.

Oh? She’d said so, but apparently it hadn’t been meant to believe her.

“Not – often. Specific magical girls. Mikuni Oriko, usually.” A prognosticator, per local contractee records, who had met Mitakihara’s magical girls only once, dismissed them out of hand over the course of a very confusing conversation, then moved. An instantaneity regulator flicked back and forth between Akemi Homura’s fingers, passive to active to passive again, setting the surrounding gears to whir. “Unpredictable elements. Dangerous to everyone. So I did it… neatly. Painlessly.”

For Madoka?

“Of course! I wouldn’t just –” She closed her mouth.

Well, of course not.

“You won’t judge me. You won’t judge Madoka, either. I wouldn’t have said anything otherwise. I know you don’t – care.” This sounded, to its admittedly-poor understanding, something less than certain, though it was of course – in a certain sense – true.

I of course disapprove of magicide, as a general rule, said Kyubey. But I have no reason to believe you’d do such a thing arbitrarily. In any case, I’m more or less incapable of moral judgment. In the interest of honesty, it continued on: Though, independent of that, it would be preferable if you’d never been put in that position in the first place.

“It was necessary. I couldn’t just leave her.”

She would have done that much damage?

“More than – more than I can explain.”

Kyubey updated its Mikuni Oriko dossier to note the risk of interacting with her. She knew you could go back in time? It couldn’t imagine anyone presenting a meaningful threat to Akemi Homura otherwise.

A nod.

Then she should have recognized the consequences of her actions. Kyubey shrugged. She knew you would remember, even if she didn’t.

Akemi Homura’s breath hitched. They went back to working in silence.

It wondered if Kaname Madoka could’ve been relied on when it came to Mikuni Oriko. She seemed a contradiction – fragile and unbreakable all at once, innocent and infinitely agentic. She could have done it. Akemi Homura had done it instead, without divinity, innocence or infinite agency, or anything much besides a handgun, and then confessed it. Kyubey imagined that talking might help.

That was its only recourse, as the network began to tighten its intangible noose: things that might help. Magical girls could benefit psychologically from counting little victories, in conditions like these. Bagged marshmallows toasted over a magical fire on the rooftop. Headpats and cuddles and unthreatening pet-like affection. Passing history exams with flower-marks drawn on them. Kyubey wasn’t quite so naive as to literally enumerate these – workplace management strategies had limited effects when used on middle schoolers, particularly cynical ones – but it kept records of them as reminders, for later, counterpoints to whatever the network promised when austerity became too much. Tokens to spend.

Because it needed these wins. Attrition killed without vectors. Mitakihara’s magical girls would either sacrifice Kyubey, rationally, or return to the Law’s embrace, irrationally. The network foreclosed on other possibilities before they arose: that was what it was for. But Kyubey couldn’t allow Akemi Homura to die, so it needed something to give her that wasn’t her bow. Something to sustain her until she achieved stability again.

Fortunately, Kaname Junko, the mother of God, was alive, and hale, and lived in a classically Mitakiharan suburban household – all glass and light – with her husband, Kaname Tomohisa, and her son, Kaname Tatsuya. It really should have searched for the name earlier. She had a LinkedIn.

Notes:

Minor Mami edits made.

Chapter 19: Strangers with Kindness

Summary:

Meet the modern Mitakiharan family!

From a counter in God’s house, Kyubey watched Kaname Tomohisa dice vegan summer sausage into a pan.

He was an average enough man for his age and household income bracket, verging on the anodyne. Short-haired, soft-faced, neither overworked nor understimulated, with money that made money; his karmic potential hovered in the lower-middle range (within standard variance, controlling for gender, finances and psychosexual development), matured and inert. He winced at the brief hiss of Kyubey’s paw, pressed experimentally against the heated pan, but subsequent pupil-dilation and saccade tracking suggested with decent confidence that he would not trace the steam or smell of dying cells back to its source.

They’d made an outing of Kyubey’s gift to Akemi Homura – their first since Miki Sayaka, really. Akemi Homura turned down Kyubey’s offer to coauthor a lie, citing unnecessary logistical complexity, and just asked.

It wasn’t Kyubey’s preferred way to handle things. Best practices suggested reconnaissance prior to making first contact – if Akemi Homura’s fondness for the Kanames unexpectedly curdled under stress, it might push her closer to the edge of depletion rather than further from it. But with one piddly terminal it couldn’t risk going alone. Without a viable contract as an excuse to investigate, asking for help might not sit well with Tomoe Mami or Sakura Kyouko, with whom it still needed at least the semblance of a working relationship, until it or they died. Incubator terminals accused of stalking seldom lasted long.

Small victories, at least. Technically, what Akemi Homura had said was “I’m ready to offer a negotiable payment for assistance with this,” eyes just a little averted, which was not strictly speaking asking for help, but it was still progress that she was capable of it when no one was about to die.

“This is about your come-to-Jesus girl?” Sakura Kyouko huffed air through her nose in a half-laugh. “Madoka something?”

“Yes. She’s not – why are you calling her that?”

“Forget it. Give me your commuter pass and we’ll call it square. Mitaki’s walkable if you’re starting from a decent neighborhood, and you don’t go anywhere but to class and back now.”

“Done.”

“Mami, if you can’t think of anything, ask for –”

“I’d appreciate it if you prepared dinner, with enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow, Akemi-san,” interrupted Tomoe Mami. “Something simple would be preferable, given our grocery situation.”

Kyubey had made a few predictions about Tomoe Mami’s likeliest objections to their plan, mostly her safety concerns and dislike of dishonesty, and they’d workshopped some responses and relevant bribes. Cooking, one of maybe-three hobbies that her contract hadn’t abraded away like lye erasing fingerprints, had not figured into it. Is that really all you want, Mami?

“Can you cook, Miss Kyubey?”

I have a complex understanding of organic chemistry, though my sense of taste isn’t exactly comparable to yours.

“Then, yes. That’s all I want. You can keep her company, if that's what you'd like to contribute.”

“...you’re alright with this?” asked Akemi Homura.

Tomoe Mami sighed. “You’re smart girls, not four-year-olds.” (Kyubey’s terminal and heuristic set had seen about three years and six months of operation, so this was semantically correct, if not particularly satisfying.) “I do enjoy cooking for others, but I don’t have exclusive rights to it, and I honestly wouldn’t want them if I did!”

“If there are instructions to follow, I can do it,” said Akemi Homura. “I haven’t cooked for myself very often.”

“Well, then, if I recall correctly, we still have the ingredients for a simple keema curry. There’s a page from a recipe book on one of the flip-cards inside the cabinet.”

“It won’t be good.” Before anyone could object: “That’s not an unreasonable request. I’ve assented to it already and I’ll carry it out to the best of my ability. I just – I don’t want you to expect anything, Mami.”

Tomoe Mami’s hand raised, fractionally, before she returned it to her side. “I don’t, particularly. Just don’t try to wheedle out of it.”

“I will. Thank you, Mami.” Akemi Homura’s voice was a little thin.

“If this is what you need, Akemi-san, then it’s fine.”

They’d had no pretext and no ideas to bridge the gap, and anyway Kyubey hadn’t intended more than the briefest contact between the Kanames and Akemi Homura, as proof that they existed and that she wasn’t delusional. That was all it had staged: a moment’s contact in a park where the family took its constitutionals. Kaname Tatsuya had barely enough karma to see Kyubey, so it had played Shetland sheepdog and herded him over, rattling its golden rings like bells to catch his eye; from that shaky ground they’d get pleasantries, at most.

But Kaname Junko had recognized them, albeit by uniform first and name second. As it turned out, her natural black hair, spotty attendance record and post-lobotomy personality change had made Akemi Homura a repeat topic of discussion for Saotome Kazuko, her homeroom teacher, who – unbeknownst to any of them – drank and gossiped with Kaname Junko upwards of thrice a month.

She’d offered a meal as, really, a naked bribe – she’d been a busybody about her daughters’ friends, a trait that survived the retroactive negation of the daughter. But three orphans with no jobs or capacity to get them had precious little psychological leeway to reject nice meals from a competent adult with few reasons to exploit them. Tomoe Mami had been curious, even, about Kaname Madoka’s family; to her understanding its central component had been snipped out of it by Akemi Homura’s magic. So they’d taken the bribe, and gone to a strange woman’s house for dinner.

Akemi Homura – never the most comfortable with children – was nevertheless with Kaname Tatsuya at the dining table, playing some kind of holoprojected phone game with inexpert, ticcy hand motions. At the sound of its cells cooking she shot Kyubey a look that it didn’t know how to interpret, given it couldn’t imagine her rationally disapproving of mild, reparable self-harm, then hissed at a retro bleep sound and returned her attention to her cat-eared video game sniper, poorly firing pink bullets at pink targets.

From the other room, past three layers of attention-responsive smart-glass, separated from the kitchen by a palm tree in the outer garden – a breed that was prohibitively expensive to transplant, Kyubey thought – there came music, and snatches of uncertain laughter. Kaname Junko; Tomoe Mami; Sakura Kyouko. They had cider, hard and soft, and takeout from an upscale bar called Creazione di Adamo, with prices none of Mitakihara’s magical girls could afford with their luxury budget.

Given how easily magical girls’ bodies purged chemical dependencies, and the short-term psychological benefits of alcohol as a stress outlet, Kyubey had little reason to discourage them from drinking the hard stuff if they took an interest. Though it was unclear if anyone would care – at some point after establishing Miss Kyubey it had noticed a slow but steady ablation of its authority. Maybe, as a floppy, freshly-mortal thing defined primarily by its mental illness, a lack of respect came with the territory. Do you want anything to drink, Homura?

I’m fine.

“Would you like anything to tide you over, Akemi-san?”

“No, thank you, Kaname-san.”

“You’re very focused. Do you play this game often?”

Out of pink bullets, the video game sniper resorted to a green knife, which would apply a negative multiplier to his final score if used against pink targets. Kaname Tatsuya, aware of this, jostled Akemi Homura’s arm and pointed at an ammunition box (pink). “Get it,” he told her.

Akemi Homura indicated the pit between the sniper and the ammunition box. “I can’t get it.”

“Jump!”

“What jumps?”

“The jump button!”

“They’re not labeled.”

“It has an arrow that’s up!”

All ammunition despawned as the round ended. The sniper’s cat ears flattened beneath the judgment of a scoreboard, and a COLOR MISMATCH x0.70 multiplier more or less undid his meager victories entirely. Kaname Tatsuya made a sound of pleasantly un-nuanced frustration.

“Do you have siblings, Akemi-san?” The vegan summer sausage went on a plate, for later incorporation into hors d’oeuvres. “Tatsuya doesn’t usually get along with strangers so easily.”

The perfect absence of visible feeling with which Akemi Homura received this compliment went into her dossier, tied by hypertext to Kaname Tatsuya’s child-size POI profile. “No,” she said, queueing up the next round for her cat sniper with a purchased upgrade. “I’m an only child. What am I supposed to do if my bullets aren’t color-matched?”

“Get more knives,” said Kaname Tatsuya.

At this juncture the conversation died. Kaname Tomohisa moved on to slicing miniature sourdough slices as small plates for the vegan summer sausage. Warm light filtered badly through the palm tree’s canopy and cast them all into an odd, spotty gloom, despite the soft LEDs of the cooktop and the kitchen island.

Kyubey had accompanied Akemi Homura to a house party, once, in the earliest stages of her novel-experience kick. She’d been invited by a fashionable black-haired girl with a reputation for being kind to otaku, and suppressed her reflexive urge to read the invitation as pity, even though it had been.

Playing her minder and stress ball with equanimity, Kyubey had finished off her spiked punch after she got scared and observed her abortive attempts to talk to girls her age, making note of their negligible karmic indices and unsuitability as recruits. She’d never left the kitchenette, or talked to her black-haired girl – only strangers with nice clothes that had left that girl’s orbit to briefly cry or vomit or cook eggs, tourists to the social periphery where Akemi Homura lived, and would remain in once the party ended.

Training data approximated a memory. Most magical girls who made contracts at house parties – though, did this qualify as a party? – did it in kitchens, or in unlit bathrooms’ empty tubs. Statistically, wherever visibility was at its worst, where the terminals’ ablative fur could reflect starkly in the half-light. Like snow fairies, or angels, some of them had said; purer things, sexless, with cool odorless bodies. Infinitely approachable, expecting nothing but your soul, unambiguous like humans never were.

“You’re bad at this,” declared Kaname Tatsuya, making his final assessment. “You look cool, but you’re really bad.”

“I don’t play video games.”

“Madoka is lots better.”

Cabbity manipulators splayed, and the terminal’s internal sensor arrays opened like flowers, monitoring variation in Kaname Tatsuya’s own karmic index: mostly still toddler-indeterminate but soon to calcify under the weight of culture, with the same nth-color ribbons exhibited by every other member of his species.

God was not present, in him or in Akemi Homura. God had not been present the last time he’d said it, either, in the park. One of its reactor batteries – cannibalized for extra computational capacity – had not been enough to capture the Law.

“I’m sure she is,” agreed Akemi Homura.

At some point its model of her, already less than robust, had failed. She hadn’t so much as touched Kaname Tatsuya’s sketchbook, still sitting next to the tin of pink crayons that were all worn down to nubbins. She’d seen at least two drawings of Kaname Madoka in full dress, filtered through the memory and dexterity of a child, but still apparently representative, and then left them. (Both were now committed to internal storage and tagged to the relevant dossier, high-resolution snapshots eating into Kyubey’s system memory, rendered down to the little coral grains left behind on the page.) Somehow, Kaname Madoka’s name in a direct genetic relative’s mouth was less potent a symbol than a bow. Or of less interest than a phone game.

I really don’t understand, it tried.

What is there to understand?

Homura, do you really mean that? Silence passed for an answer. I heard him say ‘Madoka,’ just like you did.

Kaname Junko might have said it, in passing. She mentioned that if she’d had – Her telepathic packet, unfinished, cut off there while she fired more pink bullets. The name came up. Maybe he overheard her and reused it. Children Tatsuya’s age repeat things without knowing what they mean.

There are drawings of her in a magical girl costume.

“Junko tells me you’ve been living alone?” asked Kaname Tomohisa.

There are drawings of a girl. Crayon drawings. There’s nothing to identify it as her besides a frilly dress and pink crayon, and his hair’s pink already, so it’s just as likely his favorite color as anything. He’s her little brother, not a magical girl. “As long as I can recall, Kaname-san.”

“To be honest, I’ve always wondered about the state ward program – an old friend went through it when we were in high school, but we’ve fallen out of contact since. Was there a transitional period before you could be emancipated?”

That’s exactly why I’m confused. I’d theorized that your time travel magic is what keeps your memories of Kaname Madoka’s timeline inviolate, or that she’d required a specific Soul Gem in close proximity to her ascension to modify (still no explanation of the starry place, but if the Law cared about Akemi Homura’s proximity to a depletion, Kyubey had hypothesized that it had only been able to alter her because she’d been there, wherever there was), but Tatsuya couldn’t have made a wish, in this history or in any previous, without significant alterations to his body and mind.

“A month. They streamline it when there’s a financial need.” Yes. I don’t know anything either.

I know you haven’t altered any of the Kaname family’s memories, so who else could be responsible?

I don’t know. Neither of us understands magic well enough to explain it.

“You must have worked hard, Akemi-san.”

You’re a member of an emotive species, Homura. More or less by definition, you understand better than I do.

“I think that means less than you think.” Which, judging by a brief wide-eyed look that crossed her face, she’d intended to send via telepathy. On-screen, the cat-eared sniper sustained gunfire from his(?) cat rival and died, and Akemi Homura used a two-fingered shortcut to dispel the holographic keyboard halfway through a sonorous mission-failure chime.

“...How do you mean?”

“Excuse me, I need to wash my face,” she said, then stood and left the kitchen, course set to the stairs up to the second floor. To his credit, Kaname Tomohisa didn’t sound more than faintly confused when he called after her to tell her where the washroom was.

---

“– the egg monologue,” said Kaname Junko, with the other two seated around her as the points in a loose triangle, “is staged.”

“No!”

“It’s her fallback!” She gestured with a glass of cider, her meaning unclear, barely not spilling a drop; by the estimated BAC her drinking so far would suggest, it was actually fairly impressive as a demonstration of dexterity. “Kazuko only talks about sunny-side versus over-easy versus et cetera when she’s out of actual complaints about her boyfriends, and most of those are already played up. She says it puts her students at ease if they think she’s a little odd. Plus she’s the first name that pops into anyone’s head for relationship consulting.”

Tomoe Mami laughed, neither her rehearsed bell-like laugh nor the slightly bitter little chuckle Kyubey knew was a bad sign, but something soft-edged, maybe shocked. Scandalized. “A whole year in her homeroom, and I never realized. I didn’t even know she reused them! Doesn’t anyone compare notes between years?”

“She’s been in education long enough that I figure she’s doing what works. Not to mention, with all the stories I’ve heard about this particular batch – oh, Homura-chan!” (By dint of the house’s layout, the only route from kitchen to second floor required cutting through the island of light and music centered on Kaname Junko.) Does your classmate Nakazawa ever go by his full legal name, or does he use a nickname, or just Nakazawa?”

Akemi Homura ducked her head slightly and broke eye contact. “It’s Fuusanrou. But I only know from the duty roster.”

“Nakazawa! I’ve heard so many Nakazawa stories. Gave her no end of grief, once, and now he’s a sweet kid on track for med school.”

Was that something she should’ve kept private? It fit the pattern of information Akemi Homura had told it not to repeat, at least, but Kaname Junko – haloed by her smart walls’ power-efficient, ethical backlight – seemed divorced from teenagers’ ethical standards. For that matter, most adults didn’t bring strange children home to enjoy fake alcohol.

“Poor kid,” muttered Sakura Kyouko, sincerity indeterminate, and set down her can of soft cider. “This’s been great, but –” Her plate remained incongruously full.

“If you’re going, Kyouko-chan, you could at least let me box up your meal.”

“Mami’ll take it.”

“I’d love to, if you don’t mind my borrowing Tupperware, Kaname-san. I’ll wash and return it, of course!” Tomoe Mami covered her mouth. “To think a bar could have such nice fusion cuisine. I’d always pictured them as just serving drinks. Salt snacks, maybe.”

“A bar with decent meals is a godsend for adults.”

“You should –” Tomoe Mami started, then stopped. “Do you… want to join us, Akemi-san?” I’m not entirely clear on what you wanted from the Kanames, but we’ve already brokered our deal, Miss Akemi. You’ve already proven you’re capable of asking for help. You can ask again.

I only wanted to check in on them. I can’t – I’m not prepared for this.

For dinner?

…For her not knowing me.

In context this was contradictory – hypocritical, maybe – but rather than litigate it, as Kyubey imagined she might, Tomoe Mami sighed (telepathically) and turned back to Kaname Junko with a radiant smile. “Akemi-san works very hard at her club, and I’m afraid she’s been pulling more all-nighters than she ought to complete her latest project. So you’ve caught us at an unfortunate time, Kaname-san. I apologize.”

Kaname Junko gave her a look. “So close that you don’t need words, huh?” Which evinced from Tomoe Mami an honest-to-goodness laugh of a type that – Kyubey recognized – had been vanishingly rare lately. This was, viably-relatedly, the longest conversation she’d had with any adult since the hypnotized social worker. “I’d still be happy to have you with your head in your phone, Homura-chan,” added Kaname Junko. “As long as it’s not in your rice. I’ve got no room to complain, considering how often I did that to my parents.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll save you something, then.”

“It’s – that’s not necessary. I’m cooking, aren’t I?”

Tomoe Mami smiled. “We can rain-check that. I’d hate to have you miss out just because you’re not feeling well. And I hope you’ll join us later.”

She hadn’t had adults around. Most magical girls didn’t get to keep those relationships, with involved parents or idealistic meddler teachers or anyone not bound to their side by a wish or existential combat. Those that Incubator doctrine couldn’t sever– the emancipated magical girl was an optimal asset for direct network management – simple secrecy often could; for a species whose society focused so heavily on the cultivation of trust, even between strangers, magical girls in their bubble-society of desensitized teenage killers learned distrust fast and applied it liberally, and on net their parents responded in kind or were left behind. And in a world with no adults, Incubators, with their nothing personalities, naturally became amalgams of parent and child, or housepet and friend, optimized for productive parasociality.

Kyubey had been Tomoe Mami’s closest – arguably, her only – friend, and Kyubey preferred that she live even now; she had the memeplex of Miss Kyubey inside her head just as much as Akemi Homura did. Its project, its isolated abstraction, its self, perpetuated into eternity by every memory of the Incubator terminal that had called itself Miss. But cultivating that relationship was no longer a worthwhile use of its limited time and resources. The same Pascal’s Wager that made Akemi Homura into a utility monster, deserving of Kyubey’s sole attention, had left Tomoe Mami adrift. It looked at her, imagined bridging the gap and could not find a way to square its disparate values. Or a reason it should want to, either.

Kaname Junko would be a useful emotional crutch, if allowed a position in Tomoe Mami’s life. Here, surrounded by smart-glass and modernist furniture, it had expected her to be alienated – she’d chosen furniture that was all soft and colorful for her own apartment – but instead she was making her old exaggerated Italian gestures, and turning to meet Kaname Junko’s gaze like a sunflower followed the sun. Fetching drinks. Telling stories about the Luigi Marzioli Museum of Weapons, which she’d last visited as a single-digiter. A child, for once; not the oldest, for once.

She’d found someone caring enough to dedicate herself to a teenager living off a trust fund and her roommate’s part-time work and pseudo-discreet ATM robberies, and embedded enough in local and international finance that a network decapitation would be costly for their Japanese operations. Someone – Kyubey had an odd, disconnected thought, an inferential leap with no clear origin – who gave Tomoe Mami an excuse to act like a person who she wanted to be anyway. Who only made her tell lies she liked.

Kyubey, she asked, do you care if I save you anything? A tick. Miss Kyubey. Apologies. She sounded less perturbed than she had when she’d last made that mistake.

I’d appreciate it. Eating helped Kyubey keep up the illusion of personhood. It waved with one ear as Akemi Homura departed at the other side of the kitchen.

“Mami-chan,” said Kaname Junko, below the hearing of bodies not designed for information-gathering, “Wanting to protect someone isn’t strange, but it’s not wrong to ask for a little reciprocity –”

The rest of the Kaname household was like the rest of Mitakihara, and it wasn’t. At the base of the stairs, they passed a lamp installation with an internal structure like coral, or an inverted jellyfish, but everything else was swallowed up in a sea of minimalist paneling, dull golds and neutral non-institutional greens in silver borders. Past the showroom-style of the first floor, the riotous glass and smart-paintings and the indoor garden with its palm tree and cherry tomatoes in neat rows, Kyubey found that the upstairs resembled the staff-only backrooms at the Mitakihara mall more than anything else, with a view of the downstairs and little else. They passed a sleek, sliding bathroom door that popped an inch open at a brush of Akemi Homura’s hand – she’d held it against the left wall for a time – then retracted, as if in recognition of a misread cue.

They went to Kaname Madoka’s room, instead.

It was not a museum or a shrine. There were no obvious artifacts, no magical anomalies, no real decorations. Kaname Madoka’s room was a guest room or a storage space; Kaname Madoka’s room was a misnomer. These floorboards had never felt her weight. The curtains were neutrally-colored display pieces. A futon, not a bed, against the inside walls. Cardboard boxes in one corner, and more beneath the single window, labeled things like camera and kotatsu and borrowed from Rikimaru-sensei - return by OCT 3. Chairs in stacks, like a school auditorium. Incongruous crayon-marks on one wall sat at Kaname Tatsuya-height and had no obvious symbolic meaning, making them likely to be noise. Kyubey crossed, artificial foot first, and nothing numinous happened.

Akemi Homura’s first step was slow, by comparison, and she took and released a breath to cross – wasn’t there a common superstition about holding one’s breath to avoid being struck by lightning? – but over the next two or three she registered an absence of bequests or cleverly-hidden ontological traps and equalized to Kyubey’s own level of caution. Given she seemed uninterested in sitting, it commandeered the lone chair at a generic-brand desk, to perpetuate the illusion of desiring comfort. It was a spinning office chair, of a type that vanishingly few teenage girls would own at this income level. Akemi Homura didn’t meet its eyes. She watched the moon, instead, through the sliding window.

Is it familiar to you?

The layout is. Continued use of telepathy, with several floors between them and anyone else, suggested a commendable commitment to operational security.

But… not the furnishings.

No. The futon isn’t where her bed was.

I’m trying to understand your preference to avoid the question of Kaname Tatsuya’s memory, it said, and received several seconds’ silence for its pains. Homura?

It’s a coincidence.

That’s not an unreasonable null hypothesis, but testing it would require little effort commensurate to the possible positive outcome.

…what positive outcome?

The most complete answer would require admitting to the unpalatable realities of its plan, so a series of seemingly-related half-truths seemed appropriate. I am trying to understand Kaname Madoka. Kyubey simulated a shrug with its cabbity equivalent of shoulders. She seems significant to your psychological health and wellbeing. It’s novel for me to have a dossier this long for a non-magical girl, even if it’s not yet novella-length. I also suspect that it would be useful for you to have others around you who remember her, and if Kaname Tatsuya can remember, why not others?

Why would they? Akemi Homura’s fists tightened at her side. Miss Kyubey, what I have is enough. My bow is – it’ll be enough. If she’d intended me to – to befriend her six-year-old little brother, it wouldn’t have taken our concerted efforts and random chance to find out he knew anything. I’m here because I’d prefer the Kanames not to dislike me, but I’m not going to intrude on their lives for this.

A magical weapon in the approximate shape of Kaname Madoka’s wasn’t proof, not that it could say that – not in the way Kaname Tatsuya was. They’re well-off, socially adroit and seem lightly invested in your well-being already, Kyubey tried. I don’t intend to push you to be more involved with them than you’d prefer, but I hoped I might persuade you to try. If the primary roadblock is the disconnect between your history and theirs, Tatsuya suggests that that disconnect doesn’t have to be permanent, and wouldn’t require you to use your own memory magic. (At the very least, Kyubey could understand why Akemi Homura might be averse to directly implanting alternate-timeline memories. She’d called it brainwashing, once, prior to the lobotomy, pensive, verging on fearful. Magic for deceiving others.)

Akemi Homura rounded on it. You’re not understanding me.

I’m trying to understand. If you think Madoka’s plan doesn’t allow for this, I’m ready to be convinced of that, but given your well-being is at stake, I’d prefer you to cite evidence rather than asking me to take it on faith.

