Ghosts of Chrismas Past

by TakerFoxx

Resonance Days Christmas special. At long last, Kyoko has found peace. A pity she had to die to do so. Rated T for language.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

There is a moment between sleep and awakening, when the mind has left dreams but is not yet ready to rise, in which the world is dark and deep and comforting. Those who find themselves in this state are often unwilling to leave it, for its grip is as strong as it is soft, and its warmth too tempting to resist.

Conversely, it also tends to happen exactly ten minutes before the alarm goes off.

The redheaded teenager that lay half asleep knew it well. She floated in its embrace, faintly aware that the time to awake was soon. She had already opened her eyes enough to see the rising numbers on her bedside clocks three times, though the second had probably been a dream, given that it had tried to explain to her that it was now 47:13 in the afternoon. Regardless, though it annoyed her, she knew that it was almost time. She hadn't set an alarm though; she didn't need to. Because there were two little twerps that were not going to allow her to oversleep. Or even get a moderate amount of sleep. They were probably up already, stalking the hallway outside of her room, sneaking in with predatory smiles, getting ready to-

"KYOKO!"

Yup.

A small body threw herself onto Kyoko, jolting her most of the way to wakefulness. Groaning in protest, Kyoko instinctively tried to push her off and slink deeper into her bedcovers, but of course that damned kid wouldn't have any of that. Blanket and sheet were yanked away, leaving Kyoko with nothing but the fabric of her pajamas to shield her from the chill morning air. "Hey," she mumbled in irritation. "Give those back. Go away."

Through sleep-bleared eyes she could see her little sister grinning impetuously at her. "No! Get up!"

"Gojumperhousish," Kyoko grumbled. She considered summoning up a magical barrier of shields to encase the little nuisance and get back to sleep. They wouldn't stop the sound of her voice though.

Then she became aware of someone standing over her, on the bed frame. Squinting, she looked up to see her other little sister staring down at her, also with an impish smile on her face. She was holding something. It looked like a glass of water. But why would she…

Aw crap.

The cold water hit Kyoko right in the face. In doing so, it accomplished two things. One, it drove out what wisps of sleepiness still clinging to her. Two, it royally pissed her off like nothing else could.

"Why you-" Kyoko roared as she lurched from her bed. Her sisters ran laughing from her room, and she stumbled her way into a clumsy sort of pursuit. "Get back here you little creeps!"

She chased after them through the hall of the still-dark house and down the stairs. "I swear to God I'm going to-"

The rest of her threat died as she entered the living room. The lamps and overhead lights were still off, and the drapes were closed, holding back the rising sun.

The others lights though…those were all on. The Christmas tree in the corner of the room shone brightly, from the glittering red crystal at its peak to the twinkling lights and golden stars that covered its branches. A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace, illuminating the three stuffed stockings that hung in front of it and the wrapped gifts that sat under the tree.

Momo and Yuma were already bouncing their way over the couches. "Merry Christmas, Kyoko!" they cried.

Kyoko Sakura stood at the foot of the stairs, her long, copper hair and the shirt of her pajamas soaking wet. She stared at the two grinning little girls and marveled at their audacity, as if the Christmas spirit would be enough to save them from her wrath.

Then her shoulders relaxed, and she smiled. Well, hell, they were right. Even when you were dead, the Christmas spirit still held strong.

"Yeah, okay, fine," she said. "Merry Christmas, you little monsters."

…

Kyoko, Momo, and Yuma left their house at around ten past eleven.

Freehaven tended to go all out on Christmas. Sure, being a seaside town in a temperate zone it didn't get much of a winter, but that didn't mean they couldn't hang lights from every building, set up gaudily decorated pine trees at every street corner, and play the same twelve or thirteen songs at every public place. Indeed, they could hear one playing somewhere in the distance as soon as they stepped out onto the narrow street.

"…cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy cozy are we. Come on it's lovely weather…"

Well, it was right about lovely weather part. If it weren't for all the holiday dressings, one could be forgiven for thinking it to be early spring at the most. The only time the sky wasn't a gorgeous shade of blue was when it rained, and the temperature rarely dipped to the seventies. In fact, the only bit of winter wear Kyoko and her sisters were wearing was her natty green jacket and their sweaters, and the fact that Kyoko was wearing jeans instead of the short shorts that she went with practically every other time of the year. Some of her friends complained of the lack of variety in her choice of outfits, but screw them. That getup was one of her few mementos of her past life, and she was in no hurry to part with it. Though to be honest, she did sometimes wish that Freehaven had a wider range of weather. Honestly, seeing how everyone had some sort of magic, couldn't they do something to add a little variety? Christmas without snow was just plain wrong.

"All right, that everything?" she said as Yuma came running out, clutching her nearly forgotten packages. When the other two nodded, she locked the door and the three of them stepped onto the street. "All right, let's go!"