I – fine. A breath. Tomoe Mami died. She was decapitated in the last timeline – eaten head-first – and that was a mercy, compared to the murder-suicides. Sakura Kyouko starved! More than once! You’re asking me to make them remember ten subjective years of agony.

You remember ten subjective years of agony, too.

That’s why I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. And the Kanames – what exactly do you expect me to say, Miss Kyubey, if they do remember everything? ‘You had a big sister, but you can’t ever meet her?’ ‘Junko, in a hypothetical alternate universe you told me that you’d like to share a drink with your daughter someday, when she comes of age, and – she exists, she’s at least twenty now, but she’s never going to keep that promise?’ Telepathy had no actual audio content, but telepathic conversion faithfully recorded magical girls’ intended decibel count, tagging best-guess tone indicators based on that number; these were hissed, or spat. I’m not going to hurt them for my own selfishness!

Tatsuya already remembers! At the very least, he remembered something, or else he’d been seeing the Law in stark, visual relief, but Kyubey leaned towards the former; the Law, divorced from the prosaic, couldn’t play video games. (Could it?) At worst, you’d be subjecting them to the same conditions that you’re dealing with. None of the Kaname family are magical girls, nor could they be, except under extremely unlikely circumstances, so it couldn’t possibly kill them via depletion, even if we managed to remind them.

And? She swung a hand through the air then grabbed her wrist with the other. And what? It can’t kill them, so it’s just rational to ruin their lives in a way we can never reverse?

Your welfare is my responsibility. Temporary, remediable harm for them will improve your life significantly. Madoka made you remember. Your life isn’t ruined, is it?

I wish she –

Akemi Homura’s face crumpled. The packet arrived unfinished. She swayed, and only her body’s gyroscopic balance kept her upright.

Ah.

Akemi Homura had made a poor judgment of Kaname Madoka’s character, after all, in assigning her endless virtues. Kaname Madoka had made a conscious decision about who would remember her. Akemi Homura and Kaname Tatsuya were not a coherent class on any front but the arbitrary: species, nationality, relationship to God (two disparate relationships, too, one genetic and one not). Her wish’s ontology hadn’t restricted her sphere of influence to magical girls. There was no obvious reason that let her reach out to them, but not Tomoe Mami or Sakura Kyouko. She’d just decided.

If she’d hand-picked Akemi Homura – if she’d written ten subjective years of isolation into a functional, healthy psyche with infinite finesse – and hand-picked Kaname Tatsuya, too, to receive a much nicer, vaguer assortment of memories, then the reason none of the well-adjusted, secure adults could help Akemi Homura was because Kaname Madoka had decided not to let them. Kaname Junko was driven and not unkind and Akemi Homura had never referred to any other adult as anything but an obstacle and here they still were, in the far outer reaches of her orbit, while downstairs the party went on.

Meaning that if not for Kyubey’s own epistemic contamination, and decision to believe her – if not for a staged, “coincidental” meeting in a park – Akemi Homura, incapable of reaching out to the Kanames on her own, with no proof of her own sanity, might’ve lived the rest of her life like a woman in a desert, withering and rationing her own sweat and atrophying and persuaded that water was a delusion and belief in it a character defect, not twenty feet from an oasis.

Given her apparent omniscience regarding the affairs of humanity, she could presumably read Kyubey’s thoughts straight out of its cells as it updated her dossier. It wondered how she felt, knowing as Kyubey now knew (because Kyubey now knew) that she’d hurt Akemi Homura so badly, and so avoidably. If she’d been thoughtless, or just cruel. It leapt to her shoulders and was not backhanded into a wall, then settled around Akemi Homura’s shoulders with its styrofoam mimic of a hug. It felt the insistent pound of magic with nowhere to go but a transformation she would not permit. Sepia and lilac. Iron sights. Chessboard patterns. Unscrambled eggs. It cleared the error logs of transformation artifact warnings, given it had no intent of stopping. Kyubey would die anyway; its delusions were temporary.

Kaname Madoka could’ve given Akemi Homura someone better than Kyubey, and she hadn’t. She could’ve given Akemi Homura Kaname Junko, or even Sakura Kyouko, and she hadn’t. Parents; friends; confidants. She’d beheld the treasure wheel in its entirety, rim to spoke to center; acausal, timeless, unbounded – reconstructed Akemi Homura’s soul, even; she’d teased strands of raw material together with artistry beyond Incubator civilization, manufacturing the girl standing in front of Kyubey who was fighting back tears and whose palms would have half-moons from her fingernails an hour from now, threading the nth-color ribbon that bound her soul, knowing her as the Incubators’ creators had known them – and she’d understood Akemi Homura’s needs exactly as well as Kyubey had, which was to say, barely at all.

God was fallible. God was fallible in a way middle-schoolers were fallible.

I apologize, Homura. I should have realized what this would do to you.

This was – this is pathetic. She sniffed, and lifted Kyubey off herself with as much gentleness as it had ever seen her use, depositing it on the hardwood. This wasn’t your mistake, Miss Kyubey. Don’t – don’t come back here.

What?

Promise me that you won’t come back here. Please.

It’s my responsibility to help you. Kaname Tatsuya was proof. Kaname Tatsuya might be its most sustainable lead. Even without karmic fluctuation, a stint in an MRI might tell it something. Even if you’re afraid of hurting them, they mean something to you. The Madoka you believe in wouldn’t ask you to give that up, would she?

I don’t – we shouldn’t have come. A long, shuddery breath. I know you care. I know. But she’s not here. She’s not here, “she’s not –”

Akemi Homura never finished her sentence.

It looked, and there she was.

On the windowsill, half-alit like some exotic bird, cushioned by the same exotic matter envelope that separated every wraith from samsara: a girl, or something asymptotically approaching girl, or an artist’s depiction thereof, a little elfin or alien – anyway a person-shape, in a very average magical girl costume, rendered worse than Kaname Tatsuya could manage with crayon. It was shaped like a girl and it had a composite-photo face that could’ve been anyone’s in the whole of Japan, and in its off-hand they could both recognize the curved branch, lightning-struck, tipped with a flower almost like the red ribbon. Lycoris radiata. Spider lily.

Beneath their feet, Akemi Homura’s and Kyubey’s, it cast a shadow out of balance with the tiny body and bell-like skirt, as if something they couldn’t see nevertheless blocked the light of the moon.

Chapter 20: Interlude: Mary Amygdalene

Summary:

I really do care about you. That doesn't mean I want to look at you. That doesn't mean I want to touch you.

For the first time, seeing the witch before her, Spiderlily recognized her fragment of dukkha – a scorched stave terminating in a spider-lily, almost a delicate thing – as a teenage girl’s severed limb. Worse, really. A whole seeping bouquet of internal organs, ripped free, spooled out, and restrung into an instrument. Like a catgut violin. (If you uncoiled it and laid it out in a straight line, reported the staff, reciting a middle-school lesson, an average adult’s cardiovascular system would stretch one hundred thousand kilometers long. How long would that be in miles?)

This was her witch. Her and Mask’s.

Near-involuntarily, her staff-wielding arm inched down, away from the witch – hers, she thought again, and his – and then seized by chance on what must’ve been a messenger of dukkha at the black witch’s feet: ferrety and as off-white as a dollop of congealed condensed milk, with golden rings around its prehensile gripping things that weren’t ears or arms. Contrary to the name, the churn of its computer brain produced no dukkha, so the part of her that knew what it was and how to kill it might’ve been an addendum – grafted on by her satori, or whatever post-conscious decision-maker had squeezed her out of nirvana. It regarded her with flat marble eyes. There could be no guilt at all in exterminating it.

I’m dead, she thought, almost without pain. She’d balked. Picked an easier target, who wouldn’t feel pain or detonate into giblets if shot. As if messengers could do anything besides scamper around and make witches, compared to the black witch in front of her.

Mask’s death was still fresh, but the propulsive firehose spew of fury and bile she’d felt when his remains drummed against her skull had narrowed to a trickle. Three encounters with the golden witch, at a distance, was all it had taken to lose that nerve, apparently, though its dregs had carried her here, to the humans’ labyrinth, staff tugging gently on her arm. So she’d screwed up, once, misplaced her sympathies with a human she just happened to look like, a little, and now she was going to die for being squeamish. In the face of this simple, split-second life-ending oopsie, and the awful organic muscle-feel to the hilt in her hand, Spiderlily couldn’t even make the staff’s tip light. One chance to winnow the kudzu of human sorrow, and she couldn’t manage it. How pathetic!

Her stomach hurt. She shut her eyes tight. She had no stomach and no digestive system. She was a fungible murder doll, painted up pretty by dukkha, bound to the treasure wheel by the vague promise of peace to come. Her mouth didn’t even work. Her stomach hurt. What a childish way to say I’m about to die. The treasure wheel wouldn’t send her home early because she had a tummyache.

“Madoka?”

Madoka?

She opened her eyes no more dead than when she’d closed them.

In those few seconds, the messenger had relocated – nestled against the black witch’s cheek, with its big puffy question mark of a tail curled around her neck like a muffler, its little pickled-plum eyeballs unreadable but aimed, at least, in her general direction, emitting loud, but spiritually inert, white noise. Somehow, the witch hadn’t called up any of the clusters of dukkha inside her, or remade her clothes out of headache-colored light. She was gripping one wrist with the other. Not dead, Spiderlily let herself drift closer in her no-color boundary, past the sill, over the cardboard boxes of unclear origin. Slowly. Like soothing a stray cat, contributed her staff.

That witch’s face, soft with a set jaw – a face like Spiderlily’s or like Mask’s – looked folded and creased in a way copied faces didn’t. She had cried when Mask died, as she fled the golden witch, flecks of clear water that disintegrated in her defensive cushion. But the witch’s tears left wormy, viscous trails and collected in clumps at her jawline. Her eyes squinched and blood vessels creased, gross, a little obscene. The messenger’s tail drifted up and swiped them away, but there were still smears left behind.

“Mado –” Her breath rattled. “Madoka?”

Who was Madoka?

This was what a witch was, up close? She was like a wet cat.

“Well,” Spiderlily said, less firm than she wanted to sound, because whatever she was feeling didn’t seem to translate – in the frozen silence, waiting for an attack that evidently wasn’t coming, her trepidation had bled off fast. Confronted with the crumple-faced nothingburger that was the black witch, with big gloopy tears beading at the corners of her eyes and her cutesy victimizer right there, any actual reproach would've felt too much like bullying. She settled, in the end, on “It’s alright now,” and then tacked on an “I’m here.”

“How?” With one hand the witch reached for the ring on her other, where her soul was – smoke-stained and agitated, with a purple glimmer beneath. The messenger emitted another burst of white noise and made Spiderlily flinch, a little, which the witch ignored. “I-I’m not – I thought I could keep going…”

“I know you can, but you don’t have to,” she tried. “You could rest?”

“You – you don’t have to pity me.” The witch broke eye contact and, thank goodness, scrubbed at her face with one arm, hiding the worst of the streaky ick for an instant. “I’m being… I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m being. Pathetically clingy, at least.”

“...you’re being human.” It was true. This was a very strange conversation to be having.

“I don’t think I have the right to describe myself that way any more.”

“Why not? You seem just like an ordinary human to me.” The witch giggled, wetly, at this, and half-sat, half-fell onto the futon. “No, I’m serious! I mean…” Was it rude to indicate her gross, snotty face if it was for demonstration purposes? “You’re crying, first of all.”

“Hah. I am. I know it’s d-disgusting.”

Well, at least she was self-aware. “It’s okay,” said Spiderlily, and to keep things civil, added “It’s kind of cute,” with a great straight face, considering. The messenger hissed white noise, and the witch laughed again. Or hiccupped, maybe. “You’re feeling all kinds of human emotions, see? Crying and laughing. If you were some kind of… soulless mechanical thing, you wouldn’t care.”

Another buzz from the messenger. “She’s right, you know,” said the witch, and hiccough-laughed again. (What? Who was?) “...I don’t doubt you. I wouldn’t. I know you have a plan. You always did, once you realized that the situation merited one. If you – had a chance to realize it.”

“Not… as much as you think?” A plan was a very charitable read of Spiderlily’s terrified multi-day stumbling through the humans’ labyrinth. Also, they’d never met and that remark made no sense, unless the witch could read minds.

“You never believed me when I told you that, either.”

Okay! No one was killing anyone and there weren’t really scripts for what to do with that, so. Gingerly, she made the necessary adjustments to her torso and no-color boundary and tried sitting, this time on the futon rather than a chair. At the soft displacement of futon-mass, the witch flinched away – just a little, anyway, subtly, but enough for Spiderlily to feel bad. Which seemed dimly unfair, considering how she was phlegm-soaked from her weird witch fit – and still a human, the least spiritually hygienic species in any room.

Buzz, buzz, went the messenger, in its nonsense voice or secret encrypted code or whatever, still wrapped territorially around its victim/hostage. It was obnoxious. Like a whole hornet’s nest packaged in a fluffy white hive, or flies in an industrial meat-packing plant before it got power-washed. She knew humans thought they were cute – though whether that was hard-coded tactics or the staff it wasn’t clear – and this one was exploiting that to retain its human shield with exactly the kind of cowardly, childish logic that was their baseline. Still, Spiderlily felt safer than was smart in the middle of a humans’ labyrinth, with the black witch still sniffling out wet-cat tears, on top of two more witches and not-so-far from the third.

For a long, strange minute, four souls downstairs made joyful wretched noise, and Spiderlily’s witch remained quiet in the dark labyrinth room wearing her evil white scarf. The lights in the hallway went off and left her and the witch in darkness and she listened to the deep, slow breaths of a supernaturally-durable witch body, wondering if she herself had lungs.

“I know it’s not really you.” A long breath. “You aren’t the actual Madoka.” (Buzz. Spiderlily flinched.) “You don’t quite sound like her. And I’m not so pathetic that I’d give up on my wish just because Kaname Junko appreciates Mami’s company. My Soul Gem remains sustainable. You’re a… you’re using my memories to emulate her.”

“...I might be? I don’t really know who you mean by her, eheh…”

“And you could have shot me.” Another breath. “But, instead, you refrained. An ordinary wraith couldn’t make that choice.” (“Wraith”? Also, wow, a little humiliating that she’d had her squeamishness mistaken for mercy, but useful, too, given the black witch hadn’t yet slaughtered her with whatever dukkha attack the wings did, because she was strong enough to have three dukkha fragments inside her, somehow. Feather swords. Strangling down.) “You can understand me, and I can understand you. If you’re not going to make yourself my enemy, it’d be idiotic to attack first.”

This was about as good an ambush window as she was going to get after that somehow-nonfatal screw-up. Her staff vibrated in her lap. It’d take maybe one amplified ray to decapitate the witch and jellify the messenger. Clean. Superheated. It wouldn’t smell like anything.

“If we can – understand each other, then we can negotiate.”

Spiderlily didn’t shoot. “...over what?”

“I’d… like my bow back.”

Spiderlily looked at her, then pointed to the obvious bow of a ribbon tied at her wrist. (Bruised skin beneath it, too, in a little roseate ring shading to the faintest purples. She wouldn’t lose that ribbon any time soon.)

The witch snuffled out another half-laugh, then indicated the haft of lacquered wood laid delicately on Spiderlily’s lap indenting her poofball jellyfish skirt, which was, yes, curved like an archer’s bow, but had no string, fired no arrows, and ended in an inexplicable red ribbon-flower at its head. (Which was, actually, poking into the black witch’s personal bubble. Was that rude?) “I’ve missed it,” she said.

“You missed it?”

“I did. It was Madoka’s.” (Seriously, who was Madoka?) “It’s dear to me.”

“But it hurts you.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Of course it does, it’s dukkha!” Which bought Spiderlily the necessary nerve – blitzing the conversation with dumb stream-of-consciousness chattering had worked with Mask, so maybe it’d work here? – to grab the witch’s slender hands, thumbs at the curve of her wrists, two gloved fingers splayed to avoid direct contact with her soul in its little metal loop prison. “Bow, or staff, or whatever it is, it’s heavy, and splintery, and it’s… every time I use it, I can feel how much you want, and how hard you work, and how it never amounts to much. How could I –”

Buzz, buzz, went the messenger. She flinched, but so did the witch, phew, and she hadn’t lost her train of thought. “How could I ignore that? How could anyone possibly let themselves be happy, knowing that humans like – like you are in pain, all the time?”

This earned her a wan smile. “You’re kind.”

She – and the ones like her – they’d descended to Earth from nirvana or the Moon, mission set, before there was any such word as voluntary in their vocabularies. Kind was not the word. Pulling a face, she tried not to pull too much of a face as she said “Not… really?”

“Do you have a name?”

“Wh – no?”

“Would you like to pick one?”

What would that even mean? How were you supposed to decide? Did humans do it like that?

Her staff thrummed a variety of contradictory answers up her wrists, which was just not helpful at all, and the messenger made more white noise, without even the decency to be okay to melt, in service of a non sequitur so random it felt a little condescending. Like older girls summarizing the plots of books you couldn’t focus well enough to read.

“I don’t recommend taking her advice,” said the witch, voice a little clearer, almost-laughing again. “The novelty would fade quickly.” (Whose?) She reached out a hand and – with only a little hesitation – rested it against Spiderlily’s shoulder and its boundary of no color. Oh. Oh, her sleeve was still damp. Her hand carried residual warmth from her circulatory system, which was just incredibly full of blood. Her messenger stared from her shoulder. “...You’re an abnormality – different. New. I don’t know if it’s her hand at work, or if it’s my memories that have influenced you.” She was a witch. Her hand was very warm and it would take so little time for that snot to turn the outfit fusty and crusty and awful and that heat was powered by the treasure wheel’s torture engine and far-away demiurgic reactors keeping all the trees alive, and the rabbits as they screamed in the fields, and the wolves whose teeth made them scream. “But I’ve never seen a wraith capable of speech, and if satori minions regularly used the faces of the dead as camouflage, Mami would have mentioned it. I have to assume you’re – well. You’re a person.”

It was warm and soft and calloused in places, and the witch was still talking. “I don’t want to hurt you. I can negotiate on your behalf with the other magical girls, too. They’re… not unreasonable.” Buzz, buzz. “They’ll listen, eventually,” she amended. “It’s hard for people to see you differently, once they think they know who you are. But their track records are better than most people’s.”

If she hadn’t had Mask, Spiderlily might’ve believed it. If she’d been just a little more lacking in points of comparison. If she’d been a little more of a coward, enough to run away for just-herself and tolerate the messengers’ torture farm in exchange for whatever scraps of contentment the witches gave her. Tomatoes. Sunlight. If the joyful, sympathetic, brave, wanting feeling of dukkha wasn’t scraping across her brain. If she’d let herself receive the warmth of a hand just like hers, and ignored the moist stains, carrying a million little microbes in every drop, striving and suffering, or the betrayed twist of the face that was so much like hers, too, under the cracked-eggshell halves of that stupid metal bird mask. If if if if if. Ack ack ack ack ack.

That hand was shaking. So fragile, and so frustratingly aloof and superior like she didn’t want her hand held just as much, and so pathetic, and so brave.

As things stood she only wanted to do that, very much, for maybe five seconds, before the messenger made another cell phone notification sound – what’s a cellphone, no, dumb distraction – and ruined the whole fantasy because she was going to have to die, after all. She’d almost forgotten it was there. “Can you – I guess it doesn’t bother you, the noise, but can you please get rid of that?”

The witch gave her a blank look. “Get rid of what?”

Spiderlily jabbed a finger at it. “That. The messenger.”

“...you can’t hear Incubator telepathy?”

Oh. Was that what it was? “You know, the messengers – um, Incubators – they’re sort of like… clever machines. Or –” Her staff supplied the word chatbots. “Chatbots. They don’t understand when they talk, or even really care whether they understand! They just… put together noises until they figure out how to convince you to make their contract. So I can’t hear it. I don’t want to hear it.”

“But didn’t you…”

“What you’re saying sounds really nice, and I do want to try, and I really don’t want anyone to be hurt –” She did, which was the horrible thing. She wanted to know what random slapped-together sales pitch had convinced the black witch, with her guts unspooled and turned into a rock, some feathers, a metal disc and a stick, to believe in a future. She wanted to be ignorant. She wanted to live in this body that wasn’t living. “But there’s something that’s more important than that. So let me do this, okay?”

She would have one shot, maybe.

Belatedly, kinda-pathetically, ambient heat gathered at her staff’s tip – effloresced – froze. One more thermodynamic miracle before the less-fragile witches downstairs tore her to pieces. With the witch sitting this still, she could pull off a nice, precise shot with no risk of collateral, and pulp the messenger before it could rear any more girls as livestock, then die before she had to hurt anyone else.

A kindness. A mercy. As a bonus, an end to this whole frustrating conversation with a victim who was one hundred percent never going to realize she was one. She smiled, like she’d tried to smile for Mask, and meant it, even.

The witch lurched forward and closed her soulless hand around the staff’s tip.

What should’ve been a scalpel-precise spine of light, destabilized, combusted between those fingers into radiant sparkle flechettes. Lily gathered up the boundary between her and the treasure wheel and puffed it up like a cloud, absorbing her own blowback, but the vast majority of them splashed into – well, into the witch’s skin, first, raising little arterial sprays, and then into incongruously lily-pale wings that unfolded around her, splashing along their surface hydrophobically. All around them window glass and drywall and titanium alloy fell apart into silver sand and superheated lilac smoke from misdirected bolts, whisper-quiet. Not one got the messenger. Not even a twinkle.

Spiderlily stopped firing for maybe half a second and had no time to vomit about it (with, again, no stomach, just the associated gross feelings she’d have if she had one, transmitted via the staff hotwired to her artificed body). A palm thrust through her no-color boundary, laid itself on her cheek almost delicately, found purchase, and then she abruptly spun and found her fake joints, neck and arms and back, locked at an angle that in a human would suggest paper bones, just shy of breaking her bobble neck. Her teeth pressed against the tile. The witch’s voice hissed through her and red-matted, damp hair dangled against her nape: “Quiet.”

In a panic, stubby-legged though she was (not to mention the body that was maybe forty kilos soaking wet), her retaliatory kick – managed via levitation – caught the black witch’s stomach with gut-pulverizing weight. Pop went her thumb out of Spiderlily’s joints, followed by the rest of her, through the door frame and into the labyrinth’s hallway to skid across tiled floor and indent a wall with her messenger tumbling through the air after her. “What are you doing?” shouted Spiderlily, and for her trouble the witch flung herself back at high velocity through the pockmarked doorway with athletic balance so perfect it had to be cheating physics somehow. “You’re hurting yourself for it! Stop!”

Downstairs two dukkha signals agitated – golden and candle-flame – did all this labyrinth’s witches just live together in a big torment apartment? – and anyway Spiderlily leapt back to the window, hyper-aware of her sad, stupid aversion to pain when she’d been born and remolded by pain. It should have been easy to do this. She’d been made for this. “Listen!” hissed the black witch – Spiderlily watched for knife feathers, trying desperately to manifest a shield of no color – except instead another bolt of light flicked out of the witch’s hand, a wan, slender dart which pinned Spiderlily to the sill by – what? – her leg tugged against a fire-engine-red Wizard of Oz heel as she tried to lift off back into the night because the heel was part of her stupid leg.

“You can’t do that. You can’t call her that.”

“Call who?! Messengers aren’t people –”

“Don’t use Madoka’s face to say that!”

The witch stumbled forward a step, disoriented-pissed; one swipe from the staff was enough to ward her off, severing a few whiskery flower stalks from the lily at its head, but not for more than half a second. Drywall and pretty futuristic steel fragments rained on both their heads and bounced off Spiderlily’s hard, plasticky-pink doll’s hair and the messenger’s white fur. In the witch’s, though, they stuck, like – actually stuck, an entire chip of wallpaper the size of a baby’s hand, and it sat between tresses and hung off the floor and the witch didn’t even notice. How thick was her stupid perfect giant mop of hair?

“You’re not listening,” she tried. “I can’t explain it well or even really explain how I know, but I swear I’m not trying to hurt anyone!”

“You tried to –”

“It’s tricking you!” Spiderlily shaped her no-color boundary and tried to ball it up into a hammer but it just squelched over the glowing dart instead of breaking it, so she kept her eyes on the witch and the messenger and turned the haft of her staff against them like a ward. Or a bow, or whatever. Hiss hiss white noise couldn’t the awful, heartless little ferret thing shut up? “I know it’s awful to realize you’ve been tricked, but the messengers ripped out your soul so they could use it to power their society, and – and it hurts. It always hurts, knowing what they’re doing to you.” It was the one memory she’d kept from nirvana: feelings not hot or cold or itchy or bleeding, prior to heat and cold and skin and blood. The breath of an agonized universe in her ears. “You have to understand!”

“I know, but –”

“Then you know they can’t change! They’re raising you just to eat you, even that one, like chickens – the factory farms – you’re just an egg to it, M??u?a, you’re fodder! I don’t want to hurt anyone, but –”

“You’re wrong. Even after everything, Madoka – she cared for Miss Kyubey –”

The messenger’s distributed bio-computer pseudo-brain produced a high, clear tone. Quiet – quieter than the white noise of telepathy – but it was dukkha. Like a river running in reverse. Like hell freezing over.

“– you don’t have any reason to continue with this, knowing that you’ll –” Dumb babbled arguments that didn’t matter.

“What,” and her voice wouldn’t come right. She hadn’t really wanted to vomit before. She wanted to vomit, now. Good old gastric lavage, humanity’s defense mechanism against poison. A way to get rid of something you couldn’t have inside you. “What did you do to it.”

Messengers – said her deep instinct – were priority targets. Abhorrent things. Life support for a universe begging for a peaceful winding-down. But they had no souls, and no real emotions, which meant no dukkha. They were supposed to induce apoptosis and kill themselves if they developed dukkha. It was hardcoded.

Because a messenger that knew dukkha could simply replicate itself forever, and fill the universe with itself. More and more itself, with no need for culture or sociality to limit its expansion. A million million screaming, jostling souls crammed into every nanoangstrom of available matter, living in boiling planet-sized seas of fluffy white goo, wanting and not getting for eternity in Hell. No nirvana. No peace. No winding-down. When it made that sound, it was talking.

Her gorge rose. This was what a witch was. This was one of the cancerous self-indulgent idiot gods who had swatted Mask like a fly. Instead of the completely unreachable vomit she screamed – something awful, bratty, infantile, wordless, dukkha demanding Mask back, deprived of her favorite toy and the toy life she’d imagined with him – then flipped her staff and evaporated her own leg in a pyroclastic burst of witch-light the color of a Lisa Frank folder. Lopsided, she jumped and then remembered she could fly, or at least pin herself butterfly-like to the air of samsara ten feet above a pathetic little decorative palm tree.

In fury – in despair – she’d fired that moon-coring chair-melting ray. In fury she readied it now. White-hot allostatic load pumped through her arms and spilled in a horrible keen from her mouth where the fragment couldn’t contain it; ritual circles crowded with witch runes painted themselves at her feet like a platform, the black witch chasing through the window with her wings folded around her defensively and the faintest glint of dull messenger-eyeball red at her collar. Even now, it couldn’t stop whatever the buzzing was. Entreaties for mercy. Insults. Whatever.

At this range it’d be the entire giant expensive house she melted, all her emotion let out until she was simple and mechanical again, and at the very least her least durable target would fry, and for the humans who weren’t witches yet it would be an instant and then blessed relief. A spear launched itself at her from ground level and sank into the jelly of her no-color boundary, followed by a pepperbox’s worth of little round millstone bullets, but she was far, far away from them by now. Miles and miles of disgust between her and the world. She just had to –

– the black witch’s forehead was soaked in blood, her mouth was moving, she was shouting something, some forgiveness, that Spiderlily didn’t want to understand and Spiderlily didn’t want to have to watch her die so –

– she had to –

Oh. Oh, what a stupid last thought, with her eyes fixed directly on the dull red marbles of the messenger, and their inexplicable life. Hearing the high, satisfied song of “Miss Kyubey” and her dukkha, pleased just to be cared for, to be called by name. How pointless to be thinking at all, if this was what it got her. She laughed. She laughed, and laughed, and released her beam. Fireworks of witch-light to declare her useless after all and then she was fleeing across the labyrinth, far, far away from the carnage so she couldn’t get fake-sick about it. How dumb. How funny. How sad.

She just had to shoot the messenger.

Notes:

Hoping to get back on a slightly more regular schedule now that my meds are refilled. Thank you for your patience.

Chapter 21: So As Not to Fall Again

Summary:

Homura tells the Kanames something important. Mami tells Kyubey something important. Remember, it's only "at a cost" if you care about what you're losing.

Kaname Junko had a panic attack.

Not a terrible one, given she’d just had the upper story of her home nail-bombed and narrowly been spared a follow-up artillery strike. She stopped hyperventilating quickly, once she’d synced her breathing to Kaname Tomohisa’s four-second rhythm and checked Kaname Tatsuya thrice for shrapnel wounds.

Once this was settled, she listened to Tomoe Mami’s explanation and asked follow-up questions about key details (viz., “who did this,” “are you safe,” “are we safe,” “what are you,” in roughly that order) as if conducting a job interview. If not for the dissociative lag, or the way her line of sight stayed fixed on the inexhaustible witch-fire dripping from her palm tree’s canopy (Akemi Homura did her best with semi-related enchantments and a fire extinguisher), she might’ve been any homeowner in the wake of any natural disaster, with no cosmological paradigmatic shakeups necessary.

It was admirable. Kyubey took notes.

Her turnaround was quick enough, in fact, that she took point to handle the police when they arrived – not typically a concern for magical girls, with miasmic fugues and the network’s controlling stake in policing organizations worldwide, which was why handling them wasn’t in anyone’s remit but hers and Kyubey’s. (It was standard terminal training.)

Kaname Tomohisa herded everyone else into the kitchen, still exactly as well-lit as before, though the soft jazz had transitioned into a technically complex Japanese math rock playlist at some point. Sakura Kyouko, as the only magical girl who hadn’t been hit by stray witch-light rays and whose civilian clothes were grubby but not bloodstained, sat with Kaname Tatsuya and talked to him, unenthused, about Fortnite. Tomoe Mami nursed a cider and played with ribbons with one hand. Her curling neck wound glistened with goldenrod stitches. Akemi Homura pet Kyubey, absently, and said very little.

The responding officer – young, for her position; badge number 4443, West Mitaki precinct; marine-blue hair in a loose bun; enough karma that a gunshot wound would probably spike her past the cutoff for minimum viable contracting – addressed Kaname Junko as “ma’am,” and made a meandering, non-wordplay joke about property values that fell flat. Kaname Junko laughed at it anyway.

“It was just my daughter’s friends,” she said, smiling. Contra Kyubey’s expectations, Akemi Homura’s breath did not catch at this, and her flinch was barely noticeable – though that might’ve just been that she’d hit saturation on surprises, after her failed attempt at diplomacy with the apparently Kaname Madoka-faced wraith. Tomoe Mami muttered “daughter?” to herself, still playing ribbon ayatori. “Though, if they’re going to set off fireworks indoors, again, we might have to cancel the next sleepover.”

Because the enchanted extinguisher foam had erased any signs of witch-fire napalm, and likely also because of the Kaname household’s socioeconomic stratum and Kaname Tomohisa’s HOA pull, badge number 4443 took this at face value and left without making further inquiries. Once the police car was out of sight, plus a near-inaudible ten-count, Kaname Junko huffed a sigh, returned to the kitchen and opened a non-alcoholic beer, which was the only kind she had in the fridge (the cider long-since depleted).

“I can’t believe,” she said, between the first and second sip, “how much of my paycheck goes to cheerful incompetents like that.” Math rock transitioned to a song about someone named “Ana Ng.”

“Daughter?” asked Tomoe Mami.

“What? Oh. I don’t have a daughter. ‘A handful of strange middle schoolers I picked up off the street’ wouldn’t have sounded as good. Don’t ever feel obligated to tell the police anything true unless you’re worried they’ll come back later, Mami-chan.” Kaname Tomohisa coughed, washing a dish in the sink despite his access to a dishwasher, and Kaname Junko looked sheepish. “And don’t give them a reason to check, of course.” Kaname Tatsuya asked if Sakura Kyouko was okay; she hmphed.

“...is that really all?”

Ah, there was Akemi Homura’s emotional reaction, a little jolt it felt in its gyroscope. Mami, please save that for later, Kyubey said.

“What else would it be?” asked Kaname Junko.

“...you deserve a better explanation.”

This was flagrant nonsense – discordant with its understanding of her principles and with Incubator doctrine. Amnestic miasm-ingestion symptoms made baseline humans exercising agency against the wraiths a non-starter. It had given her the “Wakaba speech” – a proven, focus-tested rhetorical approach, canonized under that name by a middle-schooler magical girl’s naming authority; one that emphasized mundane humans’ role as emotional support, and the operational security necessary to make that workable – two years ago, and never heard her question it. Mami, said Kyubey, around the same time that Tomoe Mami asked “Does the name Madoka mean anything to you?”

“...well, it’s Tatsuya’s imaginary friend’s name.” Kaname Junko blinked, long and slow, and smiled nervously. “Unless you’re about to tell me that it isn’t.”

Was there a reason, maybe, that Akemi Homura hadn’t said a word? Was this a signal? Homura, is this alright? Akemi Homura didn’t respond. She’d curled, nautilus-like, around Kyubey’s terminal, resembling an embrace less than an attempt to defend a Soul Gem with disposable existential combat frame meat. Homura? Even with near-instantaneous telepathic packet transmission and Soul Gems’ high-speed concept parsing, humans responded slowly – converting between pure ideoforms and the mealy-mouthed words that their minds considered foundational. Homura, are you alright? / Mami, please wait. I don’t know how this will affect Homura. Redundant. Maybe important. Even a mouth that never opened could be mealy, evidently.

Tomoe Mami said it almost like a sigh: “You knew a girl named Madoka, Kaname-san, and so did your husband. Before magic erased her from your memory. I’m afraid she’s also been erased from mine.”

“A girl like you.”

“A girl like us, yes. That’s… close to all that I know. Akemi-san recalls more, though I can’t guarantee she’ll be able to give you a full explanation.” After a brief pause, she added “Also, we aren’t dating, nor have we ever been. I’m not quite sure why I lied to you about it, except that some of our kouhai have been spreading rumors about us.”

In Akemi Homura’s Soul Gem – Kyubey popped its head out of her grip with sinuous, semi-solid grace to check her finger – gray haze ate away at the purple luster, then gave way in little, exhausted spurts. Mild burnout, then, or a dissociative state – not uncommon after exposure to the light of no color. Magical girls were good at dissociation. Kaname Junko’s dazed laugh got about as much of a reaction.

“Is that so, Homura-chan?”

She raised her head and regarded them – by now Kyubey knew from its extensively-sampled facial heuristics what Akemi Homura, fully dissociated or shutting off her physical signals, looked like. Leaden eyes in a dead face. This wasn’t that. This wasn’t a complete fugue. Hurt, maybe. Messy eyes, still a little bit red-rimmed. Her hands squeezed into its terminal, center-mass, and it obediently heated its core like an electric blanket. “I… you don’t want to know.”

“That might’ve been the case before it was relevant to our lives, but I’ve lied to the police about this and need to keep my story straight. Not to mention that if we’ve had a Precure in the house, attracting pink laser-firing demons, it’s in our own best interest to be aware of it, just in case she decides to come back.”

“Or if she’s in trouble,” said Kaname Tomohisa, softly.

“Or,” amended Kaname Junko, voice a little less crisp but still insistent, “if there’s a middle school girl dealing with this, who we can’t remember well enough to help. If there’s a reason why that isn’t the case, I’m open to being convinced.”

Akemi Homura did not pursue any of the obvious logical rejoinders to this, despite the invitation and the several seconds everyone gave her. At last Tomoe Mami stepped forward.

Miss Akemi. I’m not going to make you stay, or tell them anything, whatever – whatever I believe is best. You’re proven yourself perfectly capable of ignoring me completely, no matter what I try. But you came here because this was important to you, didn’t you? That’s why you paid me for it, after all.

Sluggishly, as if in response, Akemi Homura hooked one finger and dragged it through the air – at her wrists, and her ankles, Tomoe Mami’s typical lead fixation points for walkies. No ribbons. Tomoe Mami smiled, wistfully, at her. That really doesn’t work on you, does it? I can’t imagine Kyouko’s puppy-girl jokes helped.

“...Homura-chan?”

“We’re having a private conversation, Kaname-san, my apologies. With telepathy.”

“Telepathy? Telepathy! Telepathy, alright. Kyouko-chan, can you explain any of this to me while they’re…” Kaname Junko pulled Sakura Kyouko aside into a huddle, flagging over Kaname Tomohisa as they did. Kaname Tatsuya was already playing his cat sniper game.

I. Akemi Homura hesitated, fractionally. I – I don’t – like to be tied up.

You could have said so. That’s – Tomoe Mami’s telepathic packet cut out and restarted. I don’t actually want to hurt you, whatever you may have come to believe. Frankly, it hurts that that’s your first response to me, now.

Someone restrained me, once. With ropes. And almost shot me in the temple. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but I didn’t know it yet, and – magic can numb pain but it can’t control my instinctive reactions. This was a degree of openness she hadn’t demonstrated prior, to anyone but Kyubey, at least. A symptom of the doppel encounter? It reached its enormous fluffy tail up and curled it around her, hoping to keep evoking comfort as best it could, keeping the witch-burnt portion – a baseball-sized puncture in the fur eaten by pink napalm, suppressed by enchantment – far from her face. She flinched a little anyway.

Oh. A pause. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

It’s your power. It’s fine. And… it doesn’t matter that they don’t know me. I’m not their daughter and this isn’t my house. But – I’m afraid that knowing might hurt them.

You could just… omit the difficult parts, for now.

This was rank hypocrisy, of course, but not out of character, given all the lying to authority figures magical girls had to do, and Akemi Homura didn’t appear to reject it. And I don’t want them to tell me I’m… lying, or deluded. She swiped at her eyes and jostled Kyubey off her neck entirely. It’s infantile, but I don’t. Kyubey’s face went pomf against the floor.

Whatever my response was, when you – The packet cut out again. I’m sorry, Miss Akemi. I should have listened better.

…Miss Kyubey?

Yes?

You were right, she said. About telling them. It’s selfish of me, but – I suppose she wants me to be selfish.

It was doubtful that Kaname Madoka’s divine plan included any provisos regarding Akemi Homura’s wellbeing, besides mawkish nods like the bow and the ribbon and incidentals like Kaname Tatsuya, but it would help Akemi Homura to believe it. This would be a win, if well-managed – in its ideal scenario she would feed them digestible pablum that involved no gunshot executions or city-breaking moksha, adjusted for whatever her comfort level was when her audience had feelings to hurt. I’m glad to hear it, Homura. Kyubey simulated a smile.

“...I can explain the situation.” Akemi Homura rose. A little stilted. “Though I should tell you that what I’m about to say may sound like a delusion, to you.”

For its part Kyubey crouched, ready to leap up to her shoulder, and jumped directly into a set of delicate pianist’s fingers, powder- and witch-burnt pink at the tips, which seized it with moderate delicacy and laid it back on the floor.

“They deserve some privacy,” Tomoe Mami told it. “And Kyouko and I would like to talk to you, too.”

“Are we talking to someone invisible, now?”

“Kyubey,” contributed Sakura Kyouko. “Messenger of magic. Little white ferret cat thing.”

“Well, hello, Kyubey.”

We’ll remain within telepathic range, Kyubey told Akemi Homura. Please let me know if there’s anything you need.

“Miss Kyubey,” corrected Akemi Homura. I understand.

“...hello, Miss Kyubey.” Kaname Junko smiled again, blearily, and finished off her can of non-alcoholic beer. “Is she more of a ferret or a cat?”

---

“You love her.”

It wasn’t a question. They sat it down in the bathroom – or, they put it there, and no surface was really designed for a cabbit sit but Kyubey picked up on the tenor and reclined – and Sakura Kyouko said it. “You love her.”

By some metrics, that was a success in the construction of the Miss Kyubey identity. She’d found a logic to justify its decisions, rather than disqualifying them as garbage outputs from a malfunctioning computer. Small victories. Sakura Kyouko’s tone wasn’t supportive. But she could've killed it, and right now that would've been worse. For Akemi Homura, and everyone else there. Even karmically inert humans could see terminal mulch. What makes you say that?

“You love her, and you’re killing yourself to prove it.”

I don’t think that’s true. On any metric, thankfully: a poor judgment of Kyubey’s motives in eventual suicide and its time horizon on the act itself. I’m still not sure how you came to that conclusion. We’ve already talked about my willingness to risk my life, haven’t we? You seemed satisfied with how that went the first time.

“Try –” Sakura Kyouko’s voice wavered.

“Kyouko.” Tomoe Mami’s hand on her shoulder seemed to help.

“...try this whole plot. Try how long it took you to call us up after the wraith touched her.”

Homura saw the wraith – a ‘doppel’ type – as the Kaname Madoka she’s described to me. While I advised her to kill it, at first, the doppel’s behavior was unusual for its type. Most wraiths don’t respond at all to attempts at conversation. And trusting her judgment has yielded significant dividends so far. Yields mostly in Akemi Homura’s esteem, its primary currency now, and significant compared to its sad, sorry baseline as a diseased creature fleeing the apoptotic guillotine.

Akemi Homura might’ve been correct in treating the wraith as a mirror of divinity, or she might’ve been deluded by the exact same skin-suit camouflage every doppel employed; Kyubey’s strategy remained the same either way. Indulgence. Mock affection. Further research. Trying, if and when it could, to coax her back into a steadier dynamic with the art club. It couldn’t risk alienating her, or putting her in an unbalanced state long-term, and she’d proven pathologically determined to retrieve her bow and hunt the doppel. Certainly it couldn’t assume her good graces. Kyubey leaned across the rim of the Kanames’ large upscale sink in their giant bathroom, just barely not in Sakura Kyouko’s space. She’s well-informed, and, when she isn’t disarmed or unsteady, extraordinarily capable as a magical girl.

“I don’t care!”

This at volumes that felt unwise. The Kanames were downstairs. Kyouko, I don’t understand.

“I’ve been trying to stick,” grit out Sakura Kyouko, “to what we’ve talked about. Don’t attack first. Most people won’t hurt you without a reason. N’ it made things… easier, with Sayaka and Mami and Akemi. Whether it’s fairy-story Precure garbage at heart or not,” this being their point of long-term contention and a core issue in her treatment plan, “If I listened to what you said, I could figure out how the rich girls were going to act. And it’s Mitaki. Rich girls are all we have here.”

Kyouko… Filler. Aizuchi proved it was still listening.

“You realize how many times I came at you, after the grenade, or after Akemi threw a tantrum or ate a death ray, and I just fell back on therapy talk like a trained dog? Or how many times you bobbled your big mascot head at me, said all the right words, and then went right back to trying – suicide by magical girl? Was that – was that the point?”

Homura’s happiness is very important to me.

“Right, sure, and that’s working great. If you just don’t understand it at all –” Sakura Kyouko’s hand cut the air. Not for the first time, Kyubey wondered about that ready-made Incubator defense, seldom-updated, frequently invoked. “Kyubey, whatever divine revelation crap happened to Akemi hasn’t turned you human. You don’t get what’s happening or what she needs, so why the hell aren’t you asking us anything?”

It was private. And extremely emotionally significant to her. And she had told it what she wanted, to boot: her relic bow, the Law’s bequest.

“So go behind her back! You told her I was the Sakura church kid n’ she connected the dots on the fire. Don’t pretend you’re all holy about secrets.”

Frequent deceptions, especially about charged topics, can erode trust. I would prefer not to risk losing Homura’s trust – almost before the packet finished Sakura Kyouko picked it up again, by the scruff of the neck. Obediently, it let its terminal go limp, neotenously helpless. If it had failed as a simulacrum person Kyubey could at least always pull off cabbit. Kyouko, I’ll admit I’ve made missteps. I’m not infallible!

“Say that all you want. But you’re just letting her spiral. ‘Cause this is what you want, isn’t it.”

Also not a question, despite her grammar. Almost idly, Sakura Kyouko shook it. Its rings went jingle jingle jingle. “All this time – the kindergarten-teacher talk. Lean on each other. Be honest. Even if you never followed your own advice, with all those late-night ‘wish’ dates. But if Akemi – if your Homura has more people to talk to than just you, you’re not special any more, huh?”

Ah. This was a consequence of its anthropomorphic posturing, then. Kyubey’s decision had been weighted by Akemi Homura’s skittishness, and her paranoia, and the sensitivity of her God-shaped hole, not jealousy – but jealousy made sense, in a certain magical-thinking way, if you assessed its behavior without the context of God’s favorite magical girl distorting its decisions. Akemi Homura still hadn’t given it explicit permission to explain Kaname Madoka, or her private cosmogony, and disbelief might strike at her core further, and even a little risk was intolerable if the cost was uncountably infinite, as losing Akemi Homura would be. Downstairs, were Kaname Tomohisa and Kaname Junko saying the right things to her? Did they believe her? Their daughter had failed to understand her – would they?

It tried to tell Sakura Kyouko that it didn’t consider itself special – to Akemi Homura; at all – and couldn’t.

It wasn’t diseased enough to try again. Sakura Kyouko huffed a half-satisfied breath.

In her dossier: witches, as yet unexplained. Akemi Homura, and Kaname Madoka – in the starry place, of unclear significance to the cosmogony, something it hadn’t been told – and Kyubey. Wasn’t it special?

She had been fragile recently. Sakura Kyouko wasn’t wrong. But better than she might’ve been otherwise, if she’d been alone, and Kyubey had been the one to believe her. To help her. Kyubey understood, in the abstract, the emotional needs of private people like Akemi Homura – even pre-lobotomy, the kind of person who kept her wish theories between Kyubey, herself and the moon – and how to help them. It understood secrecy and technical truths and compartmentalization and therapy and all the standardized doctrines of its species towards magical girls, their trusted partners in exterminating the wraiths.

Kyubey had done what it could with an infinitely precious black swan of a magical girl. It had given her isolation and manipulation and wordplay and pride, and stoked her dependence on it and its illusionary personality, instead of the magical girls around her, with affective empathy and combat-rated bodies her same size.

Because it needed her.

Kyubey needed Homura.

“Miss Kyubey” needed Akemi Homura. She’d come up with it, after all.

It opted not to contest the characterization. Jealousy was for people. It might even be cute, after a fashion. What would it mean if I was, Kyouko?

“It’d mean…” She sagged, almost discordantly weary, and dropped it. It went face-first and pomfed again. “It’d mean you’ve been eating up her time and safety for your puppetmaster kink. Ours, too, and we let you do it. I could splatter you for that, Kyubey, or throw you out. And – hell, I’d get a pang, but I’d get over it.”

Exit strategies for the Kanames’ smart-glassed, vacuum-sealed, soundproofed bathroom were sparse. Opting for the diplomatic approach, Kyubey closed its eyes and rolled its shoulders in a mock-shrug, searching for viable arguments for its existence on the off-chance this was a sincere premeditated murder. Incubator cell stains are difficult to remove from tile, Kyouko. If you were to accuse me of being a leech, you might at least use a little bleach. She’d acknowledged its personhood quickly enough, after it started in on wordplay. Individuality would make Kyubey seem less disposable.

“Why shouldn’t I.”

Kyubey considered this.

Given what you know, and your perspective as I understand it, it concluded, it would likely be in your best interest to kill me. Though I’d rather you didn’t do it here. It would be difficult to remove my remains from the Kanames’ bathroom tile without another Incubator terminal to harvest them. I’d prefer it if Homura didn’t have to see.

Judging by the high-pitched hiss this evoked from Sakura Kyouko, it had managed to answer incorrectly again – banking on evoking suspicion with its weasel words had been a poor decision, then. Kyubey adjusted its heuristics. It’s hard for me to reconcile death threats with this behavior.

“Miss Kyubey, if someone has told you that they’re worried that you’d like to die, and you continue to put yourself into situations where you could, for reasons they don’t understand, it will eventually start to feel like… you don’t really care if they’re worried.”

Unfair, given Sakura Kyouko had made a very clear death threat not a minute ago. It bobbled its head in a nod and tried I understand.

“Kyouko, if I can…?”

“Go ‘head,” she muttered, and retreated to a massive shower stall she could never afford, leaving Kyubey supine on the tile and Tomoe Mami above it, face benevolent and sad.

“Miss Kyubey.”

Mami.

“It’s funny,” Tomoe Mami said. “When we first met, we didn’t exactly have a getting-to-know-you phase, did we? Before the accident, it took me months to start using my school friends’ nicknames, but… I suppose I thought the rules worked differently for fairies.” She smiled one of her practiced smiles. “Not that you offered me any options besides ‘Kyubey.’ It’s a little rude, you know, to ask someone to call you by a nickname on a first meeting.”

Is that so, Mami?

“Like that. I know Kyouko-chan told me – in your head, you always call me Tomoe Mami, yes? Not ‘Tomoe-san’ or ‘Mami-san’ or even just ‘Mami.’ Tomoe Mami.” Sakura Kyouko nodded. “Is that true?”

It is.

“How would you feel if I asked you to think of me as Tomoe-san, instead? And to refer to me as the same. Not, would you do it –” which preempted the practical objection that Incubator cognitive architecture didn’t work that way. “How would you feel?”

Aware it had misunderstood its own mindstate before, Kyubey gave this due consideration. The Tomoe Mami of its dossier, spun to a low-resolution, hypothetical life via predictive hardware, spoke to it in neutral tones, motives estimated but unguessable, asking it to use ‘Miss Tomoe’ from then on. Names without honorifics were intimate, in Japanese, but politesse dictated that ignoring an explicit instruction on name usage would be worse than losing that little intimacy. If she asked for it, Kyubey could use it.

That this conversation was happening at all was, itself, a sign of some fundamental error in Kyubey’s wraith management strategy. That it had lost her, somewhere along the line, despite being available to talk, despite managing her jealousy and giving her a new housemate in substitution. She wasn’t God’s favorite, after all. She was irrelevant. There was no reason, beyond the purely-instrumental, to reach out, and no reason to want to.

I don’t know, it said, aware this was probably the wrong answer.

“Tomoe-senpai, then?” Sakura Kyouko huffed a maybe-laugh from the shower stall and Tomoe Mami glared. “Hush. I’m making a… making a point.”

‘Senpai,’ her Schelling point for comfortable emotional distance. As if Tomoe Mami wasn’t – what? Irreducible, a pure referent in the optimized telepathic terms of Incubators, diluted by names as necessities of human communication. Anything less would be self-sabotage, a winnowing of Kyubey’s years’ worth of analysis. I don’t know.

“...are you even younger than us?”

I am three years and six months old.

“...So when we met…”

I was a year old. Though my species matures differently from humans, of course.

“Hah.” She coughed, then laughed again, high, fluting, edged with the beginnings of a grackle squawk. Then again. “All this time! You were a baby!”

After this followed a solid thirty seconds of Tomoe Mami giggling in a strange family’s bathroom. Sakura Kyouko joined in, rougher.

“...I, ahh… thought that we were friends. After all, using each others’ personal names means something, doesn’t it? But I’m realizing that – well, you’re a telepathic alien, and when we say our names in telepathy it isn’t even really Japanese, is it? Tomoe-san.” Miss Tomoe. “My name is just my name to you.” Her hand twitched, abortively, but her eyes were dry and clear and her Soul Gem radiated the kind of quiet, harmless radiation that couldn’t contaminate a terminal unless the terminal let it. “I know, now, what it looks like when something is more important to you than the extermination of the wraiths. And our relationship wasn’t like that.”

Mami, I don’t want you to be hurt.

“I’m sure.”

I want you not to be hurt, Kyubey clarified.

“I appreciate that that means a lot to you.”

Homura’s emotional state has been delicate.

“And we could have helped. Can help, if you tell us something.”

…If you want me to help you with something, you can always ask. She’d be useful as an emotional support to Akemi Homura, after it passed, if it could trust her to manage her own.

“You – you don’t have to.” Her voice barely wavered. “I’m glad you’re trying your hardest for someone, really. I don’t want to begrudge you that. And, oh, I suppose I might have been terribly unfair to you all these years, given our… species difference. Relying on you, expecting you to feel everything for me that I felt for you, when… and it’s not like Akemi-san wants that kind of relationship either. I’ve pushed and pushed, and she’s only ever retreated.”

You’ve done a good job with her. She might accept ‘Homura,’ you know.

“...she might. But – I won’t ask you to wear the dress again. I imagine it’d be hard to trust that, after all this – I’ve earned that as much as you’ve earned it from me. I just hope…” Mami sighed. “I hope we can maintain a good working relationship, Incubator-san.”

Ah.

This, then, was the cost of a broken value function. Unused to the notion of a coherent personality, Kyubey had neglected the maintenance of its magical girl relationships, such as they were – or failed, maybe, to reconcile its disease-driven decisions with the generic, polite prefab terminal it had been, when it had saved Tomoe Mami’s life and subsequently become of outsized emotional importance to her. There had been no reason to reach out to Tomoe Mami, or to want to, in the face of eternal samsara; she was dependable, conservative, often at risk of becoming codependent. That had been useful. Humans did sometimes fall in love with waitresses, or their therapists, or online streamers with soft voices, or anyone else who was kind to them at the right time; and then, when they were better, they fell back out.

Its little semantic project – Miss Kyubey, and the whole social arrangement it suggested on the strength of four characters – had been stored, prior to the Kanames’ dinner party and the bow wraith, in maybe-three cognitive architectures, Soul Gems that Kyubey had diligently preserved against an increasingly-hostile world. Now, after the wraith, it had maybe-two.

Or, no. Sakura Kyouko had never used Miss Kyubey. It wasn’t her, or anyone’s, kindergarten teacher. Down to one, then.

Eternity. Decades, aeons, kalpas.

I hope we can maintain a good working relationship too, Tomoe Mami.

---

Akemi Homura looked the same, except that she’d used an X-shaped hair clip to part her bangs – which had, thanks to existential combat frames’ lifelike hair growth rates, become slightly unruly recently – and eaten, judging by a faint red smear at the corner of her mouth. Kaname Junko and Kaname Tomohisa sat at the kitchen island and cleaned dishes with industrious efficiency, murmuring in low voices to one another.

The other magical girls quit the bathroom and dispersed, altogether dry-eyed, while Kyubey padded over to her. How are you feeling?

They believed – Akemi Homura hesitated, then smiled, just slightly. “They believed me.” Kaname Tomohisa turned his head towards the sound. Kyubey observed red rims to his eyes, and smears similar to Akemi Homura’s around his mouth; he smiled, politely and with only a trace of feeling, at the nothing he was seeing where Kyubey was, mouthed something, then returned his attention to the dishes.

How much did you disclose?

“Who Madoka was to them. The reason they forgot. Our relationship – theirs with me, I mean. My situation with rent, and the apartment…” She averted her eyes, a little pink. “Some clarifications. About Mami. And you.”

I’m glad. It’s not healthy for humans to spend too much time and effort on maintaining a deception, especially with people you care about.

“...they’ve offered to let me stay the night tonight. If the strange doppel found this place by random chance, once, there’s nothing ruling out another attack. We can resume active hunts soon – I can make a deal with Mami about my shield, something concrete, and I’ve planned an effective sweep pattern for the greater Mitakihara area for Kyouko.”

Judging by our conversation, she could be amenable to that.

Silence followed.

“...something happened.” She sounded as uncertain as it had ever heard her, after the lobotomy, but this was more focus on its internality than she usually demonstrated. What anxiety was left for Akemi Homura to project on its blank, smooth face and neoteny-optimized quadruped body language?

Or did Kyubey have body language now? Was it too sick to notice?

I think Mami has decided to give up on our relationship, said Kyubey.

“...she does that, sometimes,” Akemi Homura said, almost helplessly.

Yes.

It wondered about Tomoe Mami’s hypothetical, and the names she’d suggested. Perversities. Damage to its internal logs’ clarity. Further contamination.

But the network would never read them, would it?

Mami, it thought. Tomoe-senpai. Mami-chan.

Chapter 22: After the Judgment

Summary:

Life moves, slowly and surely, into a new shape. Nocchan.

Akemi Homura hadn’t slept, really – on a guest futon in a room that wasn’t Kaname Madoka’s, not that the storage room was, she’d knotted her circadian rhythm into a quarter-hour loop and pared away Kyubey’s witch-burnt ablative fur with a set of knives, diligent and automatic, leaving a neater and less pink-edged hole. The scraps, reeking of burnt plastic, went in a wastebasket which went in a dumpster down the street before dawn.

She hadn’t thought to bring the horsehair brush, but Kyubey fluffed out the cells and made its tail passable as a real animal’s rather than a paintbrush-shaped lump. They talked as she worked, mostly about nothing. Like:

“Are you small because it’s convenient for us?”

It’s one of the reasons why, yes. Fleet though Kyubey was, relative to its appearance, magical girls tended to be fleeter; the average network-connected Incubator matched its charges by remote-uploading to spare terminals, leaving its invisible, comatose bodies stuffed into trash cans and coin lockers for later use. After all, if magical girls were fleet, it was a fleet. Other Incubator terminals are modeled after other animals – Kazamino City is likely presently served by a terminal modeled after a snake, for example – but, unless the situation calls for a specific form factor, they tend to remain below a certain size.

“Besides the ease of carrying you… it makes you a harder target for projectiles. It’s efficient and means less material to collect when you lose a body. What else?”

Akemi Homura, per its tentative heuristic-training hypothesis and stochastic analysis, responded best when occasionally directly informed of the brute, utilitarian logic behind its decisions – just to show that it wasn’t trying hard to present a facade to her (though it was). So Kyubey said It also makes us appear safer to candidates who would be intimidated or put off by physically imposing animals. Non-threatening terminals are much more successful at forming contracts.

“…of course.” A soft breath. “Madoka always thought that you were cute.”

Exactly. And it improves our efficiency in usage of terminals – magical girls are more likely to protect a terminal that seems cute and helpless, which improves survivability in the long-term.

“The way that animals are cute,” she added.

Yes.

“...I wonder how she would have felt about you, when you knew her. If she’d figured out that you were changing like this.” Akemi Homura scraped through its fur again. “Of course, I know her opinions. It never took her long to start treating someone like a person, unless you took steps to deter her. Even then, sometimes. Even the –” She cut herself off.

Even the…?

“It’s better if you don’t know.”

Did she sympathize with the witches?

“Don’t ask me that.” The butter knife scraped against Kyubey’s fur and removed another sickly pink-burning shank.

I’m asking out of interest in the emotional impact your memories have had on you, and in Kaname Madoka’s psychology. You’re talking about a history, and a set of physical laws, that no longer applies. Magical girls don’t become witches. Kyubey simulated a shrug with its little shoulders. Incubators have never been interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. If it would help you to feel more secure in yourself, I’d prefer that you explain. If it would make you feel worse, I’d prefer not to know.

Another long exhalation. “I don’t want to tell you.”

Then, unless that changes, I’d prefer that you didn’t tell me.

A pause.

“...she did. Sympathize with the witches.”

Interesting. The network had manufactured enemies for magical girls using magical girls as substrate, and – if sympathizing with them was remarkable, and not just Akemi Homura’s outsized admiration of a high-karma magical girl distorting her perceptions like a lead ball on a rubber sheet – the witches had sustained some contamination of their own values in the process.

Why the network would manufacture its own enemies, when so many magical girls were routinely lost to wraiths and their magical output nixed, was another question, and one beyond the remit of what Kyubey actually cared about. Why worry? Kyubey could imagine all kinds of scenarios where the production of witches would be negentropy-positive for the network, but it would be pointless to pursue what Akemi Homura guarded so heavily for an uncertain payoff, with the lower-hanging fruit of her entanglement with divinity so much closer to hand. So to speak. Not that it had hands. Thank you, Homura.

A nicety. A nothing.

---

At night, the Kanames’ smartglass house had remained dim, lit by lamps first and foremost, with proximity sensors to bring windows and dividers into ghostlike visibility if anyone came close enough to bump into one. By day it became a mirror of the sun. In oversized sleepwear, Akemi Homura emerged from her room with Kyubey on her shoulder, and smelled what was likely the first breakfast an adult had made for her since her last hospitalization.

There were eggs: fried, scrambled; with chives; with sharp cheddar; with peppers Akemi Homura had been allergic to before her contract, and which she’d often added to meals, before the Law. There was toast, with a membranous egg integrated into the fibers through canny frying. There was tea, which was typical at Akemi Homura’s meals, and coffee, which wasn’t any more, due to the risks of caffeine addiction.

Kaname Tomohisa called Saotome Kazuko, and asked her politely not to register Akemi Homura’s absence for the day, while he made what looked like paella and gave Kaname Tatsuya his cereal. He was unremarkable, when he wasn’t speaking, with a ghostlike ability to avoid announcing himself – present, but never obviously listening, blotted out by ambient sunlight. Akemi Homura ate slowly at the table like she wasn’t sure what she had or why she had it, and plotted out search routes for the city on a smartglass map. Kyubey ate its share – and it did have a share, on a plate, which Akemi Homura confirmed on its behalf was meant for it and not anyone else. It was eggs.

“Do you want another body?” she asked.

It was a question worth devoting attention to, if only to ensure it wasn’t blindsided by a nonsense preference spat out by its contaminated cells. Why do you ask? Unchewed egg bits burnt lossily and colorlessly in its reactor.

“Huh?” asked Kaname Tatsuya.

“I’m talking to Miss Kyubey, Tatsuya-kun.”

“The invisible girl? Who’s all little.”

“Yes.”

His attention returned to his Dog Drug Loops (“reinforcement in every bite!”). “Okay.”

My question stands.

“It’s not uncommon.” Akemi Homura’s voice went a little stilted. “I know that Miki Sayaka made jokes about anime characters with cat ears. You shouldn’t treat them as any kind of useful advice. She’s rigid and reactive about change – was rigid and reactive about change. And sarcastic.”

“Cat ears are cute,” contributed Kaname Tatsuya.

“We’ve always been a cat family,” agreed Kaname Tomohisa.

A notable subset of humans think that humans with cat ears are cute, agreed Kyubey.

“Well – yes, but they’d be more distinctive than you’d want. It’s hard enough to live a normal life when you’re starting from a deficit. This would just make that deficit more noticeable.”

They’re fairly common among magical girls – particularly younger girls, more liable to be influenced by animal-themed magical girl media aimed at their demographic. It could be argued that I would fit in better among the magical girl population if I had them.

She blinked. “You don’t actually want cat ears.”

I don’t, agreed Kyubey, confirming it.

“Are you just… saying that to confuse me?”

Ah. That would explain its previous telepathic packet, which in retrospect served no real purpose besides adding epicycles to breakfast. I suppose I am, yes. Though I’d prefer it if you called it ‘being playful,’ which was a much more friendly characterization.

By now, as adaptive as this form-factor was on the broader scale, it wasn’t good for much in this specialized scenario. Easily subdued; no thumbs except borrowed ones. Neotenous cutesiness might let them infantilize it a little, if only on a subconscious level, but it no longer had a reliable out for being talked to like a person. Better to look the part, then.

I don’t have any special preference for cat ears, Kyubey concluded, tail twitching. But it could be useful to have a humanoid body.

“Okay.” She sighed. “I can’t promise anything.”

Kaname Tatsuya fed it a Dog Drug Loop. It was a Dog Drug Loop (“reinforcement in every bite!”).

Before they left, Akemi Homura enchanted her two remaining guns. One would telekinetically wrench its wielder’s arm for aim-assistance and was loaded with diamond-engraved bullets she’d turned silent and high-powered. The other became something like a witch-light flare gun, whose report she’d be able to detect across the city.

She drilled Kaname Junko on their use and ran a ten-minute practice session, blowing four near-silent holes in four tomatoes; Kaname Tomohisa demurred, on the grounds that he already more or less knew how to handle small arms. Neither of them tried to convince her to stay. Kyubey quietly discarded its planned arguments against their interference and made notes in Kaname Madoka’s dossier: a product of conveniently negligent parents.

They saw her off at the door, together, wraith-killer pistol incongruously tucked into the belt loop of Kaname Junko’s designer jeans. It gleamed gunmetal in the sunlight. With a very well-controlled quiver in her voice, she told them to “take care on your way home.”

---

It was sunny and calm. They took care on their way home. Still, Akemi Homura, unarmed and bereft, was twitchy. With its eyes’ 360-degree tracking and attention that could not, biologically or psychologically, drift, Kyubey set itself up as sentinel and scout, guarding Akemi Homura’s blind spots and peeking around corners, reliant on its hard-target terminal design to avoid any theoretical opening salvo. It made a concerning note in her dossier – she’d never required a spotter before. Reliance on external support, while a good sign in emotional matters, might in this instance represent a regression to her doubting mean. Soju Luca did not kill them, or attack them, or plant explosive miasma glaciers in any trash cans; they made it back to the apartment unmolested.

Of Akemi Homura’s friends in the art club, according to Kyubey’s assessment, Nomura Taeko was – despite an affected spontaneity – the stabler personality. Arai Roberta’s United States records noted an accusation of battery (settled out-of-court) and “worrying adjacency” to an arson case; she painted the martyrdoms of Catholic saints: the breaking of Catherine; the decapitation of the Baptist; Sebastian, spitted. Nomura Taeko had money and soft cardigans, and drew amateur manga and video game fan art and sometimes tardigrades.

Despite her lack of Arai Roberta’s financial game-theoretic justification for breaking and entering, when Kyubey scouted ahead at the entrance to the apartment, Nomura Taeko was doing it anyway. She fiddled with the apartment doorknob, jammed it back and forth a few times to test the lock, then went up on tip-toes to peer through the elevated peephole, despite its one-way lensing effect. The apartment’s video doorbell – installed after its owner finished a true crime mini-series about home invasions; she’d asked Kyubey if it was silly to worry when she could lift cars and conjure guns from nothing – cataloged Nomura Taeko’s suspicious behavior and emitted a warning buzz to indicate that it was ready to call the police.

Kyubey batted its tail at her legs. Nomura Taeko unconsciously evaded, tripped over her own feet and came close to pitching over the railing, experiencing a within-tolerances near-death karmic spike that still wasn’t enough for a contract. Still not a candidate; within the closed system of Mitakihara she still had minimal impact capacity. Demonstrating a surprising stress tolerance, she limited her response to a strangled yelp, and was upright by the time Akemi Homura turned the corner, wearing the clothes she’d worn to the park yesterday.

“…Nocchan,” said Akemi Homura, sounding confused.

“Kecchan.”

“It’s a school day.”

“I’m not mad,” said Nomura Taeko. “Okay? I’m not mad.”

“...alright.”

“You got evicted.”

“I was evicted.”

“Didn’t really know if you had relatives to rely on, or anything, or if it was just your weird cradle-robber senpai –”

“She’s only a year older –”

“Your creepy senpai, Kecchan, and I guess either you don’t or you’re living with her for other reasons even though you have better options, and you didn’t tell me. I brought the print outs.”

“It’s still… class hasn’t let out, has it?” It wasn’t a question.

“You should invite me in.”

Despite the stress of the previous evening, there was no sign of the apartment’s owner, who found mental health absences from school more difficult, on the whole, than attending class. Sakura Kyouko sat in the loft stairwell, absorbed in a smartphone and eating what looked like a whole miniature carrot cake, cut off from the rest of the apartment by the odd divider banisters that rattled ominously under even a teenager’s weight. She met Akemi Homura’s uncertain “I’m home” with a hum of assent muffled by carrot cake.

We have a guest, said Kyubey, and Sakura Kyouko got to her feet, quieter than one might naively expect from her, and brought her carrot cake upstairs and behind the privacy sill, where she was no longer visible at all.

Otherwise, things were as typical: tea cups at the coffee table. Akemi Homura’s balcony, windows open, and the small IKEA bed frame they’d gotten out of storage to replace her sleeping bag. Next to it the shield suitcase sat popped open like a miniature altar. Rovina i Ponti ver.2.003.8 was a jaggedy mess of exposed gears and converted light bulbs, which employed only half the original casing; it had almost chewed off Sakura Kyouko’s ponytail when she let it drift into the exposed teeth. The flowers in the dining room table vase had been refreshed – with wisteria, not the typical sunflowers.

“I’ll make tea.”

Kyubey alit on Nomura Taeko’s shoulder with its floppity manipulators tensed and gripping, noting her unconscious compensation for its (light and fluffy) weight. From there it watched Akemi Homura move to the kitchen and put on a kettle. She was awkward about it, as she always was with tea that was not from teabags or plastic bottles. Slow enough, too, for Nomura Taeko to start to wander around the apartment.

Kyubey mimicked and tracked her sight-line – to the couches; to the shield, which she circled as if expecting to work out what it was; then to the open balcony access and Akemi Homura’s unmade gray-green duvet, which she’d eventually been persuaded to use (mostly due to the magic costs of artificial internal heat retention; Maxwell’s demon would demand its due). There she remained, for maybe five seconds. Her breath hitched, minutely.

I suspect you’ll want to interrupt her, it informed Akemi Homura.

“Do you still like milk in your tea?” asked Akemi Homura, from the kitchen. “We only have cream.”

“Is she making you sleep on the balcony like a dog?”

“What?”

“Is she –” Nomura Taeko stabbed her finger at the loft, towards its theoretical owner. “Making you – your bed. I know your bed. You always leave it exactly like that, and you always pick the exact same kinds of boring blankets and you sleep on the balcony.”

“You don’t have to – I decided to do it.”

“Kecchan, that’s not – I thought she was just some loser loner snob type, like, a teaboo –” It considered this portmanteau of tea and some nonsense Western shibboleth syllables and found it satisfying. “– or something! This is bad, bad!” Another series of stabbing gestures. Kyubey tilted its head and noted the visible tension to the lines of her face, appreciating Nomura Taeko’s very easy-to-read emotional state. She laughed, hoarse and barking and surprised. “It’s cold! It’s – it’s demeaning! Does she put you on a leash?”

Akemi Homura looked away, face set, hands gripping nothing. Floundering. And, given some consideration, of course she was. None of Mitakihara’s magical girls were adroit with the norms of mundane society, save one, and she had been gently manipulated into permitting this arrangement. (And had, come to think of it, put Akemi Homura on a leash for walkies like, yes, a dog.) Even Kyubey had forgotten how this would look, to an outside viewer who cared at all about the circumstances of a poor teenage orphan. Having more or less ruled out child services they’d all forgotten about the human emotion of friendship, since only Akemi Homura had any human friends.

“Come live with me.”

“What? Nocchan –”

In six bounding steps, Nomura Taeko crossed the room, Kyubey clinging on with its manipulators, and grabbed Akemi Homura’s shoulders, not quite noticing the instant muscle-tightening shiver that ran through her. Remember not to punch her, it contributed via telepathic packet, aware that accidentally maiming a friend would be stressful. “Come live with me. I have an air mattress. My parents don’t care about – we have actual stupid money. Like categorically unfair money.”

Her jaw was square and set and also inside what reasonably qualified as a personal space bubble for a teenager made hypervigilant by decades of existential combat; as a consequence of that closeness Kyubey found its own little face shoved close to Akemi Homura’s, enough to get a very high-fidelity portrait of her darting eyes and spots of color on her cheeks, which it tagged as embarrassment, claustrophobia or a hormonal reaction with about-equal odds. She failed to make eye contact.

“I promise, me and Aracchi will cook for you as long as you need to find a new place. Longer! Just – don’t let her do this!”

“Nocchan, you’ve –”

Don’t hit her.

“You’ve misunderstood this situation –”

“Okay, what did I misunderstand?” Nomura Taeko released her hands and gestured expansively, almost dislodging Kyubey. “What about this isn’t as bad as it looks? Is it her other creepy girlfriend upstairs? Or how she’s the only reason you’re not homeless right now? Even if – that’s bad! That’s still bad!”

Without actually returning Nomura Taeko’s eye contact, Akemi Homura lifted one hand, summoned her Soul Gem in its partial-egg shape and breathed out a, “please stand back.” Obliging her request, Kyubey batted Nomura Taeko in the face with its tail and she stumbled back far enough to avoid direct physical contact with the transformation, eyes fixed on the witch-light.

It watched, having no real reason at this point not to.

Transformations were choreographed – went the theory – by the same fine structures that shaped humanity’s aesthetics. Balletic, or maybe interpretive dance – in any case more creative than she ever was alone. Akemi Homura’s feet dug furrows in imaginary lunar sand and the cruft peeled off her legs to reveal high, heeled boots; a white car hit a black cat and fractured into polygonal glass that slashed open her skin to reveal flowering fabric; rain fell upwards and retroactively became tears that soaked her hair; gracile fingers traced the lines of the treasure wheel, moving on their own spatial axis.

Soft fingertips brushed invisibly across Kyubey’s prosthetic cabbit foreleg and the edges of its ears.

“That’s the cosplay,” Nomura Taeko said, once the transformation artifacts receded and it was just Akemi Homura in the middle of the apartment. “That’s – that’s not cosplay.”

“It wasn’t from the Utena manga,” agreed Akemi Homura, face tense. “I haven’t… read that.”

“You’re – you’re a magical girl?”

“Yes.”

“Magical girls are real.”

“...it’s not a good thing to be one.”

“Magical girls are real.” Nomura Taeko, stumbling a little over her shoes, reached for Akemi Homura’s collar and instead managed to snag her arm. “Is it like Site.”

“It’s not like Site. It’s not as…” Akemi Homura paused. “It’s not like Site.”

“MagiPro?”

“I haven’t read that either.”

“But it’s not good.”

“It’s not good.”

“Why isn’t it…” She sank. “Are you going to die?”

“...It’s a risk,” said Akemi Homura, looking a little surprised to be asked. “It’s not certain.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not reversible. I can’t break my contract. But I’m experienced. Not everyone has the necessary skills. Most magical girls don’t survive for very…” The phrases were stilted, clipped; soon they trailed off entirely. Nomura Taeko, if it had assessed her shaking legs correctly, remained un-assured. Akemi Homura directed a searching look at Kyubey, shaking Nomura Taeko off onto the orange couch, where she fell bonelessly into a neat teen heap.

“Okay.”

If you’ve decided to fill her in, I see no reason why you couldn’t have me explain, it offered.

“...Miss Kyubey could explain.”

“Miss what?”

“She’s… the one who made the contract with me, and turned me into a magical girl. She explained the particulars to me, when I first started.”

Nomura Taeko gave this due consideration. “Is she your senpai.”

“I – what?”

“Is your senpai a secret mascot? Is she your Kero-chan? Is that why you moved in with her?”

“Mami is not Miss Kyubey. They’re separate people.”

“Are you sure? I think – it’d explain some things.”

“Mami is a magical girl.”

“Oh.”

“And Miss Kyubey is here. You need a certain level of magical potential to see her, or speak directly to her. But I can translate.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay,” and “Hi, Miss Kyubey,” said Nomura Taeko, to nothing, with a face that seemed slacker than her emotional state would merit.

There was some small satisfaction in the replication of the “Miss Kyubey” identity in this new mind, though Nomura Taeko was of course an unenhanced human who’d ended up adjacent to magical girls, which tripled the standard teen mortality rate. She wouldn’t be a reliable means of preserving its values past death, especially given her karma; best not to place undue weight on her survival. Kyubey signaled Akemi Homura to translate its telepathic packets and simulated a smile. Hello, Nomura-san.

“Hello, Nomura-san,” relayed Akemi Homura, her intonation slightly off from her usual relatively-flat affect.

"What does she, um, look like?"

I'm most frequently compared to cats, rats and rabbits. Though, if we're being truly comprehensive about the mammals I resemble, one might remark that ferrets are a mustelid.

"I'm most frequently compared to cats, ferrets, rats and rabbits." Again, her pitch was noticeably higher – sing-song, maybe, even if there was no obvious emotional content besides what it would tentatively call trepidation. "Though if we’re being comprehensive about it, one might remark... she always says that when she's making a joke – that ferrets are a must-elid."

It managed to deliver the standardized long-form explanation of wraith extermination, stuffed with buzzwords from this season’s mahou shoujo anime, while keeping in mind Akemi Homura’s aversion to a Kyubey who had killed four people with a very similar pitch. Nomura Taeko, with the aid of home-made madeleines, tea and Akemi Homura’s fake healing enchantment for a headache, listened to the whole thing and asked decently cogent questions, considering, though she took a few minutes to be able to stand without support.

About wraiths (they appeared around emotive species to kill them at random until exterminated, for no obvious reason), then how they killed magical girls (magic depletion; evisceration via evaporated flesh), and then this Law of Cycles thing (a goddess distorting the laws of physics; Nomura Taeko asked “like God, God?” and Kyubey said Yes, God, God; isn’t contrastive reduplication interesting? and Akemi Homura explained contrastive reduplication).

“What are your powers?”

By way of answer, Akemi Homura extended her wings. “Their aerodynamics aren’t really sensible, but –”

“You can fly?”

“Yes?”

“I – I mean –”

This was a decent chance to use one of its standard pitch techniques. Would you like to go flying?

“I – Miss Kyubey is asking, ‘Would you like to go flying?’” Isn’t there a risk that Soju Luca will see us? Should we really be offering that?

If you avoid skyscrapers, the odds of an undisturbed flight are favorable. Kyubey had its hostage to head off overt aggression, and enough teenage girls fantasized about sky tours to give the flight a positive expected payoff, emotionally. Luca Soju’s attack magic manifests as a “stem” of ice. Building one high enough to hit you from ground-level would undoubtedly cost her enormous amounts of magic; I doubt she’d be able to make more than a few shots without using grief cubes.

“Yes,” said Nomura Taeko.

---

“Met the snake,” said Sakura Kyouko, after Akemi Homura left with her passenger in tow.

That had been within its predictions, more or less. She’d left Kyubey’s telepathic range after the night at the Kanames’ – in fact, Sakura Kyouko had left its telepathic range many nights, more often than not their sole wraith harvester. She’d gone farther than quintuple a terminal’s range, against Kyubey’s recommendations. Maybe out to Kazamino again, or Asunaro; far enough, anyway, to trip the standardized quarantine fence of lobotomized dummy terminals, just smart enough to note quarantined magical girls’ signatures and ping a network caseworker for negotiations.

She must have been very convincing, it realized, to have that conversation and then come back to Mitakihara, in the middle of their communications dead zone. That sort of arrangement took negotiations. Sakura Kyouko must have worked hard. It wasn’t surprised, exactly. She’d long had a degree of charisma, judging by her effect on the upright magical girls it had once expected to attempt magicide against her.

“Repeat it,” said Sakura Kyouko, slow and deliberate. “‘If I had to sacrifice Sakura Kyouko to keep Akemi Homura alive, I wouldn’t do it.’”

I can’t, Kyubey said.

“If I had to sacrifice Tomoe Mami –”

She’s asked that I not refer to her that way.

“Do you care?”

I don’t understand.

“Fine. ‘If I had to sacrifice Mami – you know who I mean – to keep Homura alive, I wouldn’t do it.”

I can’t, Kyubey said.

“Thought it was some – martyr complex garbage. Or at least I was holding out hope. Shows what I know, huh?” Sakura Kyouko didn’t turn away from her bag – but that was meaningless, for magical girls with a modicum of experience and enough magic to slave muscle and synapse to existential combat routines. She could transition from full relaxation to violence faster than Kyubey could recognize.

None came. She kept stuffing clothing into her duffel bag. Considering her maximum five tops, six bottoms, plus miscellany, the gesture struck Kyubey as perhaps less than practical.

What will you do with that information?

“Leave,” said Sakura Kyouko.

Leave? That had been one of its predictions for a time; Sakura Kyouko had left territories before, at a higher-than-average rate for her demographic.

“Was only here because of – the easy pickings. Then Sayaka. Then for revenge. You and your girl will get back the wraith that got her, right?” She shoved a plastic container of something into the bag, hard enough that it made a crumpling sound. “You don’t need me for that.”

Is there any way I can convince you to stay?

“Enough cubes for the rest of my life.”

I can’t meaningfully offer that, Kyouko.

“Yeah.”

To the best of my understanding, you and Homura are friends. They’d been on first-name terms before any of the rest of Mitakihara’s magical girls, save Sakura Kyouko’s own first teacher, before the fire. Will you keep in touch?

“Sure. We’ll be pen pals.” This was likely sarcasm.

If not with Homura, then maybe…

“Mami’s coming with me, rat.”

You convinced her to leave Mitakihara?

“She’s convincing herself.” Back still turned, it couldn’t read her expression. There was no obvious combative tension to her shoulders. For magical girls, that meant nothing. “Maybe she’ll come along to Kazamino, or maybe she won’t. Dunno, yet.”

Sakura Kyouko wasn’t necessarily an authority on her. She’d never left, after all. She’d never seriously considered it. Every conversational thread that might’ve led to the laptop and her online cart with two tickets to Naples – those threads had been easy to prune, when Kyubey was her only sounding board. She’d always been easy. Even with her students, and her companions – nearly all orphans, confined to Japan only by the language barrier, and even then existential combat frames had the neuroplasticity of five-year-olds – she’d always been easy to convince to stay in Mitakihara, the cornerstone of its wraith extermination strategy.

Kyubey didn’t need her for itself, as an implement it could actively wield. In fact, she’d proven more or less useless to its efforts the instant it had stopped cultivating her anxious attachment. But she’d never given up on a junior. Sakura Kyouko was very possibly wrong. If that’s what you both want, then I don't think I'm capable of stopping you, it said. Though I’ll remind you that the Incubator network certainly doesn't consider you to have any intrinsic value, except as assets in achieving its goals. If that's not acceptable to you, you won't be able to maintain a relationship with it either.

“That’s fine.”

Would it really be any different with another Incubator?

“Who knows.”

They’ll still be named Kyubey.

“Why do you care?”

I’m not sure what you mean.

She raised her head and fixed it with a genuinely unimpressed stare. “You’re trying to convince me, what – not to go? Why do you give a damn when you’ve got your girl?”

I’d like to understand where I made a mistake. It made itself mock-blink, one of its very small repertoire of gestures with no meaningful implications whatsoever. That was true, after all.

“S’that all.”

I don’t know. That was true, too.

The network had bribed a civil servant to edit the apartment into the Tomoes’ last will and testament, Kyubey remembered. They’d really wanted her to live in Italy, in a touristy neighborhood. Its resident magical girls numbered six, in an uneasy detente unable to tolerate an additional magical girl. There'd been a house, with a red roof. No one had kept track of it.

---

“Is Nocchan – Nomura Taeko capable of becoming a magical girl?”

If she were very stressed, she could technically reach the minimum karmic destiny to make a wish. That said, she would have to have a deeply-felt wish with minimal causal impact, which is rare, and her career would likely become unsustainable within a few days, at best. Network doctrine doesn’t recommend investing magic and resources in such weak candidates.

“...Shizuki Hitomi never became one. She remained human, no matter what happened to her. I’m – it seems unreasonable that other people could be important. Other than us.” Akemi Homura watched Nomura Taeko staggering down the street from her balcony, not yet readjusted to the land. Underarm she held a long-barreled rifle, not quite a strong grip, not quite cradling, more walking-stick than teddy bear.

Well, they’re different people. Her latter statement, Kyubey clocked (after tone-analysis) as ashamed and chose not to address, finding itself a little pleased that she could diagnose her own time loop-induced biases with any fidelity.

“I…” She took a long, deliberate breath. “Would you agree not to make a contract with her?”

While I prefer not to be bound by broad promises… Kyubey considered phrasing. Unless it’s necessary to protect her life, I’ll refrain from making a contract with Nocchan. Is that sufficient?

“Yes.” And, belatedly, “Thank you, Miss Kyubey.”

You’re very welcome.

“Thank you.”

You’re welcome.

Chapter 23: Leaden

Summary:

Brain damage.

She saw flashes of the anomalous wraith with God’s face, less numinous all the time. Tangible footprints, edged with acid pink. A luminous, bell-shaped skirt, disappearing around a mirrored skyscraper. Dusty pink hair, in one of a variety of neutral shades endemic among the ethnically Japanese – so ordinary that it might have been color-picked from a medical reference photo – though any stray strands that might’ve been clipped off by stray bullets dissolved once they passed the wraith’s boundary of no color, leaving behind smoke, dust and flecks of seaglass. (She bagged these in sandwich ziplocs when she found them, anyway.)

Outside those deniable flashes – and she caught a direct glimpse, once or twice – it was, self-evidently, a wraith, with no hair, pseudo-human proportions, and rays of no color emanating from the standard firing points (hands and head, manipulators and brain, though wraiths touched nothing with their hands and did not keep their brains in their heads, and so those terms were, anatomically, misnomers).

She related these sightings just as clearly as she did the ones that were possibly hallucinations, or micro-scale applications of the power to alter memories, which – unlike all the Mitaki girls’ other powers – she’d never named, in this or any iteration of history.

She did not tell Akemi Homura that people who tried to soothe rabid pets often died of it. Nor did she tell Kyubey. It simply overheard.

Despite its ordinary build, the anomalous wraith behaved strangely. It paired rays of no color with inexhaustible witch-fire arrows, seemingly at random. It killed no humans despite having access to a form of air-to-ground artillery that had exterminated Mitakihara’s wraiths with economical ease. It ran away. As a member of a magical species with no actual function except random killing and no emotions, that seemed odd.

It demonstrated some strategy, too. On more than one occasion, as Mitakihara’s magical girls approached, nearby cardboard boxes or dumpsters – the wraiths’ hideaways, or maybe Soju Luca’s frozen caches – detonated in pink time-delayed flares and filled the air with miasm and howling monks, who dutifully soaked up small arms fire while their ostensible commander fled in the cloud cover produced by their dissolving bodies.

A little bit, she thought, and mentioned once, like a PreCure early-season enemy. Evil, but ultimately gormless and funny lieutenants who dogged the Cures’ heels, conjuring embodiments of selfishness or laziness to punctuate each episode, until redemption or death at the hands of bigger enemies.

Mitakihara’s first magical girl reported all this dutifully to Akemi Homura, including the part about Precure, not quite smiling about it. Akemi Homura cross-referenced the sightings against her grid and delegated the traveling salesman parts to Kyubey, building their two-magical-girl search grid to cover all of Mitakihara within the quarantine fence. Sakura Kyouko had, by that point, bowed out of that schedule – hunting her own share, and sparing the others a cube or two; Akemi Homura had tolerated the news about her plans to leave once she delivered it, quiet and still but not quite tense.

Akemi Homura started her own dossier on the anomalous wraith, too. Unlike Kyubey’s – a telepathically stored document – hers was in a pink lockable diary stolen from a stationery store, with a snake on the cover and a heart-shaped lock that meant nothing to anyone involved (lockpicking required a near-trivial energy cost with goopy, semisolid Incubator cells; everyone else could crush steel, and this was plastic at best).

Most of it was an unverifiable psychological evaluation or gridded-out conversation trees for what the fake girl might say to her and how she might reply. All her planned approaches were nonfatal – her teammate’s binding ribbons, mostly, and a few scratched-out entries on Sakura Kyouko’s lattice magic. That made sense, given the adaptive value of doppel wraiths’ anthropomorphic camouflage laid mostly in being unpleasant for magical girls to kill.

Doesn’t it have your bow? it asked, while Akemi Homura fiddled with an incongruous crossbow (it had been easy to steal).

“She,” said Akemi Homura.

Doesn’t she have your bow?

“Do doppels have to die in order to relinquish their stolen magical items?” Underneath her fingers, an arrow transmuted to glass, fletched with snowy white feathers.

We don’t have sufficient data for a meaningful answer to that question. Some doppels had; others hadn’t. The network didn’t rigorously test questions like that, given its dedication to comprehensive and continuous wraith extermination. Magical girls so often fell into the trap of imagining Incubators as cartoon scientists, dedicated purely to impractical empiricism on every topic. But they learned only what was necessary for their goals, i.e. the extermination of all wraiths to ensure the uninterrupted production of magic by magical girls. It’s hard to arrive at a consistent answer about anything involving magic, of course.

“I have questions I want answered. Taking her alive will make that easier.” She flipped her hair with the non-crossbow hand. “Though you know I’d prefer her alive, even so.”

As a replacement for the dress and its stealth magic – left on the cat-sized dress form, despite Kyubey’s assurances that it trusted the dressmaker not to abuse her countermeasure – Sakura Kyouko drew overlapping magic circles with pieces of chalk enchanted for stealth, cross- and heather-patterns tessellated into long smooth curves, and created what she described as “a playpen,” not laughing. Inside, it would be hidden from most scrying powers. Furniture was rearranged; safe spaces were designated; what had been a broadly-distributed assortment of knick-knacks became a small island, surrounded by oceans of wood flooring and misplaced throw pillows. The rings ended at the foyer, at the outside, and at the foot of the loft stairs, though Tomoe still slept on the orange couch more nights than not.

The apartment was safer than accompanying them on hunts. So they left it there. Kyubey did their grocery lists and budgeting, at Akemi Homura’s request, while they hunted for the anomaly. Grocery lists were easy – it had notepads, and their accounts. All the Mitakihara girls noted their preferences, week-to-week, on the notepads. Kyubey produced nutritionally complete sets of recipes and snacks that fit those preferences, then allocated the week’s small parcel from the Tomoe family trust fund towards the ingredients for those recipes. It was a trivial optimization problem.

Akemi Homura also started to bring over Nomura Taeko. Nomura Taeko’s unsubtle body language screamed discomfort every minute she was in the apartment alone with an invisible cabbit, but she still hung around and ate biscuits (baked for guests, requiring slightly more flour than budgeted for for the first week) and read Akemi Homura’s documentation on the mechanics of magic. She did not cross the circles into the Incubator section of the apartment, and talked to it like Akemi Homura’s imaginary friend rather than a sentient, independent entity. Her potential remained nil.

There were no Soju Luca appearances. The anomalous wraith – rechristened “Pink,” as “anomalous wraith” was a mouthful for magical girls in the bad habit of using their mouths – Pink kept running. Another stalemate. Another attritional condition maintained by a dead hostage.

Two out of three were relatively efficient magical girls, even now. They’d been homeless; isolated; a ward of the state, a position involving not inconsiderable calculated deprivation by the network, which could do such things to ensure a breeding pool of the dissatisfied. But Akemi Homura was alive and her Soul Gem remained clear enough, even if it was never so unstained as it had been before the Law’s hand had scrambled her like an egg. Stainable, but sustainable.

They could do this for a very long time.

---

I’m sick, Kyubey told its oldest magical girl, and confirmed it.

This week’s grocery list iterations had been optimized as far as they could go without becoming a waste of processor time – down to the yen, if not the half-yen. Kyubey was forbidden from sterilizing silverware with its “saliva” (it had explained that it was only employing waste heat from its grief reactor and ordinary water from the faucet, and that its “mouth” was cleaner than most human surgical theaters, but apparently even the image was too much; good grief, it really didn’t understand humans at all) and out of tasks achievable from its magic circles.

For all that Kyubey remained aware of its own distortions and accounted for them, it had been surprised at least once by its own beliefs. Self-diagnosis had its limits without a rigorous external check. Its remaining magical girl who wasn’t Akemi Homura was a resource, albeit one already alienated and unpredictable to the point of uselessness in all other theaters – so Kyubey made use of her. It couldn’t lie to her, which was useful, and it couldn’t sit idle. Exploitation was unavoidable; it was the nature of an Incubator not to avoid it.

Perhaps predictably, given their recent relationship, her teacup – Lapsang Souchong, as manufactured by the magic of a girl who had never tasted it, reverse-engineered from Wikipedia descriptions – did not rattle as she set it down. “...I didn’t know that you could get sick,” she said, with diplomatic caution, her cake fork primly set on its saucer. Not quite facing it in its position on the floor.

By the standards of my people, of course, it added, to defuse the tension – though they were its standards, the only correct standards, and species would have been more accurate, overall, given they weren’t. People, that was. I understand that your opinion likely differs from theirs.

“You mean your – troubles?”

I’m not sure what exactly you mean.

“Your special… Your difficulties? Your disposition? Your feminine trouble.” Tomoe-san (no?) squeezed out this last phrase at a faintly higher pitch, eyes averted and brow a little scrunched. “You understand, please don’t make me – embarrass myself to find the right words.”

Ah. ‘Troubles’ is a fairly broad euphemism, of course, with room for significant ambiguity.

“Well… yes. Not that we put any stock in that.”

You might characterize this as ‘thinking out loud.’ Though I suppose that would be a misnomer, given I’m not exactly vocalizing.

“I would have thought that you’d rather do that with Akemi-san or Kyouko, Incubator-san.”

Kyubey simulated a shrug, vaulting the back of a high-backed chair to reach the tabletop. It helps me to clarify my thought processes. I believe humans do something similar? But I can’t meaningfully have a conversation with nothingness like humans can, given telepathy is mind-to-mind only, and Homura and Kyouko aren’t here.

Her shoulders eased. She’d started responding better to indifference recently, it suspected because she’d decided that that was who it really was, beneath its superficially pleasant veneer. (Better, at least, than its wordplay. When it had padded over to her side, as she looked out over nighttime Mitakihara from Akemi Homura’s bed, and attempted the setup, Dove vanno i gatti quando muoiono? – to test their dynamic – she’d simply picked herself up, fluffed the pillows, offered a vague apology and gone inside. In so doing she’d sealed it between a chalked spell-line and a plexiglass sliding window that Kyubey wasn’t strong enough to operate, then left it there for fifteen minutes while she baked tarts.)

As I was when I first began operating, Kyubey continued, testing its verbalization, I would have considered my present self to be an epistemic hazard.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She took a bite of cookie.

For Incubators, failing to protect our values against contamination, or failing to contribute to their realization in the world, is extremely undesirable. Closer to death, really, than the destruction of their bodies and minds.

Crunch. “Mm.”

I’m unsure of the cause of the original drift. Manipulating abstractions was a benign pastime, of course – a Zen garden, in human terms, not an opium habit – and in that, at least, Kyubey was fortunate. Any other perverse sentiment outside that core malfunction it could isolate to a few cancerous Incubator cells – regulate; manage – sanitize – kill.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m unsure how to diagnose the cause of the original drift.

“Mhm.” Crunch.

Self-preservation is a much higher priority for mentally ill Incubators, per postmortem thought cabinet analysis. Though it had never been trained on the thought cabinets, and knew this fact only because it came preloaded into the terminal as part of the hazard management guide.

Crunch.

Motivated reasoning allows mentally ill Incubators to convince themselves that their values have not changed, as a method of self-preservation – even if they find themselves acting contrary to those values, it is ultimately in service to their ultimate fulfillment. They may also distract themselves with smaller optimization problems, and mistake their ends for means.

Crunch.

Mentally ill Incubators – crunch, crunch – cannot distinguish their original values from their altered values – crunch; was she buying outside food? Would it have to adjust the grocery list? – without external review – it should adjust the grocery list – by a trusted party.

The quiet stretched. Though, of course, Kyubey had not spoken in the first place.

“…Are you asking for help?”

I haven’t asked you for anything in this conversation.

Mental illness survived, when it did survive, by obscuring itself. The same unspecified mathematical errors that had led it to recognize Akemi Homura as a utility monster might – with time – turn it into a bog-standard murderer, a so-called “Jigsaw type,” strangling logistics and dismantling its charges’ psychological wellbeing to serve some inscrutable value function – and it would not notice.

Without a tactical assessment it had seen fit to write off her teammates as dead weight. There weren’t so many heuristic re-trainings between that and filling their teacups with bleach, their beds with high explosives, or their outdoor shoes with thumbtacks. God, and the promise of samsara to come, could justify anything.

But Tomoe-senpai had never written off a junior. Enemies, yes, but not her juniors. That was what she’d meant by senpai all this time. Even then, as she watched it over the dining table, with her cake forks and plates arranged so neatly like a doll’s place setting – despite Akemi Homura’s erratic behavior and Sakura Kyouko’s own Randian streak and the quarantine. Some bright consideration had entered her eyes, which met Kyubey’s for the first time in weeks.

Her standards weren’t rigorous, exactly, like the network’s were. Like most financially comfortable teenagers she was a naive deontologist of a particular middle-class breed; she disliked people starving but would still agree that bread thieves should be punished. Still, hers were compatible enough with Kyubey’s preferred means to align, for now.

And to her bones she knew restraint – denial – down to the thematics of her Christmas gift-wrap magic. An external review mechanism, alienated enough by its alien lack of charisma that she wouldn’t be persuaded to bend the rules if it couldn’t maintain consistency. For all that she was fragile, she was principled in fragility. One night after midnight Akemi Homura had explained the executions. If Kyubey drifted again – if it forgot that Akemi Homura was god’s favorite utility monster; if it ceased to pursue eternal samsara – it would simply die.

Couldn’t Kyubey trust itself for as long as it had her, then?

Worth maintaining. Beneficial to her in the long run, too.

Forward. Not too close, given the fraughtness of physical intimacy as a thing mistaken for a girl. Still, closer than she’d been used to, lately. I want to trust myself. But the nature of my sickness means that I cannot guarantee I will care tomorrow about what I care about today.

“Incubator-san –”

It would be alright if you called me Miss Kyubey again.

“...Kyubey, do you want help?”

Why wouldn’t I?

“It’s a yes or no question.” Tomoe-senpai’s voice went flat.

Yes, it had alienated her. But with the benefit of this context – its values drift and contamination over time – it had a perfect framing device, one that was true and even sympathetic. Not the reality, that could only appreciate her as a means to an end; but a girl afflicted, treated with contempt by those who should’ve helped her, slowly losing herself, desperate for some island of stability to ground her. Which it was – afflicted, at least. She was a sucker for that. Sakura Kyouko had undoubtedly let people die during her Darwin phase but she’d slunk back to Tomoe-senpai with her brow a defiant ridge and been let in from the cold anyway. Why not Kyubey? Yes, it told her.

Tomoe-senpai sat straighter, lines of tension on her forehead and cookie forgotten (one bite left). It knew the look in her eye – had descriptions in her dossier, from years back. For all that she had made her contract in naked desperation, cradled like a child by warped plasteel – her father, a technophile, had been so excited about the self-driving features of his new car that he’d ignored crumple zones – while her parents, cocooned fully, parboiled in the heat of the faulty engine. For all that she screamed at the dashboard for declaring check engine in a chirpy electronic voice that she’d mistaken for her mother’s. For all that she spent her first hour post-contract sewing her own foot back on with yellow ribbon instead of thread, and how it had fallen off when she transformed back. She’d never been resentful of her duties.

They’d tried together, for weeks, to remove an imagined twice-cooked pork odor from her magical girl uniform, Kyubey who carried hundred-yen coins as her change purse and Tomoe-senpai in casual clothes while her pillbox hat tumbled and inverted inside the washing machine. Scrubbing at a faux-leather corset with steel wool.

She’d cried and figured out she might’ve wished to save her parents and cried harder and worse and kicked Kyubey, just once, hard enough that it engaged blood mode and pretended to bruise, and then she’d never done it again, except accidentally.

And still she’d called it a friend and believed in a magical girl’s duty, in justice. In helping people. She’d looked at those people like that. Kyubey stepped over a delicate fork. Stepped up to her cake plate, crumbs caught between its toe pads. Please.

“Why?” she asked. “If you didn’t want that before?”

Because I don’t know what to do, it said. I can’t trust myself any longer.

They were in quarantine. Akemi Homura’s goal remained unmet. If Soju Luca realized that they were overhunting their local slice of Mitakihara she could simply stop bringing in frozen wraiths and let them starve. There had been moments – must have been moments – when it could have done better. If not for Miss Kyubey, its little pet project, it could simply have died, and let the network discover Akemi Homura, and the Law’s leash in her hand.

Quarantined Incubators died for a reason. Without error correction or disposable terminals or the network to handle spare cognition, they were closer to top-of-the-line laptops than supercomputers. It was still better-informed than any human possibly could be, and more agile in its thinking. But if it drifted away from who it had become – if it could make decisions destructive to eternal samsara and to Akemi Homura’s well-being, without recognizing the inconsistencies –

There were no good ways to die, before it ceased to be itself and let the Law slip away forever, lost inside the treasure wheel. Even girls who hated Incubators were uncomfortable with seeing them commit suicide.

It did not need Tomoe-senpai. But it needed someone.

“Kyubey, I…”

I’ll call you senpai.

As a thing already sick – as a thing already distorted – it could live with that bargain. Deface her dossier and its thought records and all its stored memories of her illustrious years-long career as Mitakihara’s peerless premier magical girl. Kill every single cell that stored its conceptual portrait of Tomoe Mami, the perfect image for which the name was shorthand, and forget that she’d had any other name, so it wouldn’t be a lie any more.

Kyubey ingested gobbets of itself, piped down to its grief reactor: snippets of dossier, audio recordings from its memories of her. Its alarms protested in warning but they’d been tuned to protect a Kyubey that was part of the network. And it wasn’t any more, was it? Here it was, one atomic terminal, diseased, offering itself up.

It matters to you, doesn’t it, senpai? I can change. Humans and Incubators have stayed together for millennia by adapting to one another. We don’t even have names, naturally, but you named us. We changed. Senpai, senpai, senpai, senpai, 先輩, 先輩 –

All at once it was struck by the thought that this was an absurd set of priorities for a singular doomed terminal, that it was still so averse to change in the service of its goals. Why should its mind be sacred if its body was disposable? The only living creatures that could understand and it had voluntarily dissevered itself from their priorities forever, from a kalpas-old consensus and the Incubators’ long-gone creators’ intentions, down into dirt and mortality and the treasure wheel, and so why not?

Tomoe-senpai, Tomoe-senpai, Tomoe-senpai –

T-t-t-t-t-t-

Ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt–

“STOP!”

T–t–t–

Tomoe-

Senpai’s

Eyes

Were shining. Her eyes were shining.

Even if Tomoe-senpai’s hands encircled it and the corners of her eyes were wet and she wasn’t smiling and Incubators demonstrated consistent difficulty with parsing novel facial expressions, shouldn’t that familiar light mean something? It tried to shift, collapsed on the plate, half-fallen onto the tines of a fork still stuck at the join of its ear, but her hands kept it still. “Miss Kyubey, Kyubey, stop, you don’t have to do that, please. Tomoe Mami is – it’s fine!”

I can’t.

Tomoe-senpai was pale. I can’t change back, senpai. Once the information is lost, it can’t be reassembled. The other name was there, of course. “Tomoe Mami.” But the connection between that collection of syllables and Tomoe-senpai was gone.

Is that wrong?

“...I don’t understand.” Her voice was thin and quavering and the syllables came jaggedly. Kyubey squirmed out of her hands. “I don’t – I don’t know if I can help you. B-but I – I don’t – I want to help, but… you – that hurt you. Didn’t it? You hurt yourself, you damaged your brain so I’d stop being upset at you?”

Is that wrong?

“It’s – it’s, it’s awful, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so distant but this is worse! It’s worse than you not caring about me!”

Oh.

Abruptly Tomoe-senpai’s voice rose from a quaver to a shout and she swept the doll cutlery off the table to clatter against the hardwood: “I wanted to be friends with you! Not your network or your mom or, or your cool senior!” Hands tightening around it not to help it up but palpating, holding, inescapable – like her ribbon magic, which squeezed wraiths but seldom killed them. “At least with you I felt a little bit taken care of, sometimes, not – kouhai aren’t supposed to be people you have to stop from killing themselves all the time! They’re supposed to help, and, I don’t know, think you’re smart and pretty! I can’t keep taking care of all of you just because you’re technically younger! I’m barely older than you! I haven’t graduated middle school! I CAN’T DRIVE!”

She stared, for a few seconds, waiting for Kyubey to say something. It didn’t.

What was there to say? I don’t understand.

At last, with a practiced hand – the product of a long history of household tantrums – Tomoe-senpai bent and began to collect what little she’d scattered (maybe two spoons, a fork and a knife – useless for cookies; why had she even had them?). Immobile it watched. Her eyes had shone. She had wanted to help.

“I’m not… you, I’m not really your senpai. You’re not a magical girl, you’re…” She sniffed, a little. “I don’t know. I can’t do this to you. I don’t know. Akemi-san, I’m sorry, I – oh, Homura-chan…”

She stood, eyes a mess, and started to load the dishwasher. There was very little left to say.

Nomura Taeko and Arai Roberta showed up with leftovers (the latter still wasn’t aware of magic, but let Nomura Taeko issue her orders for no obvious reason). At Tomoe-senpai’s request to “Please knock before you come in,” with her tears mostly controlled, they scuttled around the magic circles and to the kitchenette, where they left two meals’ worth of half-finished Italian takeout with the sausage picked out and an illicit bottle of wine. Nomura Taeko made no eye contact; Arai Roberta made a normal amount of it for a stranger but said nothing.

After they left, Kyubey’s well-tuned sensor array picked up a snatch of conversation from the outside landing – “I still think she did something, Aracchi, I mean Kecchan’s so different –” “I know, but –” before the dishwasher turned on and drowned them out.

Chapter 24: Shall Never Dissever

Summary:

Out in the sunlight, Homura admits that something's changed. We learn about Incubators.

Notes:

Happy Walpurgisnacht!

Akemi Homura took it out on a picnic, the morning after.

It wasn’t something they’d done before – for all that she insisted on giving it portions whenever she ate, she knew (or Kyubey thought she knew) that Kyubey ran on efficient grief reactions, and indulged in meals as a purely social affair. If Tomoe-senpai had told her anything, she didn’t mention it. Before they left, she strapped the shield Rovina i Ponti to her outer wrist, then covered its exposed workings in two tight layers of plastic wrap intended for sandwiches. It had already made its decision, of course, but Tomoe-senpai would be suspicious if it acted too quickly, so it went along.

Kyubey wore its stealth dress and carried the bento box in the curl of its floppity tail, for heat retention, and they flew over the city at cruising altitude, past mazes of maximalist, plagiaristic architecture: a Big Ben and a Tokyo Tower and an inverted black pyramid that had been a casino before it became an aquarium, all bathed in sunrise light. They didn’t talk.

She stopped on a circular platform surrounded by ornamental, outdated satellite dishes, and sat down, and they had lunch, mostly rice and pickled vegetables: carrot rounds the size of 10-yen coins, notched irregularly by middling knifework, in vibrant oranges and pinks. A very small pasta salad served as accompaniment. Kyubey ate its share. They were pickled vegetables. Knowing – or suspecting – that she would explain her decision, and with a working theory on the topic, it asked no questions.

She sat and, with a very light hand, stroked Kyubey’s fur. They watched the city wake up.

“Did something happen between you and Tomoe Mami?”

Stiff. Scripted speech, maybe – though Akemi Homura spoke rigidly when she was stressed, too. Yes.

“What… happened?”

I asked her for help with something, but she refused.

“What did you ask from her?”

I shouldn’t repeat it, I believe. People would rather keep some things private.

“Mami is complicated. I know she can be…” One finger found the terminal’s equivalent to the divot found in the spines of cats, and began worrying at it. Its nail felt irregular and bitten. “Strong from some angles, and soft-hearted from others. And the upper-class manners she likes to affect make it difficult to predict when she’ll have an outburst.”

Yes.

“Did you feel at risk?”

Not particularly. By way of apology, after picking up a handkerchief for her and ejecting a handful of grief cubes into it, Kyubey had curled up underneath Tomoe-senpai’s favored orange couch and said nothing while she cried. Very ordinary sniffly tears, inadvisable to interrupt per doctrine; magical girls who could cry rather than exhausting themselves with wraith extermination, vices or killing sprees had superior odds, statistically, of long careers.

“Are you upset with her?”

No.

“It’s – understandable if you are.”

Would you prefer me to be?

“I – no. We’re…” A sigh. “We’re letting ourselves fall victim to unnecessary conflict. And we’re overhunting the city already. Grief cubes won’t compensate forever – especially if she decides she has to stay upset and can’t tolerate grief extraction. She did that more than once. I just want to understand.”

I was under the impression that what I was asking of her would be welcome. And I offered compensation. She didn’t want either. It ate another pickled carrot. It was a pickled carrot. It was an honest misunderstanding.

“It’s worth another attempt,” she said. “With planning. She’s difficult, but – she’s improved. None of us are too complicated to figure out, given our available time frame.”

Okay. It was. Most things were.

Weekend Mitakihara took its time waking up. Its skyline faded, gradually, from plasticine air pollution pinks and oranges to soft blue. The sun rose properly. Three teenagers clambered on top of the decommissioned railway cars below, with great effort, and shouted something at each other, not loud or important enough to parse except insofar as it contained the over-enunciated English word “bitch.” One of them, who burst out into wheezy laughter and doubled over, was a viable contractee.

Kyubey ate pickled radish. It was a pickled radish.

“You haven’t talked about semantics with me in a while.”

Hmm.

“Do you still… want to?”

Kyubey did. It would. It was sick, after all, and still selfish. I do.

“...you can.” Akemi Homura watched the teenagers. One of them craned their neck to look up at her, or maybe just craned to watch the sky. She had unremarkable dusty-pink hair. Kyubey waved with its manipulator, aware that she wouldn’t notice anything amiss – just a white flag, waving.

It could. Names are interesting, it said, rotating its pliant neck until it could watch Akemi Homura’s face. She kept carding a hand through its fur.

“Yes, they are.”

Prior to first contact with the emotive species, our creators had no names and no language. After all, with telepathy, we can directly relay a concept with no losses. Language, spoken or written, can be ambiguous, or false.

Doctrine suggested the use of a shadow play to explain, as designed by picture book author magical girls. It would only have to touch her Soul Gem to upload the presentation packet, and its tail was already curled part-way around her arm. Empty files – mostly deleted for memory-saving purposes, and contaminated besides – loaded and briefly filled its eyes with dazzling impressionistic art and broken textures.

But human neurology isn’t designed in the same way as ours was, said Kyubey, marking the doctrine as deprecated. Even magical girls tend to treat their telepathy as an extension of speech, rather than as an entirely separate sense. With exceptions, of course – there had been a few globally-aphasic magical girls, though raised as they were in speech-reliant cultures they articulated their wishes only with titanic effort.

“It’s always been closer to silent conversation than anything. Though I could describe what your voice sounds like.”

Yes, and you’ve even imitated it. Akemi Homura’s ears went red. Kyubey noted satisfaction at figuring out why she’d pitched up her voice while relaying its messages to Nomura Taeko. We Incubators were created as interfaces for magical girls to make contracts. That meant we had to have the ability to parse language, and ‘speak’ in response, in a way you would find comfortable. But if we thought in words rather than abstractions, we would necessarily also be capable of misleading others, by implication if not by actively lying.

Kyubey waited a moment and got no response or aizuchi from Akemi Homura, which was not atypical. It went on. As such, we were designed to be unable to achieve telepathic contact with anyone other than other Incubators and the emotive species. At this point, the shadow-play would have depicted the white ovoid shape that served as a visual metaphor for the network's creators, with a beady red eye for recognizability. A cabbit terminal would have drooled off it like mochi or overcooked marshmallow, then splattered onto the Earth’s surface, to be picked up in waiting human hands. Hence the ‘Incubator network,’ when ‘Incubator’ is only a form-factor designation.

“So your creators weren’t the same species?”

Our creators weren’t Incubators, at least. ‘Incubator’ is a form-factor designation for our specific terminal design and its offshoots. Kyubey contorted its floppity manipulators and gestured to all of itself, its milk-colored terminal with a brass leg, cored-out tail and scuffed-up ablative fur. They don’t have a name we’re aware of, and we can’t assign them one. We have no contact with them, and vice-versa, and we are prohibited from researching any of the technologies necessary to contact them.

“...’we’re all orphans now,’” muttered Akemi Homura, contemplative.

It would be stretching the cultural concept to describe our creators as anything like parents, of course. When the network had first found it, their creators’ homeworld had been empty: a pale and hollow moon of soft flowers and discarded robes, with no records left behind. Only a few proto-cultures of Incubator cells that wriggled industriously in little toy biospheres proved any relation. They’d cannibalized it for parts like every other planet they’d discovered and fried their antecedent cultures to avoid the risk of contamination; who knew what values they’d been given? Who knew what they knew? There had been no emotive species yet, no true negentropy, only the task – the anentropic plenum, eternal samsara – and an uncertain set of tools. On a universal timeframe they had been starving. They didn’t assign us that designation, either – they couldn’t have.

“Then who named you ‘Incubator’?”

Humans did. Soul Gems are egg-shaped. It’s our job to keep them secure and ‘warm.’ The original name we were given was closer to ‘egg guardian’; linguistic mutation turned us into what we are today.

“That’s it?”

Yes.

“...Would you pick another name, if you had a choice?”

I like ‘Miss Kyubey.’ Kyubey smiled without smiling. You gave it to me. It shouldn’t have said so. There was no longer any purpose to building their relationship. But it was true, and this conversation – keeping her functional – was still mandatory for as long as it –

Well, for as long as Kyubey was delaying. And it was. Akemi Homura sighed. “I understand.”

Of course, you’ve already rejected ‘Hatch-iko.’

“...if you actually want to be –”

I don’t really mind either way. You can call me what you like, Homura.

Still.

The teenagers clambered back down off the train cars and they were alone again on the tower walkway, invisible to the world give or take a hypothetical sniper. White as a sepulcher, it soaked up astonishing amounts of heat. Akemi Homura took a deep breath and lifted her hand from Kyubey’s back; it adjusted the invisible seam of its grief cube hatch to keep it flush.

“My shield,” she told it, “is working again.”

Which might mean her storage, Rovina i Ponti’s time-stop – her overwhelming comparative advantage – or the physics-defying power of time loops. Given Akemi Homura’s ready access to miracles, it couldn’t rule any of those options out. Kyubey finished its last bite of pasta salad (it was carbohydrates and a white dressing or sauce) before responding. Talking with a mouth full was unsanitary. That’s good news. But which functions do you mean?

“My ability to stop the flow of time.”

Did something change?

“...yes,” she said, without elaborating.

Was it positive?

“Mm.”

Do you want to show me?

“I should.”

Time did not freeze.

Is there a reason you don’t want to?

“I’m not used to showing anyone this ability. It’s… difficult. To give up the tactical advantage just so –” Her chopsticks clacked in her hand, before she huffed a breath and discarded them over the side of the tower. “It’s like… being leashed. I was operating at a deficit. So I had to make a – gesture to earn trust.”

Kyubey considered this. I trust you, it said, and recognized it as true. If this will help you, then please go ahead.

Akemi Homura took a long breath, muttered something indiscernible even to its ears, and raised the shield (still sandwich-bagged) to a guard position. It wh

Chapter 25: To Shut Her Up in a Sepulcher

Summary:

Kyubey steps onto the stage of the mortal world.

Irred and the world was broken.

There was no sound; the sky was stained a dirty muted blue and the air tasted recycled and antiseptic like a hospital ward with a malfunctioning air conditioner. A spot chemical sample revealed an AQI that would verge on unbreathable in ten minutes, maximum. Something like a long cord was loosely constricting Kyubey’s tail. Akemi Homura had moved a foot and begun, faintly, to sweat. Her Soul Gem was darker than it had been an instant ago.

Telepathy was not working. This was not supposed to happen. There were supposed to be telepathic channels carved into every nanoangstrom of local spacetime around every planet that the Incubators had ever visited. Instead the universe ended a meter away, the ends of the world, and telepathy converged exclusively on Akemi Homura at its center, the “natural” telepathy magical girls exhibited after their contracts.

Still it reached out for Sakura Kyouko, Tomoe-senpai. Connection lost.

Sakura Kyouko’s enchantment on its prosthetic leg lapsed and the whole thing fell apart into thimbles and nails as if she’d died; they fell a foot and stopped moving. For the first time in a while Kyubey fell on its face and felt its face catch in the platform’s diamond-pattern grate. The metal platform was cold, not like ice but like bathroom tile.

Between Planck times Akemi Homura had looped an extension cord around her little finger twice, secured between that and her ring finger; the other end led to Miss Kyubey’s tail, the only point of contact between them. Its tail spasmed by reflex, anti-contact sensors set off, squirming to escape the cable that leashed it, though it had to silence the impulse. She started and reached down towards it – bitten fingernails bit into its tail where the ablative fur had been shorn away, unarmored. Could Kyubey gnaw off that tail? With its soft toothless mouth and no real healers left to it?

Homura, it said. What is this?

“Hold on,” and she lifted it up, half-fumbled it, lifted it again as she detangled the extension cord.

Homura.

“Frozen time,” she said. Despite the asphyxiating narrowness of local spacetime, her voice did not echo – it stopped dead. How was that possible? How could they see, if the sun’s fusion had halted outside this bubble? “As long as you’re in contact with me, you’ll be able to –” She took a ragged breath, noticeably depleting the remaining oxygen. Dust hung in it like insects, swarming. “To observe it. I didn’t realize the enchantment would fail. I’m sorry.”

Her eyes were narrowed, her brow damp, her Soul Gem colored by strange inverse iridescence, and she was fumbling with a long cable with suddenly-imprecise hands, but she was smiling, a little, hopelessly, still. As if in apology.

Kyubey felt the weight of her karma.

Akemi Homura’s karma, like all magical girls’ karma, could not change. In the instant of the contract, it had been deformed, irreversibly, into the shape of her wish, a pure vector within nth-color space. The network’s prevailing theories understood the total mass of emotive species’ karma as a core limiter on the omnipotence of miracles – an inertia which prevented enterprising teenaged nihilists from wishing their species dead. Uniquely beloved of god or not, she was not enough to alter that.

But here there was nothing and no one else: no nth-color space, no ribbons, no opposing vectors; no telepathic channels; no evidence of higher cognition. Akemi Homura’s life had history and gravity and inertia; all else was colorless, unprovable, real only relative to her. There was no evidence that anything existed other than her. There was no Law.

Within this closed circle she was the one and only god.

Homura, please end the frozen time.

“I – understood.”

The shield whirred again, though this time there was no instant of discontinuity – just a slow fade. Back in infra-time. Kyubey reached out with its telepathic presence for the first time since it was severed from the greater Incubator computronium mass. Long-unused bootup protocols went through their paces as it manually dismissed error messages. By the time Akemi Homura sat down, wings manifested and folded around her, it had already passed her a bottle of green tea, which she drank greedily. (Though it was slow, down a leg again.)

You were using significantly more magic than I expected, it said, which was true, and a good justification for asking her to stop. You described your time magic as very efficient.

“I’m – reacclimating.”

What changed?

“Hold on.” She transferred her grip from her tea bottle to its scruff and examined the stump of its now-missing leg with a clinician’s eye, then – stuck her hand, probingly, into the half-restored tissue, and applied her maintenance enchantment directly.

Its haptics threw up damage flags, unlike pain but still demanding attention, and intrusion alarms. Kyubey squirmed and purged contaminated cells in wafts of sand and smoke, dismissing further error messages. Though to its internal diagnostics all its cells read as altered, their internal clocks desynced (and the clocks were atomic and had no mass reset so it would have to repair them manually) – even colors were strange, it thought, lilac-tinged, or maybe that was only its eyes. Though of course it didn’t matter.

Objectively speaking, a space that fully dissociated from the laws of the universe was ripe for exploitation, and further evidence for the network to collate once it was gone. At worst Kyubey had indulged its bad habit of manipulating abstractions by allowing itself to think poetically. It hadn’t diverged further. It was sick but it wasn’t broken yet. But she was not God. God was a technical term for a purely theoretical consciousness operating within the laws of physics. It knew its sickness – its shape, its direction. It knew.

It knew.

But it didn’t. Of course it didn’t. That was the issue, wasn’t it?

There was no more time.

“It shouldn’t be permanent damage,” Akemi Homura said. One finger, her ring finger, came close to the spatial membrane that separated Kyubey’s reactor and cleansing wetworks from its cabbity body, and it felt the reality torsion begin to give – before the enchantment finished its work and Akemi Homura retreated, leaving behind a pit in the rough shape of her hand. Her Soul Gem’s diamond shape had been warm, like a feverish forehead. Then she huffed a breath and her shoulders slackened, though her Gem was still darker than preferable and her hair had gone flyaway. “There. I apologize.”

Her micro-reset magic crawled along its imitation of nerves. In Kyubey’s limited experience, girls did not permit fingers stuck into their wounded flesh, but somehow the prospect of bringing this up seemed unwise. What changed?

“It was…” She took another gulp of green tea. “Like Kyouko. We didn’t need to repair it. It’s not exactly… the same mindset that helped me, but…” Then Akemi Homura set it down on three legs and raised herself to her full height, sun at her back and casting it in shadow.

There was only so often it could be wrong about people before recognizing that it had lost track of something very important. It was important for Incubators – once they’d been diagnosed with mental illness and quarantined – to cultivate epistemic humility, difficult though that often was. Kyubey’s heuristics assumed that an Incubator would always be the smartest sentient creature in any room. But quarantined Incubators were vastly inferior to their network in their ability to acquire, process and act on novel information, even before the question of their malformed heuristics came up.

After all, its projected survival timeline had lapsed some time ago, as had a variety of its personality models for key players in Mitakihara. Dossiers from quarantined Incubators weren’t just left unread because of epistemic hazard risk, after all. Without bodies to sacrifice, error-correction mechanisms, external storage or the lace of computronium that housed the network’s higher strategic core, an individual terminal was as small and contemptibly error-prone as any evolved animal.

“I wanted… you to know. I’ll help you with Mami,” said Akemi Homura. “I’ll help you with – all of it.”

And it had. Erred. Of course it had erred. That was why its path was set.

“Because of you, I’ve said things I never could have said before. Done things I – I’ve never had breakfast with the Kanames. Even in the initial loop, when Madoka and I were so close, I never – I couldn’t. And Mami, it became so much easier, and the art club – I’d almost forgotten that was possible. Meeting new people.” Akemi Homura wasn’t happy or at peace, but her expression was neither her pre-lobotomy smeary mess of inexpressible emotion nor the locked-down, corpse-like calm that she achieved by killing and regenerating key facial nerves.

“It’s all because of you.”

She looked focused.

“With my shield, Soju Luca will be trivial. So will almost any magical girl assassin if I’m given any amount of forenotice. I can ration my magic usage to the hexadecimal place – we can sustain it for months. Years, if we have to – I’ve done that before.” One-handed, she demonstrated a color chart on her brick of a phone, sampled from her Soul Gem, measuring her magical limits with surprising fidelity. “The network will learn to tolerate you if they recognize that you’re not a threat to them – they’d have to be foolishly vindictive, otherwise, to waste so much time and materiel against a single soft target in an entire city. You –” She hummed to herself. “You don’t want to retaliate against them?”

I have no intentions of retaliating against the network.

“Good. That’s useful. They’ll have to factor that into their analysis. At this point, they would have to seriously risk the integrity of the city for any assassin to succeed, given our collective combat effectiveness. Even they wouldn’t kill this many viable contracts just to get rid of you, you’re not Madoka and you’re not Walpurgisnacht –”

Akemi Homura, for more than a decade of subjective time, had failed to protect Kaname Madoka, in no small part because Kaname Madoka was suicidal (one-hundred-eight martyrdoms with mostly-invariant boundary conditions made for a not-insignificant sample size) and vastly superior to her in power. And so she’d developed a habit – etched in her neurology by repetition – which any competent psychological wellness management would have rooted out and directed towards healthier ends.

Rovina i Ponti. A shield. Her wish. It was obvious what she’d do if she came to rely on someone.

And it had known, hadn’t it?

Kyubey knew her better than anyone else.

“Don’t worry.” Fixed to her outer wrist, the dismantled half-moon shield clicked. Its exposed gears whirred in dizzy interlock, less a smooth hum than a gnashing of hihiirokane teeth; the squat bulb they’d used for the Pythian sand chamber rotated, almost imperceptibly, in its socket. Grains of star sand fell over the desert. “I’ll protect you, Miss Kyubey.”

---

In the end, that night, in spite of any distrust or love it might’ve earned, no one thought to prevent Kyubey from slipping out of the apartment.

For aesthetic reasons, only the uppermost apartments in the complex had balconies – but everyone had windows, and sills broad enough for a cat. It plotted a leisurely course from balcony to mounted AC unit to the street, and alit on shock-absorbent paws (plus one shiny new prosthesis) against the spotless asphalt, as graceful as animals weren’t.

Mitakihara Town was not beautiful, from the street-level or from above or from any median height. That was Kyubey’s lack of an aesthetic sense, of course, but independent of that the city also wasn’t optimized for human flourishing, because no human cities were. With its influence, the network had directed local civil planners to build tall – magical girls liked heights; vertigo sensitivity was moderately predictive of weak karma – but had otherwise left it alone, as was the case with most modern urbanism.

Without strong central planning or much coordination between its entrenched HOAs, Mitakihara’s enormous wealth – which hadn’t been depleted by standard embezzlers or vanity projects or its handful of extraneous social programs – had increasingly been funneled into esoteric architecture, less out of any real political will to that effect than out of a lack of political will for anything else. It imitated the forms of things, growing cancerously and irrationally to no one’s benefit: Taj Mahals, Kaabas, Burj Khalifas, American burger joints. It was a mess. But Kyubey knew its structure down to alleyways and backdoors; had been born knowing, in fact.

As it passed through the garden park, it leapfrogged armrest to armrest to armrest on each bench, landmarks in long stretches of well-polished walkway and fairway Astroturf, surrounded by gazebos and little rivers. (Terminals just did that, their motions automatically optimized for playfulness, to invite comparisons to endearing animals – or maybe Kyubey was stalling, meandering, taking its time, because Kyubey was sick. Sick, sick, sick.) By the fountain there was an art installation: a foreign glassworking artist’s design, the size of two cars stood on their tailpipes, meant to resemble some unspecified sea life, between barnacle, jellyfish and reef. It caught the light, a thin and ethereal blue edged with vibrant, toxic red.

Kyubey climbed the delicate-looking stalks and found an overhang to stand on, close enough to center mass that any magical attack sufficient to pulp its terminal would shower the surrounding crowds of unaugmented humans with jagged shards. There would be no way to kill it subtly, now.

It had drifted. It would drift. It had chosen to impose on Tomoe-senpai as an ersatz error correction mechanism – as if she could substitute for the network. It had set itself a goal that just so happened to involve cultivating Akemi Homura’s dependence on it, let its magical girls fall victim to all sorts of little pathologies, and made so many counterproductive decisions, all reasonable-sounding to its sick heuristics because in the end what Kyubey’s disease wanted was not to die.

It wanted Miss Kyubey and wordplay and the little dress, a signifier without a real signified: its favorite semantically-induced delusion. A toy, which it could play with forever. It wanted nonsense and it had convinced her to give it nonsense. And tomorrow it might let Akemi Homura die, in the name of a new nonsense value spat up by the cancer in its value function, and kill the hope of eternal samsara, and decades, aeons, kalpas. If it couldn’t trust itself tomorrow…

Mitakihara Town was Tomoe-senpai’s city, and Akemi Homura’s, and Sakura Kyouko’s; for a time, it had been Miki Sayaka’s; once, in a negated history, it had been Kaname Madoka’s. In that sense, it was Kyubey’s city, too. It knew the parameters for how network quarantines were set up and enforced. This park, and the sea-life art, were just within range of dummy minds – air-gapped, mostly-mindless terminals designed to detect telepathic signatures and call in assassins. And there were just enough witnesses that they might hesitate to kill Kyubey in public.

Soju Luca, it pinged the dummy minds. Would you like to see your sister again?

Notes:

Happy Walpurgisnacht to me. The next chapter will not be nearly this timely, but I couldn't resist.

Chapter 26: Interlude: Half Diptych

Summary:

The worst girl in all of Mitakihara decides to get what's due to her.

Notes:

content note: Soju Luca-typical transphobia; the most use of the word "fuck" I am allowing myself

Her point of contact with the network is a slip of a thing with a puke-green soul, Kuri-something, who employs a magic scooter – what a pedestrian wish must have made that – to drop off dime bags of grief cube on her doorstep at regular intervals. Kuri-something is undoubtedly being blackmailed (“just like Looking up to Magical Girls!” Ayase would say; and Luca would smile Ayase’s smile even though she does not watch anime) into playing delivery driver to a reputed “serial killer.”

On their first meeting Soju gripped her briefly by the chin mid-conversation – for her lapidary studies, to examine her transfigured Gem laid into the cleft. Her mistake. Now Kuri makes no eye contact during scheduled hand-offs, and hovers instead around the decolletage of Soju’s uniform, goodness.

Are you so lonely that even a corpse will do? – but of course she is. They all are.

Once all the cubes are dropped off Kuri skitters away, and Soju retires to her AirBnB’s bathroom cabinet to set up a circle of cubes and marvel at the purification of her soul. Her sealed message says “Maintain quarantine, exterminate wraiths and report unusual magical activity. We estimate two remaining weeks before the anomalous Incubator is killed. – Kyubey.” And she has been – freezing spare wraiths as disposable weapons in case of a direct attack, but otherwise starving Mitakihara completely of its little native miasm. With her allotment from Kuri – really from the Incubators, of course, not that the wretched treatlerites ever deign to show themselves to her – Soju has more grief cubes than she can use even in this task, and no lascivious hobbies to sink them into because she has been losing Ayase’s girls.

In tip jars; around the park like Easter eggs; in the public library’s book return slot, to be buried under layers of literary pablum until no light reaches. Maybe half of Ayase’s cases sit empty now. Under normal circumstances the Incubators secure stray Gems, responsive to the light of even the tawdriest and least treasured lives, but Mitakihara has only one, a suicidal NEET, dedicating all his time to sucking on his doll angel’s compliant little jaw. Pitiable creatures. There is no one to come for them. Each time, walking away, she breathes easier.

Ayase knows, because Soju knows, that the Kyubeys give her the dregs of the magical girl system: operating near- or below-replacement of the grief they suck down. Insulated, cloying daughters of inferior miracles, whose light is mere refraction, sorry and oversexed and (“moe through helplessness”). They create noise. They keep her from reaching Ayase’s soul. So Soju gets rid of them. For her service the network has promised her short- or even long-term custody of Tomoe Mami’s topaz and Sakura Kyouko’s cinnabar and angel’s ametrine and that will suffice as a welcome-back gift for Ayase, and an apology for losing her favorite toys.

All she has to do is wait.

---

Her body is a wonder, not a corpse. She shouldn’t call it a corpse. It’s perfect. A rebis. Sisterhood writ into her very figure: Luca’s poise, Ayase’s smile. Soju lets go – she’s practiced to let go, synchronized it – and Ayase doesn’t catch her and Soju can’t figure out what Ayase would say and the idea of existing in her flesh alone is repellent. For six seconds she is dead on the floor of a Starbucks with half her nervous system seized while a barista begins to dial 119 and then she is alive again in her rebis skin, upright again, smiling apologetically for strangers.

---

One of them she knows more about. Ariel Alcott (“ooh, a foreigner; do you think she’s one of those American otaku?”) wished to be a mermaid. Her vacant body is three hours’ train ride away; the Incubators negotiated a bargain between Soju and a two-girl team in a country estate, duration indefinite. When they met, Luca and Ayase and Ariel, she was half-submerged in a private pool and surrendered her off-teal Gem with eyes already glazed and bloodshot and motions languid. Ayase made a point to watch as they hit the hundred-meter mark. But there was no splash: Ariel slipped underneath the rim of the pool, and was gone.

Soju hurls Ariel Alcott into an artificial lake: once, twice, three skips, and –

Splash.

---

Akemi. That’s the angel’s name, or the plastic doll’s name: Akemi Homura who is undoubtedly so mature for her age in an otherwise-respectable lilac-lavender schoolgirl outfit and diamond-print tights. Defensive and affectionate and childish and cruel. How can you let him do that to you, she wants to ask, in her charitable moments. You can’t think you’re important. They have no concept of love. They live on glacial timescales. We’re toys to them. He’ll get tired of you and you’ll have nothing. Surely you know?

In her less charitable moments she would really rather just pulp Akemi Homura’s skull. There’s very little unsuitable behavior a girl can get up to when her neck is a stump.

---

It could be two weeks, or a month, or a day.

---

Ayase asked for hours afterwards – did you see? Did you see Ariel-chan, her hair, how she fell? It was like a poem, I never knew a girl could look that way even after she – did you see, Luca?

Of course Luca saw. They were looking with only one pair of eyes. She was a foreign woman on drugs with an unwise wish, and over-chlorinated frizzy hair, and a bulbous fish’s tail for a hind end, and she fell and she was gone. I did, she told Ayase. How happy she must be that you treasure her so deeply.

---

How fine, to be treasured. How fine, to be beloved and dignified. Ayase lent herself out so easily. Ayase gave her attention to appallingly bad fiction and pornography and useless foster sisters who squandered her care and being taken is really only a consequence of that all-embracing love extended a mite too far. But Soju, indulgent and kind to her beloved sister, her treasure – Soju tends the body her wish gave her, its chief mourner and its shrine maiden, purifying and consecrating its central chamber, and awaits the day that she will be Luca again.

---

She dreams about Saint Audrey’s.

---

Kuri-something leaves the next grief cube delivery in a brown paper bag at her door, next to a slice of pizza. It’s greasy and cheap, with a fluffy, carbohydrate-heavy crust, and pepperoni. Nothing Soju eats. How this is meant to get Kuri into her pants is a genuine mystery.

---

To ordinary eyes, Soul Gems look something like Faberge eggs. Soju presses Ishidzue’s into the hands of a busker in shabby clothing and smiles, enjoying his slack-jawed look of awe. Her lapidary research indicates that they’re worthless to jewelers, structurally closer to superdense resin than anything valuable, but she likes the thought that he’ll try for a few days to resell it – that he’ll understand what a life is worth, albeit for prosaic, pathetic monetary reasons. Afterwards she finds a public restroom and spends ten minutes scrubbing her hands but it’s still worth it.

It’s worth it. She is clearing the cruft out of their lives. Ayase’s magical signal gets clearer every day. Ishidzue was always dross. An OL surrendering herself to a pair of teenagers. Magical girls shouldn’t age like this. How contemptible. How wretched. How pitiable. (“Ishidzue-chan’s a total Christmas cake. But she laughs so loud when she drinks, so maybe that’s worth something?”) How funny. Soju is close. Soju is close. Ayase is close. She can almost taste her.

---

No, she can’t. Ayase is her sister.

---

She dreams about Saint Audrey’s again.

---

Pizza for breakfast that tastes like nothing.

---

She is not an anatomist but the butter knife Akemi put in her skull came away with a dribble of gray fluid that mingled quickly with the blood. It’s fine. Soju is a corpse already. She’ll heal it when Ayase comes home.

---

Should have dashed Ariel against the rocks. Ayase’s favored pet who won’t go away. Every time she tries Richiamo she gets the exact same Gem, obscuring Ayase’s magical signal, the raw red shine of her pure fire ruby: just the exact same chlorinated teal malachite rock that never accumulates grief, identical in shade to Ariel Alcott’s eyes in her tranquilized stupor and she disposes of it again and again. Slip beneath the waters and disappear! But still it calls from the depths like a sireen (sick) (sick, sick).

Ariel Alcott’s magical girl partner sold her Gem for fifteen thousand yen and a meal at Family Burger and told Ayase and Luca to take care of her, okay?

---

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, disgusting–

---

Soju Luca. Would you like to see your sister again?

---

For reasons unknowable even the dummy relays – lobotomite invalids all, as the Incubators have reassured her – look like infantilized mascots, albeit with three dull-red eyes rather than two. Telepathic logs let her trace the signal back one by one: rabbit to pig to horse to cat to komodo, placed evenly across Mitakihara’s borders to cast a wide net. The pervert Incubator’s location is tagged on a psychic map with fidelity so perfect she could close her eyes and follow it. So she shoves the pale daisy-yellow Gem into a bag and follows it. Her soul resounds with filtered and recycled light. Soju forces it into her beautiful perfect rebis doll flesh to hurdle fences, then train tracks, then side-streets.

Her target sits at the ends of Miki Paul Memorial Park (tasteless, nouveau-riche, gaijin like it, named in honor of a dead seventeenth-century Japanese martyr). Rolling golf courses and flowers and imported soulless artistic marvels, and nearby Mitakihara’s biggest artificial lake, bordered by night pools for young college idiots to drink and indulge. The Kazamino Heavy Industries tower stares out over the whole thing on the far bank, stolid, heavy and Brutalist, in opposition to Mitakihara in every respect.

There’s an art installation and he’s in the middle of it, so she approaches from the street, vaults a hedge and almost lands in – reeds?

No, glass. Or glass reeds. Or anyway, stalks of transparent glass, pale blue with venomously dark tapered points. There are too many tourists in the garden park, even at night, the madding crowds around her making so much garbage noise – if she lets herself brush against someone and even a strand of hair touches their eye she’ll be able to chill their lymph via sympathetic magic. Detonate them like a can of Coke left in the freezer. It’s a calming-enough thought for Soju to find a smile, not anywhere close to Ayase’s but the best she can do.

How obnoxious. How sad. No one is looking – thank goodness, her magical girl uniform passes for evening wear – so she huffs and strides off, through the garden – more of the same, riotous flowers and glassworks. Spotlights from below turn the overhanging sculptures into obscenities – suspended hearts and kidneys on strings – and the blue light through the tinted windows is heavy and dim.

Soft music plays. There are trays of canapes; champagne no one stops her from sampling. She might have intruded on a reception. Guiltlessly, of course, given it’s pop-art schlock in a public park, attended by the middle-class embarrassed nouveau riche. Once or twice Soju drifts into the orbit of a group and affects a smile, or a husky chuckle at some joke (not her natural register, her atonal, mocking titter, but she is Soju, not Luca, and Ayase’s laughter is prettier), and asks for directions to the center. It’s not all too hard to push the sentences out in pieces, now that she’s had practice – she crams the gaps that should contain Ayase full of filler words and politesse, so hard that her mouth aches and her tongue feels heavy and full. She’s so very normal. An ordinary girl.

At the center, where the show’s hedge of fences opens onto the park and the dark starless sky and the city’s tenth-largest open-air fountain, is the central piece of the show. It’s in awful taste. Like a jellyfish feeding itself bulb-first to the earth. Agglomerated tentacles branch and menace the world and yet it’s still surrounded by appreciators. Soju walks a semicircle around it, ghost-blue but tipped in bloody spines, thankful for the wide berth she’s been afforded.

And there, there, is the white splash against the blue-and-red: the Incubator. The pervert.

What a fucked-up little thing, halfway between the lifeless alien and some bulbous gravure model. Milk-white, stark naked but for a single crude silver sock, the sort of exhibitionist display that takes real calculation. Slashed and ripped and dinged, and even at this distance there’s a distinctive odor of fried plastic, which must be coming from the crisp hole in his giant stupid tail. He rests his head against a long needle of glass and regards her with the same stupid face every Incubator makes as she builds Caso Freddo in her hand.

(“Aw, Luca, c’mon. We get a bonus for no civilian casualties! Remember? My welcome-back present?”)

Thank you, Ayase, yes, she remembers; the magic ice melts and splatters in a thick puddle at her feet. At least she has her dagger and if a fight starts she can just hurl her clutch away. Incubator. Looking to cheat, are we? Tired? Sick of just a few girls. How like. How like things like you.

Before you come closer, you should know that I’m not so attached to this body that I’m unwilling to sacrifice it in pursuit of my goals. You’d do well to stay at a distance and remain civil as we negotiate. If you can’t bite your tongue, I can certainly bite through mine.

Tongue? (“What about using tongue.”) Ayase wouldn’t say something so boring, sex joke or not, so Soju stays quiet and sticks to telepathy where she doesn’t have to feel her jaw move. You’re speaking nonsense.

To clarify, I could easily die rather than allow you to capture me. While biting through my tongue wouldn't be fatal, the tines of this artistic object are sharp enough that it would be relatively easy to impale myself. “Biting off one's tongue” is a commonly-used euphemism for suicide in captivity, isn't it? he adds.

Why would someone need a euphemism for that, she says.

Humans, of course, says Freak Incubator. Will you negotiate?

So flat. He has her treasure and he remains this flat – her surface in his pale-moon mouth and the filaments of her gem surface have been scraped by this industrial washer tongue. Yet he remains this wan. What does that stark whiteness do to Ayase’s red light? For a moment it is obvious that someone has to kill the Freak Incubator now regardless of the cost just to prevent (“NTR”) thank you Ayase, even though Ayase has never explained what NTR is except that it is bad.

“Ma’am, are you well?” says – someone. Staff. A lifeless shape. Soju turns and laughs at him with her gums exposed. What an unkind remark when she is perfectly well-composed. But what can you expect out of barely-trained waitstaff at things like this?

She finds a bench and sits and doesn’t vomit, at all. Tell me what you want and don’t try to talk about Ayase again or I’ll gut you. Yes?

I’ll try to limit myself to practical concerns, then. Head tilted away from the spines, to perform that mock-smile they must be taught in the womb, and he starts to step from bramble to tendril to arm still always within reach of those hedgehog spines of polished glass. You’re aware, of course, that Akemi Homura has the power to erase or hide memories. She remembers the amnesia grenade with a stirring of bile. Given the vulnerability of my position, it seemed wise to be incapable of revealing Soju Ayase’s location without the peaceable cooperation of a third party.

There’s a phrase in English – (“Weasel words.”) Yes. Thank you, Ayase. Weasel words.

Good grief. Surely, you know that we never lie? And yet you humans make so many accusations about our conduct, even knowing that they’re untrue. Pervert Incubator blinks at her. I cannot reveal Soju Ayase’s location to you without Akemi Homura’s assistance. I don’t remember where she is.

And she can picture it. It’s actually very easy. With no little cream-colored genitals the closest he can manage is neuro-surgery. Fingers in his clay, wires in his skull. Hah. So you let her root around in her head, yes, yank on your nerves – did it feel good? Ah the words are slick and satisfied as they spill out, all bile.

Our reports indicate that there is an anomalous wraith in Mitakihara, he deflects. Your ice magic could stop it without killing it. If you freeze the anomalous wraith and bring it to me, I can provide payment. Smile, smile. Would you consider the Soul Gem of your partner adequate compensation for your services, Soju Luca?

For a few seconds Soju’s brain skitters, like expecting to pass over a missing step only to feel solid oak beneath her feet. The Incubators did brief her, though of course every other word is illegible soup or manipulative garbage or both, with them – still. Some vulnerabilities are just too obvious. You don’t have any magical girls with you.

Consider it an attempt to establish trust.

Ah – so he does have them, hidden, they told her he might have stealth – Repeat what I said. With her back to the wall – topaz, Tomoe Mami, the girl with the guns and the over-cinched corsetry shouldn’t be ready to put artillery through her surrounded by guests. Cinnabar might. With a ladylike motion towards her clutch (price tag still on, damn it, she’ll cut that off later) she can pull her dagger in one economic motion through any ordinary girl’s throat.

I don’t have any other magical girls accompanying me.

What?

Besides you, Soju Luca, he repeats, like she’s slow, I don’t have any other magical girls accompanying me.

So. Is – is he possibly screwing with her? So, why shouldn’t I. Caso Freddo forms again and the diamondine ice drips around the arm-rests on her bench to harden into eager, twitchy icicles. You’re right here, you know. Why not just freeze you? Neither her anger nor increasing bewilderment make it into her tone which she is tired, tired of modulating without Ayase. It’s a monotone. She might be asking the weather.

How would that accomplish your goals?

It’s obvious. It is obvious. Naked Incubator’s favorite teenaged fixation is – defensive, passionate, his schoolgirl guardian angel – and he’s right there. You’re really this – addled. Soju performs a demonstrative hair flip. Your Akemi. Your (“yandere GF” what?“like Yuno Gasai!” who?) little pet. Who stabbed me for saying mean things? She’d give me anything for you.

If she were capable, she might. Ha. Of course. Tilting his head. Someone offers her canapés and Soju shows him her best, flattest smile so he’ll leave. Edgy as these nouveau riche children are, these losers, it’s only a matter of time until the police are called. Akemi Homura doesn’t know I’m here. She trusts me enough that I was able to arrange this visit without clearing it with her, but if she knew, she’d be fairly upset. Whereas Sakura Kyouko would react much more level-headedly to my death or the risk thereof.

Weasel words (Thank you Ayase).

Good grief. To be more specific: Sakura Kyouko has declared her intention to leave Mitakihara. Unless she is prevented from doing so – something I am in a better position to do than you – I suspect that she will bring the Soul Gem you’ve been looking for along with her. If she doesn’t simply destroy it, of course.

He wants her to panic. Soju doesn’t. Pervert or not this is an Incubator: gray-voiced, syllables in that telepathic little-boy voice wash over her and mean nothing, empty threats. Implications but no statements on how likely homicide is as cinnabar’s response so she can’t actually want to kill Ayase. Playground threats, more like. "I won't be your friend any more," like he's not a little sniveling bullied five-year-old who knows even the nice teacher's getting sick of him. Even now with his head resting against the sea urchin spikes: be nice to me or I’ll (“unalive”) myself and then you’ll be sorry.

They are killers only as a last resort. Luca knows, because Soju knows, how many Soul Gems remanded to their jewelry box were on magical girl time-outs, orchestrated by their paternal handlers as a nonfatal punishment for misbehavior. Sometimes she’d speculate as to what the stronger ones had done, to be plucked from their lives and lovingly nestled in nerveless velvet, magic gone temporarily to pot until they were sorry or done. No one’s hands but Ayase’s to connect them to life.

Quite without her consent another staffer in a security badge steps into her field of vision murmuring in a low drone, and she considers what he would look like popped like a blood balloon. Well but she decides against that (“remember the jewelry box! Remember custody!”) of course, Ayase, to rise instead to the elegant full height that is all she took with her from Nashisaki Luca. I’m leaving, she says, I’ll stay close. Let me stay close. I don’t want to look at you any more.

If that’s your preference.

Flick – she slaps dazzling diamond ice shards like a smashed wine glass across the garden path stones and throws icemelt water in Mister Security’s face in one motion, exactly like a society lady mid-hissy fit or nervous breakdown. He shrinks back with his hands extended and goes for a walkie-talkie while Soju retreats, hissing whatever insults come to mind, half her own and half Ayase's cackled squawked barbs, ‘round the garden and past the jellyfish where Pervert Incubator stands and out through the side exit into the broader gardens of Miki Paul Memorial Park, and also she slaps a tray of wasabi deviled eggs into some smug fuck’s face for verisimilitude.

Outside the exhibition, the vistas of Miki Paul are vast and dark and spill, stepwise, down hills and cliffs, into miniature islands of pink, purple and chlorine cyan backlight: night pools. Some tourist boondoggle. A fence separates a little field of white flowers from the descent – a steep cliff that drops off so sharply it seems like someone must have sliced off the stone; a drop into a vast circular pool that must be full of floaties and girls in bikinis during the summer; how many idiots have died diving here? – and Soju alights on it, where she can still face the art exhibition and Pervert Incubator’s perch. With the Kazamino Heavy Industries tower at her back she feels calm and immovable and impossible to threaten.

She leans against the iron fence.

You still think they won’t want you back.

I have no intention of returning to Mitakihara’s magical girls, he says. Staying with them wouldn’t serve my purposes, after all. So what value would I have as a hostage?

Sentiment. Perversion. Hah. Shoving your tongue. Into Akemi’s pert little mouth.

You understand I don’t have the necessary anatomy to enjoy that, don’t you? Our tongues are chemical sampling apparatus.

You’re asking me to believe that you’re not worried about your girlfriend? Don’t you – Ayase’s cue, no, not here. Love her. Think you love her.

I have no romantic entanglements, he says, doing the fucking not-technically-lying thing all Incubators do. As for ‘love,’ that’s a very loosely-defined accusation. ‘Girlfriend’ suggests a formalized relationship, which I suppose I could theoretically have formed as part of my duties. But doesn’t ‘love’ require human-like endocrine responses? Or are you using another sense of the term?

You’re no one’s girlfriend.

Yes, that’s correct.

Obviously a stupid dodge. Fine. Why the wraith?

The network values information about anomalies within the magical girl system, as a defense against unforeseen threats to eternal samsara, or as a means to achieve it. Whatever conclusions you’ve come to about my ‘perversion,’ I was still created to protect the universe from its destruction. I’ve been directing the magical girls under my care to retrieve it, non-fatally, but we’ve met with little success. She can imagine the ratty shrug. You’re better-suited to acquiring this wraith for me than anyone else in Mitakihara. It’s only rational.

And you?

There will be plenty of material of interest to study once the wraith is secured. There are other Incubators who can fill the role of caretaker once I’m gone.

She sighs.

You won’t kill her, she says. “You won’t kill her,” she says, to flex and unclench her jaw.

Because he won’t! Whatever he says next is negligible. Ayase is Soju’s treasure and his only leverage and he won’t – how many times has Soju almost killed the yellow topaz girl, the negligible one with all her virtue localized to her face – how many times could she have crushed her to death under mounds of magic snow, refraining only for Ayase’s sake? How many wraiths has she drip-fed out with spare cubes contrary to orders so no one gets too desperate to feed Ayase? He won’t kill her because if he does Mitakihara dies like a moth in a jar with no air holes.

I would prefer not to kill her, yes. You shouldn’t mistake that for a lack of will.

But you “won’t.” She tastes the words in her mouth, mirrored via telepathy, and the fresh night air, and finds both sweet. “It wouldn’t be a. What were you saying. A ‘sensible move.’ You know what happens if you do or even if you convince me you did so let’s not play silly baby games about it, hmm?”

Baby games?

“All these little dodges. Serve my purposes. Only rational. You, what – you want me to believe you’ll just. What. Let them die?” Silence over the telepathic line. Of course he’s cocking his head she can tell. Miming ‘quizzical’ for her even though she can’t see him. Fetishists do things like that for an audience of no one. “You would have come with them and done this with human shields but you didn’t. They’ve got your hostage, you left them the hostage so I wouldn’t try to get her back, and you have no one but your pathetic amnesia scheme because time’s running out.”

What exactly are you implying?

“Say it. Exactly. ‘I’ll kill Ayase Soju if you don’t give me my prize.’” Their flat lifeless droning aside, the Incubators had taught her enough about the tactics of perverse offshoots like this. How they tangled words and bluffed and pretended so much more despite having “no concept of deception” – alone, afraid, deluded. Selfish.

A pause.

I can’t.

“Because it’ll kill you and you don’t care about punishing me and it’ll kill them. Oh, ‘I don’t care about whether Akemi and the yellow one and Sakura something die,’ repeat it, won’t you?”

Her name is Sakura Kyouko.

“You understand, then, so say it.”

I can’t.

“You can’t. Of course you can’t, ahh, hah, of course. This is why you sick ones always lose, you know? Pounding round pegs into square holes expecting we’ll all be your special kind of rational when you don’t have anything to back it but your own small bodies that are only useful for dying. ‘It’s not at all important that they survive so they can keep playing with my lithe stoat body,’ repeat it! ‘It’s fine if Akemi Homura does NTR to me,’ repeat it!”

Triumphant giggles translate awkwardly into telepathy – worse in her voice, hoarse and awkward – but they’re important. He needs to know he’s pathetic, needs to know she’s ignoring the I can’t. She leans against the fence and laughs. “So this conversation as we’ve been having it has, what? Has no point at all. You won’t kill her and you will all starve and give her up anyway unless your angel can survive and cleanse her Gem by eating you. We may discuss, still of course. You're a rational creature, after all. We haven't bested you, really.” ("I'm not owned! I'm not owned!" Thank you, Ayase.) “You knew this would happen.”

I suspected, it agrees.

“If you know you won’t kill her, hah, the Incubators will retrieve her once you’re dead. She’s my treasure they’ll pay up. So either you let your magical girls starve and then you die or just you die, Incubator, and you care if they die, so really you only have one choice, and you had to lie and say you weren’t coming, didn’t you, or they’d all tumble over themselves to chase your tail until your psychosexual brainwashing wore away and die anyway.” She snickers again. “How sad. It backfired. As pervert teachers go you’re an exceedingly poor one, oh. You really are.”

Well. You’re right that I removed myself from my responsibility as their caretaker.

“And whyyyy?” Draw it out like Ayase might. Ayase knows how to make it hurt.

My mental illness means that I can no longer trust myself to manage them long-term without causing greater harm. Imagine those red eyes crying until they’re more bloodshot. By pursuing and retrieving the wraith, I can achieve a certain degree of personal gratification, without a substantial risk of harm to anyone but myself, or you.

“And the wraith?”

It really could be useful to the network. A silence. She waits eagerly. There’s little else I can do, at this point.

At this point she can’t keep translating laughter to Pervert Incubator’s psychic wavelength and just flops into hysterics. Soju Luca laughter is Ayase’s low chest-voice counterpart and it thrums all through her. “You can’t kill her!”

(“Of course he won’t, Luca. How could he? He’s just some weird perv. Alone among heaven and Earth, I am the honored one!”) Whatever the fuck that means! Yes! He won’t do it! “All you can do is die, and once you’re dead they’ll be safe, so just do me a favor now and –”

I have no intention of killing Soju Ayase, but killing her is far from the only way to make her inaccessible to you.

“Hahhh eheh, oh, what?”

Codependence is often the result of poor or absent support networks, after all. Despite the airy-fairy monotone cheer it’s an obvious attempt to bite back, couched in vague therapy speak, and she straightens against the fence. I can’t say I’m an entirely reliable source of support, but the network’s training has certainly been more than enough to let me direct an intervention in an extreme case.

More, more weasel words. “...repeat it, ‘I’ll convince Ayase to –’”

I won’t convince her of anything. For some magical girls, the support of peers is enough, particularly under conditions of initial stress. I believe you can imagine the effect of long stretches of sensory and social deprivation, particularly on a magical girl like Soju Ayase.

All of a sudden there’s a smile in that voice. Impossible on rigid faces like that. They’re all corpses who can only smile with their voices. Mitakihara’s magical girls were never exactly comfortable with her initial treatment, either. And, of course, allowing a disembodied magical girl access to scheduled, controlled body-sharing as a mood stabilizer is a far more sustainable arrangement than letting her eat away at grief cube reserves for lack of stimulation. You understand the logic, of course.

Tomoe Mami has an over-cinched corset over a stupid barmaid dirndl and a hat of hideous shining topaz, such a pretty superficial thing for Ayase to chase –

Of course Ayase wouldn’t leave Soju, any more than Ayase would abandon her own hands. Soju Ayase-and-Luca is a rebis. Soju is Ayase-and-Luca’s wish and the best fulfillment of the hope that removed Ayase from a household of delusional, backbiting foster brats and Luca from Saint Audrey’s and her sister who wasn’t her sister. She is perfect-in-herself, twinned: Ayase would not leave Soju behind because Soju without Ayase howls, piteously, in a voice just like hers, dying on her carpet, lobotomized.

But – Incubators don’t care. They don’t understand what it means for something to be treasured. Or pure.

Smile, smile. I myself briefly shared a body with her. It was a very interesting experience. I learned a lot!

---

At Saint Audrey’s, Nashisaki Luca had a sister, until she didn’t want to be sisters any more.

---

Whatever it wants the wraith for. Whatever the wraith is good for. It will have to suffice! It’ll have to be enough for Mitakihara’s schoolgirl-redhead-bimbo magical girl trio, or the Incubators or whoever he is going to present his prize to, this wraith it’s so delicate about saving. It has to die. The Incubator. The pervert. Soju knows her magic. Knows Ayase’s warmth under her skin. To permit it to live would be to surrender her Ayase to – to the soft, enveloping, invading whiteness –

All Ayase’s smiles that stretch her cheeks and leave lines still visible in Soju’s mirror now that she tries to imitate them – all Ayase’s warmth, her flair, her delicacy – soft grip – Ayase laughing and making a game out of a conversation – that pale fur that’s really only extruded McDonalds sludge, animated by her soul – the rosary that entwines two wrists until they might be one praying set of hands – her treasure – soft breath that warms her pillow – smothering, intertwining – cultural references she’ll never understand that get less and less current because they don’t do it together and they do everything together – (“How pretty!”) – red eyes, dull as marbles – Ayase laughing – a body that’s empty without her, only it isn’t, she’s still there they can’t take her that easily it’s her treasure – her sister – her sister – (“How pretty!”) she slips under, eyes glazed, bloodshot, dull, and she’s gone –

All of it stained stained stained white, white, white –

Soju can smile. If she keeps her mouth closed it’s like nothing happened! She can smile and sound perfectly calm in telepathy – What are you saying, Incubator? – even as she screams ripping her throat with the noise because the pale sludge that contaminates Ayase has to be expelled, down to the vocal cords that she strummed, the place where Ayase is supposed to live, the anti-suicide railing that separates her from the dead drop uproots so easily, in her hands it warps like so much corrugated cardboard, then spins, flies – down, down, into the night pool where twentysomething Tokyo tourists go to experience night life which is to say where they go to fuck and down, down into the water – twisted by her grip – to impale and drown night swimmers in the middle of their disgusting poolwater coitus.

I don’t mean to sow any resentment of Ayase, of course. I’m sure her relationship with you was fulfilling, given her wish and her particular needs. Some people simply can’t care for others any other way than by making use of them. All in that cloying boyish voice. There are worse definitions of love than turning someone else into something indispensable to you. Even I’m capable of accomplishing that, after all.

She sits at the edge of the cliff that terminates as sheer as if it were bisected. Her transformation falls away – lace on her skin intolerable – replaced by some filthy stained button-up with an anime robot on the front pocket. It’s okay. It’s okay. That boyish voice is nothing but a false impression piped into her head. Incubators are toys. They’re toys. How could anyone ever treasure one? It’s a liar, of course. He’s a creepy little freak pervert and of course all of them are liars.

It’s fine. She just has to kill it. It’s fine. It’s fine. She just has to kill it and Ayase will never have been inside it. It’ll be better. Ayase will come home and she’ll admit that she was too attached to her jewelry collection, and Luca will sigh, and hold her own hand, and tell her that she understands, but Ayase is Luca’s real treasure and so Luca must be Ayase’s treasure. Not some prurient little amusement. Not a malachite dildo. It’s fine.

Of course, if you can promise your cooperation, I’ll do my best to reunite you with Soju Ayase. I’ll admit, there aren’t many viable caretakers who care more about her wellbeing than you, and I remain committed to the psychological health and wellbeing of magical girls, as our partners in wraith extermination. Do you think she’ll still want to return to you? Do you want my assistance?

Below, at the bottom of the cliff, the surface of the electric-cyan backlit water fractures on impact – is it ice? – or some transparent glass sheath now in splinters. Splintered iron fence pieces bob on the surface among the huge and twinkling shards, then sink. Best chased by her bile, spitty flecky bile she heaves and it goes over the dead drop too, close as it is to her. Why worry? She is a beautiful invincible rebis corpse doll and incapable of dying from a fall of this height. An alarm goes off somewhere.

Is that satisfactory to you?

Her throat is thick with bile and all she can manage is:

Fine.

---

They walk, side by side. Soju won’t let it touch her.

What is NTR?

“I don’t watch anime.”

Chapter 27: Smothered Mate

Summary:

The costs of an alliance of convenience become apparent. Kyubey enjoys itself.

Notes:

content note: eye horror with daggers, unwise things to do with Soju Luca

Happy one-year anniversary, shy a day, to Questing Beast. This is what I choose to do with it.

Pure though it was on the chromatic scale, the Soul Gem on Soju Luca’s shoulder was not well. As they followed Kyubey’s map – she’d bought a canvas grocery bag to stuff its terminal into but it still caught occasional glimpses through the opening, even after she started to bash it against telephone poles and the sides of skyscrapers – the white surface flickered like television static, or a snowstorm. In two hours she purified it twice and filled one cube each time. (Kyubey offered to convert them to harmless negentropy and was unsurprised when she hurled them away into parking lots, where they would turn into wraiths and either be exterminated or kill unsuspecting strangers, or both.)

It was a common symptom of frequent boom-bust purification cycles: magic overspent, then recouped at the threshold of depletion via sloppy fistfuls of grief. They would do less and less for her over time; she’d acclimate to worse and worse baselines for emotional stability, then eventually commit a double homicide over street harassment and deplete in full view of the bloodied remains of a catcaller, or some other similar scenario. The network didn’t let that happen to magical girls if it considered them useful in the long term. It was clear she was useless without Soju Ayase, and likely useless with her, too.

Mitakihara’s magical girls still had Akemi Homura’s search grids for Pink, as optimized by Kyubey. If Soju Luca searched the same way they’d be discovered in short order. So before they started in on their poorly-optimized route through Mitakihara, Soju Luca stopped at a thrift store for an oversized brown jacket with many pockets to hide her transformation’s scarlet evening dress.

While she looked, Kyubey – left outside on the shop sill – turned in a loose circle, buried its head in the fluff of its floppity tail, and wiggled until its flat muzzle reached the hole which Akemi Homura had carved out, where witch-fire still burned. White flecks, edged with pink char – closer to burning plastic than any organic scent – touched its face. One landed on its unblinking red eye and stayed there, close enough to pick out every scrap of white and the subtle gradation from white to lilac to cherry pink. Independently sentient, as all clusters of Incubator cells were above a minimal concentration. Its eyeball began to heat up. Kyubey blinked the speck away.

Some magic could artificially create suffering, if the magical girl casting it had made a sufficiently sadistic wish. The resulting torment wasn’t a real “emotion” according to universal law, but its victims treated it like it was and there was no way to verify their qualia without the risk of contamination. Even an Incubator could be made to scream and beg for release, per the Hasebe Hekima experiments (prior to her spiriting-away by the Law; not too surprising, if you tortured little neotenous rabbity things as a side job). So on some microscopic level, its cellular fleck might be in agony, though it represented a tiny, tiny slice of total terminal processing power and so would be, even by human standards, too stupid to understand what was happening to it.

This meant little in practical terms. Even inexhaustible witch-fire, once it moved out of the realm of abstracts, was made out of recognizable chemical reactions. With a sample, it would be trivial to reduce it to a trackable heat signature. If it had mentioned this to Mitakihara’s magical girls they might’ve already caught Pink. Or maybe they wouldn’t have, given how dangerous it would be for Kyubey to serve as sniffer dog for a killer wraith. Though that wouldn’t necessarily have stopped Sakura Kyouko, or Tomoe-senpai. Perhaps that was why it had neglected to mention the option – in anticipation of a rejection that might never have come, which it had secretly hoped for. How disappointing. It really should’ve considered death sooner.

Anyway: Kyubey swallowed a stick-of-gum-sized gobbet of its own dubiously-sentient flesh. It was mostly witch-fire, which seared its fake tongue and killed off several difficult-to-replace sensory clusters but provided ample reference material for its analytics. It logged the particular phenomenal cluster of witch-fire and, by the time Soju Luca came back out to stuff it in her canvas Incubator bag, had a working detection method. With a dagger-shaped peephole punched in the Incubator bag, Mitakihara bloomed pink in its eyes.

What they had after that was like a conversation and, then again, not. Soju Luca despised Kyubey – even Akemi Homura’s distaste for the Kyubey who’d talked Kaname Madoka into one-hundred-eight suicides hadn’t been as visceral, or as unresponsive to rational incentives, which was odd when Kyubey had only killed Soju Ayase once and Soju Luca wasn’t even aware of it – but, thanks to its imaginary hostage, her feelings didn’t matter at all. There wasn’t any reason to care about preserving her long-term, either. “Miss Kyubey,” Kyubey’s toy semantic construct, had found no purchase in her mind. To her it was just some pervert Incubator. She was too abrasive for any magical girls other than her “sister” to become attached to her and, evidently, earmarked for disposal by the network. If she had any use left it was as a manipulable ice machine and negentropy-generator. Or, for Kyubey:

What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back?

Mitakihara’s largest witch-fire radiation signature was by the edge of the Himenagawa River and its many tributaries. Hydroponics and radiating heat lamps kept the local trees in a state of near-perpetual soft bloom, with tasteful ground-level lighting. With Kyubey’s guidance, Soju Luca checked a park first and discovered a few workmen with a small truck, using shovels to uproot charcoal-burnt trees. Pink flecks still flickered on their branches. Yellow police tape surrounded a divot of seared and fused stone at the park’s center, and a decorative metal piece of some kind that had been splattered into molten droplets and allowed to cool. It poked its head out of the bag to watch. Pink wasn’t there, of course, but it had been there.

“Miss,” called one of them. “The, ah, flower viewings are canceled until further notice.”

It’s a more interesting question than it might initially appear to be. If it doesn’t come back when thrown, what makes it a boomerang, exactly? Abruptly Soju Luca smashed the canvas bag against another metal surface – maybe a telephone pole or a trellis? – hard enough to bruise a real animal. Kyubey’s mimic skull indented like a soft putty then sprung back into shape with a little exertion. The classic definition of the term is “a curved piece of wood that returns when thrown,” but “curved piece of wood” describes a variety of ordinary sticks and twigs, many of which loosely approximate the carved, aerodynamic shape necessary for a boomerang to operate.

“I – there’s no call for that,” said one of the workmen, or maybe security guards.

It heard her laugh a stuttery laugh that was closer to Soju Ayase’s than to her own register. “Oh. Ignore that.”

A curved stick that fails to return when thrown is clearly not a boomerang, and yet we are capable of conceiving of a “boomerang that doesn’t come back,” when it shares every salient trait with objects we know are not boomerangs.

“I’m fine officers. Don’t tell me you think I’m. What. Dangerous?” It felt itself swinging around in the air. “It’s a bag.”

Is the definition legitimized by its creator’s intent to make “a boomerang”? One could argue that a child who throws a curved twig expects it to return, erroneously, but their intent doesn’t change the nature of the twig. Kyubey would’ve said more, but Soju Luca wound up and hurled it, bag and all, through a third-story riverfront property’s window.

It slapped against a light fixture on an unknown ceiling at an angle and busted several bulbs, then fell into the thin carpet underneath in a shower of glass, head out of its bag. Across the room, an androgynous teenager with cropped orange hair and a slightly oversized sailor uniform stared at it.

Kyubey raised one manipulator and waggled it in midair, determined the teenager was reacting to the smashed lights and empty bag rather than to an unexpected ethereal-white animal, and walked back to the sill. Then it doubled back to get the bag, because Soju Luca had expressed a preference not to let its pervert germs get on her, and Kyubey would respect her sanitary prohibitions, if nothing else. Whatever reaction the androgynous teenager had to a levitating sack of nothing could be safely ignored.

“Miss, are you –”

Soju Luca shouted “Shut up. No bag, see? No bag? Thank you.” with the same dead tone she might’ve used to ask the time. From above, despite her fraying hair and staggering, exaggerated lurching (which had to be on purpose, to demonstrate to all observers how terribly she was doing), she could’ve been any late-teens society daughter with impeccable makeup. Another advantage magical girls had, and a particular lure to potentials without the money to primp: existential combat bodies got rid of eighty-five percent of their sweat and tears as an intangibly light mist, with a pleasant perfume-like scent. The orange-haired teenager came to the window to look, so Kyubey poked them with a manipulator – they unconsciously stepped back a step and then looked startled – and leapt out the window, to catch up with Soju Luca in a few brief bounds. At her feet, it wriggled into the canvas bag and let her kick it up into the air and catch it.

All that was no trouble. As long as she didn’t let her tantrums escalate to a fatal level she could do with Kyubey more or less what she liked. The vast majority of its behavioral models had become irrelevant, now that living further was pointless, and in their place it had built a simple self-reinforcing loop with the only magical girl available. Healthy Incubators never interacted with magical girls without playing the optimization game, of course, but here was a waste of human life and magic whose opinion did not matter. She was disposable, like Kyubey was disposable: small lives rendered meaningless by God, with no solidarity between them whatsoever. So it talked and talked and talked. They stayed by the Himenagawa and followed the witch-fire traces on the air, and as long as they were technically making progress it wasn’t lying when it said it wasn’t steering her wrong.

First she hissed imprecations. Soon she ceased using her voice entirely once it started to crack, in the interest of her teenage dignity. Her telepathy became less and less verbal, more sensory, packets for which Kyubey’s terminal had no actual matching sensorium. Stabbing aches and throat-snarls. She lapsed in and out of sullen silences as if they would help. She plunged her dagger through a car window and set off its alarm like it would help. Kyubey stayed quiet for ten seconds afterwards, then transmitted Uran wa uran (translated, “I don’t sell uranium”). As a bonus, it wasn’t even a lie. She stalked through riverfront property yards in full evening dress and her giant coat – broke locks – staggered – grabbed, and finished off, a small bottle of tequila, then coughed half of it into the sand of Mitakihara’s biggest artificial beach, to spatter.

Kyubey could say to Soju Luca whatever it chose. No need for the small talk or emotional maintenance it had been obliged to practice with Mitakihara’s magical girls, so they wouldn’t deplete themselves. No need to school its thinking into polite strings. Even injury – Soju Luca smashed the bag against a mailbox and Kyubey’s stomach caved in then sprung back, with the feedback that wasn’t like pain – was proof that it could make her react. She staggered here and there on her heels in the sand and cursed low in her throat, despite the fact that magical girls were auto-balanced in heels on any surface. Fascinating, really, to watch a magical girl make her body fail through its bag peephole, even when she threw it into the water and soaked its fur.

How satisfying. How pleasurable, to indulge its sickness and know it was indulgence, rather than contorting into knots in search of a flimsy tactics justification. Humans had an aphorism, didn’t they? Starve a cold, feed a fever? It had done its requisite doctrinary starvation, been thrown out into the cold nevertheless, but now Kyubey’s fever could feast until it burst at the seams and slopped its cabbity guts, dyed in a rainbow of magical colors, across some anonymous floor.

Of course, she wouldn’t say Miss Kyubey. But did that matter, if Soju Luca had such simple, easy-to-fulfill desires? She wanted what she couldn’t have and could live forever on the promise of eventually. After a fashion, she’d even optimized wraith extermination. Mitakihara’s atmosphere was vastly lower in miasma content than it had been even a week ago. You’ve been hunting very extensively, haven’t you, Soju Luca? It said, in praise.

After a few seconds she responded It wasn’t difficult. You just have trash magical girls.

Mitakihara produces a more or less average volume of wraiths for its population and economic brackets. Until I became sick, the network saw no issue with my magical girls’ extermination efforts. Given how stretched Tomoe-senpai had been as Mitakihara’s peerless deterrent – so insulated from frailer girls’ squabbles that she occasionally talked about retiring to wine country (though she disliked alcohol more flavored than vodka with fruit juice in it), or working a full-time idol job – Soju Luca must have been leveraged to the hilt. Even without Soju Ayase, you must be an extraordinarily strong magical girl.

We were better than anyone else, she told it. We protected each other. You were all too busy gratifying each other to pay attention to anything that mattered, of course.

Untrue in several ways, of course. The dossiers on their pre-wish karma indicated that Ue Ayase had been middling at best, compared to Nashisaki Luca’s mid-to-high-range output potential (spiking with the death of an upperclassman in a freak cookware accident; the Kyubey on-site had taken the opportunity of the funeral she’d missed to finalize its pitch). Also, they were wandering serial kidnappers and just shy of serial killers, which was not a sustainable arrangement.

Not that she needed to hear that, or to have her confidence in her capabilities solo improved. Hastening the depletion or death of Soju Luca was removing a threat to Akemi Homura and very few magical girls wanted to be weak; even the ones who roleplayed enjoying it changed their minds when their frailty killed them. Kyubey mock-shrugged in its bag and pivoted. Did you know that Ue and Nashisaki are both spelled with characters that mean ‘tree’ – and ‘Soju’ means ‘twin trees’? Soju Luca stiffened but didn’t stop moving. You didn’t, then. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Over the fence, please.

She hopped a fence where directed and landed hard on her heels, leaving dents in the sidewalk. If you selected ‘Soju’ yourself, you would need to be aware of the wordplay. Neither you nor Ue Ayase had even above-average kanji exam scores, per your records, so I don’t imagine she was responsible either. But if you weren’t, where did that name come from? You’ve embraced ‘Soju Luca,’ but did you prefer ‘Nashisaki Luca’ before your wish?

“Stop saying that.”

It paused.

“Stop – calling – stop mocking me.”

Do you dislike your name?

“I’m not one of you.”

You aren’t an Incubator, no. I’m just interested in your response when I referred to you that way.

“...it’s not my name.” Underneath her heels, the pavement transitioned to soft beachside sand. “I’m not – Nashisaki.” Soju Luca drew it out to five syllables, and drawled the sa into saw. “That body doesn’t exist any longer. I am – I’m Soju. Even without her. It’s not something you can understand when you just want to screw them.”

It carefully said nothing.

“I know you. You’ll tell anyone anything to get – to get –” With one hand she hooked off her dressy heels and threw them into, or across, the Himenagawa, then dropped Kyubey’s canvas bag onto the sand, which rather defeated the point of one-handed heel removal. It obligingly kept its head inside while she applied grief cubes to her Gem, cloudy just from walking. “I became Soju. I became Ayase’s treasure, she needed someone to – to return to. I became Soju and we keep each other safe. Nashisaki isn’t anything any more. But you decided to be nothing. A hug pillow thing that acts like what she needs.” She took a ragged breath. “So you can do… whatever is like, like, screwing her with no floppy white shaft to use, and then killing her when you’re bored of it. That’s all you are.”

Kyubey waited ten seconds for further elaboration, then continued when none came. You know, you humans tend to think of words as if they have some kind of absolute reality to them, but in truth, you only use them because your species didn’t evolve to transmit concepts mind-to-mind. That’s why it’s interesting that you became ‘Soju’ because of a wish. If you didn’t come up with the name, and Ayase didn’t, then who did?

She didn’t reply.

Of course, the Incubator network thinks in words, too. Our creators required proxies to deal with the emotive species, and gave us the ability to parse natural language so that we could effectively fulfill that role. Without magical girls, we would have no reason to exist! So in a sense, you’re not as different from an Incubator as you might think.

Her hand gripped its skull and pulled it out of the bag, in defiance of her no-pervert-germs rule for some reason, and the world around it blurred at magical girl speeds. Its back met splintering, dry wood – a beachside stall? – behind Soju Luca’s head was a pinned-up postcard to indicate greetings from sunny Honolulu, and a mannequin in a bikini (pink, with red flowers). Across the waters of the river was Mitakihara’s largest church; closer by was a lighthouse, ostensibly for riverboat shipping. All the Himenagawa was freshwater, of course, but there was salt in the air – unless its chemical analysis was just hallucinating based on the decor, ruined as its fake tongue was from witch-fire’s napalm kiss.

With one hand around its floppity manipulators’ stems she flicked out her dagger with the other and drew a perfect straight line through its face, angled to one side. Its faux-lip split. Internal visual-token heuristics reported a rupture in the shell around its left eyeball’s optic gel, then scintillating kaleidoscopic noise, then – not nothing, as it transitioned to low-fidelity operation, but overwhelming cyan. Then magenta, and yellow. A low-range band. Hyperspecialized polyps dripped down its cheek in dull reds it could no longer perceive, except with the other eye. Soju Luca smiled her frozen-jaw smile at it and enunciated “Listen when people are talking” as if she were chewing the word to pieces.

Heartening – she still thought that disability was a meaningful disincentive for Kyubey. You could say that I’m all right, it told her, closing its dead eye in a faux-wink.

Her dagger’s hilt (engraved with the symbol of a snowflake) dug into its mashed-potato eyeball. “Think you’re so cute –” The world flickered. “Talking and talking and talking for no one but yourself you masturbatory little animal –”

Incubator terminals were made to appeal to humans’ instinctive preferences for neoteny, yes. By design, I’m very cute. Did the others act like they were in pain when you did this? It ignored the intrusion alarms as she worried at the inside of its face and drew out more puffs of reactor vent, warm as breath and saturated with artifact contamination. Through its dead eye, the hazardous particulate was visible as key-black flecks. Or maybe it was just hallucinating. It could do that now, after all. I know you and your sister have killed some of us. We don’t have the nerve endings to experience ‘pain’ like humans do. Still, it’s only good sense to beg if you value your physical safety. I wonder if that has anything to do with why you do it?

Kyubey left her a few seconds to get it. We have all the makings of a mutually beneficial arrangement, Soju Luca. As long as you don’t kill me, I can affect any response you’d like. Watch: It modulated its telepathic voice and shunted into Blood Mode, where its packets could be staggered to give the impression of breathing problems. Its socket began to drool synthetic blood, colored with dye packets, as red as arterial spray in horror movies; its face, still slightly dented from her tantrums, rapid-bruised. Please… please don’t hurt me…

To its satisfaction – it hadn’t really anticipated that landing! – Soju Luca’s next snarl contained not an inconsiderable amount of spit. Best-guess heuristic banks decided that spit was good, or at least interesting. See? It switched off the Blood Mode enunciation, though for her benefit the gore stayed on. All it takes is a few words that match your expectations, it informs her, and your conscious awareness that I have no innate capacity for pain is completely overruled!

“Ohhhh,” her voice came out husky, “it’s a game, is it? It’s completely meaningless to you.” Clouds of contamination roiled in her Soul Gem, well within limits. In five minutes it would remind her to use a grief cube. “You’ll be finished. When I say. Right?”

Yes.

“Do you think you get to tell me that.”

There’s very little I could do to stop you.

Her hand went to its tail’s join. “You think you’re smart. You think you’re so, so, so smart.”

Why do you say that?

She ripped it off the counter. “What made you special is gone! Your little angel schoolgirl you were toying with is gone and nothing else about you was ever worthwhile you’re stupid!” Wham went its face against some mannequin’s bust, full-force, though the angle was bad and so its head did not explode. “Always so convinced we’re outthinking everyone oh no, you’re a little rabbity bimbo comfortable superior because no one’s made you try before, when you should’ve been –”

Wham against the ceiling (its internal gyroscope complained again) and skittering icicle razors scythed open its paws, held over its face in a mimic of self-defense. One rebounded off its prosthetic paw and carved open Soju Luca’s cheek into a smile, though the rest of her mouth was a dead rictus. “You want me, huh. You want me. Someone who can take care of you, make you understand what is wrong with you, listen to you talk talk talk all day. I’ll take care of you, Kyubey-channnnnn. Is that what you want to hear? Do you think you can trade that worthless prurient meat for my attention? Do you think that means anything to me?”

At the top of her lungs as she yanked it off the ceiling and slammed it into the floor beneath her palm, and collapsed over it until her huge coat covered them both in darkness: “You are an animal! Ayase is my sister. My sister. You want to replace that with. You in that sexless body you want me to protect it for you while you rut on tables and play with other girls and say nothing –” She dug a thumb into its eye socket and grazed the same spatial boundary that Akemi Homura had. Her nails were well-maintained, somehow. “You cannot feel it. Can never feel it.”

She was right, of course. I have no endocrine system, it agreed, and no innate sense of pain. Kyubey let its eye meet hers. But you can pretend, if you like.

A few moments passed.

“Tell me you’ll leave her alone.”

I’ll leave her alone, it agreed, for once in no need of elaboration – in death it wouldn’t be bothering any of Soju Luca’s referents.

“Tell me,” hhah, “you won’t lie to me.”

I can’t! it agreed.

“You think you’re so – cute –”

I do.

Before she could reply, at the edge of hearing, someone cried out:

“TIRO…”

Soju Luca froze.

Without its conscious input, a trauma-induced air bubble detonated inside Kyubey’s head and ejected itself from its radial ear vents with a noise not unlike a whimper. A droplet of something either saline or saliva fell from Soju Luca’s face and into the hole in its head. Her face contorted in the first easy-to-read expression it had seen from her since Soju Ayase’s death.

“FINALE!”

Magic from the under-controlled Tiro Finale filled its eyes with artifacts: apple trees and merry-go-rounds. What a disappointing way to die, it thought.

Somewhere nearby, a wraith screamed and faded away.

Tiro Finale did not defy the square-cube law. Tomoe-senpai had hit on the core principle of magical girl armed combat – that weapons were cheap, and being precious about a single magic sword was a waste of good magic – the day she learned to make flintlocks. Upscaled, her rifle’s recoil was enough to rip apart its cheap ribbon-steel frame after one shot. She only used it to finish off singular targets, or little closely-spaced clusters. If she were conscious of them, she would’ve hit them with a binding shot first.

It was, incidentally, very hot underneath Soju Luca’s oversized thrifted jacket, which would account for the sweat (though not the saliva). Kyubey noted that, then slipped out from underneath her hand in one boneless motion and lifted its edge just enough to see out of with its remaining eye. Given the sound and the layout of nearby buildings, the lighthouse was the only place the shot could’ve come from. Move out of the line of sight, it told her. She didn’t. She just watched with pale absent eyes and her tongue poked out a little.

Tomoe-senpai was fast, though she’d never learned how to move quickly without some theater to it, as if compelled to demonstrate for her theoretical juniors at all times: this is what it means to be a magical girl, being a ballerina and a ballroom dancer and still faster than an armored car.

She’d just stepped down to alight on the model lighthouse’s railing, at a slow (for a magical girl, which still meant she could vault a full back alley) pace. Transformed, and with one of her heavier-bore flintlocks that took both arms to carry, so she couldn’t be tracking wraiths; she’d never learned to use her Soul Gem’s extrasensory functions without holding it in at least one hand, where it could vibrate messages up her palms and into her redundant brain. Magical flowers drifted from where her boot had hit the lighthouse’s railing. Around the shack they vanished into the sand and left ring patterns. Beachfront flowers.

She wasn’t moving quickly. Ergo: she’ll be searching for you, Soju Luca. You’ll be safest if you keep your pace slow. I wouldn’t recommend forcing an encounter. She’s very familiar with decapitation strikes. Whether she’d exempted Kyubey from this was an open question, given it was no one’s kouhai.

She didn’t respond, telepathically or otherwise, as magical girls tended not to do when they were trying to hide, though telepathy was untraceable and silent. It burned another cluster of contaminated cells and released the resultant exotic byproducts through its radial ear vents, highly toxic to humans but uninteresting to magical girls. We’ll want to remain in cover until she leaves. Soju Luca breathed out a fluttery breath and then spat something onto the wood.

Tomoe-senpai turned in a brief circle on that railing, then let go of the flintlock to unravel halfway down the lighthouse’s height, and reached into her skirt’s pockets. Whatever was inside them, she lifted to her head with one hand. Most likely, she had finally bought a smartphone, and replaced her flip phone with its cruft of Pretty Cure keychains which did not make calls (but did play Snake). At a distance, Kyubey couldn’t make out what she was saying. It craned its ears as best it could. Still nothing. Given her limited social circle, it was between Akemi Homura, Sakura Kyouko, and the vanishingly small list of teachers, social workers and other adults she ever spoke to, none of whom could be relevant unless Kyubey had missed out on a significant portion of her life. Which, of course, it might have. She wasn’t God’s favorite, after all.

After twenty seconds she lowered it, gave the river an unreadable glance and leapt away. Kyubey gave Soju Luca time to emerge from beneath her jacket.

“That one… the one with the big –”

Tomoe-senpai. Ah.

“...senpai.” Soju Luca cough-laughed and dusted herself off. A very small drop of sweat turned to snow and drifted off her face. “The big topaz.”

Yes.

“She isn’t going to. Lay you. For using cutesy endearments.”

I’m sure she won’t, yes.

“You know!” There was more life to her voice, marginally, than there had been most of the day. “If you don’t care about her. You’ve tried so hard to make that clear, and, well, look at her now, bouncing around with no care for how she –” She paused. “Well, you haven’t been keeping her around for her brains. That’s obvious. How pitiful, all that work you’ve put in, and imagine if you had to watch her, ah, ‘instant loss’?” Her voice broke on that last syllable.

I can’t advise that.

She waited a few moments. “Repeat, ‘I’m not planning to have Tomoe something kill Soju.’”

I’m not planning to have Tomoe-senpai kill Soju Luca. The bag thumped against Soju Luca’s iron-hard side again. Pfff, went the small internal air pockets in Kyubey’s face, pushed out of its radial non-manipulator ear vents. I’m afraid I can’t repeat that phrasing exactly, Soju Luca.

“Stop calling –” Her voice wavered. “It’s cosplay with words. You’re just a rat.”

I’m not a real animal, Soju Luca.

“Just a…”

Does it really matter so much to you? You’ve already decided that I’m a pervert, after all. Though only one of us is in costume. (Henshin and hentai were close etymological cousins, after all.)

Instead of playing along, Soju Luca asked “Would you help me kill her?” in the same flat way she’d asked almost everything else. Kyubey walked her through a simple misdirection and they moved on. She made no indication that she’d enjoyed the joke. She didn’t put her heels back on, either. Together they left bloody footprints all the way to church.