Freehaven was a lovely city even when it wasn't dressed up for the holidays. Sitting on the side of a hill that sloped down to the ocean, most of it was composed of Spanish-esque buildings with white walls, flat roofs of red tile with curved horns at the corners, and arched windows and doors. Plants and small trees had been crammed into every bit of free space, from few scant centimeters between the streets and the walls to hanging from nearly every windowsill. Unfortunately, it had been built long before anyone, living or dead, had thought up motor vehicles, so most of the cobble-stone streets were just too narrow to allow for anything save for walking, which made it something of a pain if you so happened to live on one side of town and worked at the other. Granted, you could always just leap from rooftop to rooftop if you were in a hurry, and in fact most people did. But still, some sort of flying taxi service would be nice. But all the old farts that had been there since the feudal days took a dim view of anything resembling progress. That was one of the irritating things about living in an afterlife: nobody aged, so nobody died, so you ended up sharing space with a lot of people who looked like they were still in their early teens but were in fact older than freaking democracy and acted like it. Kyoko could only imagine the uproar that had taken place when paper had been introduced. And the weird thing was, she could probably find someone who had been there and ask them.

Still, as she and her sisters strolled down the hill toward the ocean, she had to admit that she liked it there. Backwards or not, the people were nice, the food was great, and the scenery was to die for. She glanced back at Momo and Yuma, who were engaged in one of their fierce whispered debates, and smiled. And hey, she got to be with the people that she loved and not fear that they would be taken from her, which was a definite step up. If there was anything her last year of life had taught her, it was how much being alone sucked.

On the whole though, being dead wasn't anything like what Kyoko had been expecting. Oh sure, she had anticipated an afterlife. She had spent nearly all of her life preparing for the day in which she would die and ascend to one in specific. Then things had gone sour, and she spent her remaining year believing she was bound for the other one.

It wasn't really her fault though. Her father had been the pastor of a large church, and had been trying to spread the good news. That's what gospel meant, wasn't it? The good news? Meant to uplift and inspire, to turns hearts to love and compassion? So what if his teachings were a bit on the unorthodox side? Who cared?

Well, as it turned out, quite a lot of people did, and poor reverend Sakura found himself driven from his own church to the streets, his wife and two young daughters in tow. They hadn't fared much better there, as still no one would hear his words, and what few people were moved to compassion for their plight were never enough to provide much more than a day or two of respite. Food had been scarce, shelter almost nonexistent, and the Sakura family faced a cold death on the streets. With that hanging over them, could twelve-year-old Kyoko truly be blamed for accepting the bargain that was offered to her by a seemingly magical being from the stars? To liberate her family from the streets and turn the ears of the masses to her father's words, and in return she would become an avenging hero of justice standing between the innocents and the darkness? Of course not. And hey, at first it seemed to work. They were restored to their home, and the people came to hear the gospel. And Kyoko had taken up her spear to fight for the cause of righteousness, and for a time all was well.

Unfortunately, as was the case with the man such things had been named after, her own Faustian bargain had turned sour. Her father had discovered what she had done, and took the revelation of his newfound success…poorly. In soon order, Kyoko found herself without her family, without her home, and without her faith.

Oh, she never stopped believing. One didn't see the things Kyoko had and not believe. But things had no longer been all right between her and God. Playing for His team had destroyed her father, had killed her family. So she had left His service, with full acceptance of what awaited her in return. And in time, that same deal would end her life as well.

However, neither Heaven or Hell awaited her. To her surprise, the same deal that had destroyed her family had also provided her with something of a safety net, at least as far as eternal consequences was concerned. Someone with actual foresight had made sure that there would be a place for people like Kyoko, children swindled into making a bargain that they didn't fully understand. And so she had come to the afterlife set aside for Magical Girls, their own personal little Valhalla.

"So, hey, I've got a quick question," Momo said as they walked down the sloping street. "I mean, if you don't mind me asking."

While Kyoko was thrilled to be with Momo again, she had to admit that sometimes it gave her the creeps how grown-up her sister sounded now, especially since that, even though she physically hadn't aged a day, Momo really was a grown-up. For whatever reason, time in the afterlife moved at a much quicker pace than it did back in the world of the living. One could see someone die, be reunited with them a few weeks later, and then realize that in the convening time their friend had experienced years.

From Kyoko's standpoint, Momo had died about a year before she had. The differences were staggering.

In a way, Kyoko preferred it when her smaller but now much older sister still acted like a child, like she had when she and Yuma had pranked her that morning. It made the dissonance easier to bear. Sure, she was getting used to it, but it was still…disconcerting.

"Yeah?" she said.

"Later on, after we split up-"

Kyoko frowned. When their friends came by to visit, the six of them traditionally split off into pairs near the end for a couple of hours, but she hadn't expected them to do it today. "Wait, we're doing that? I thought we were staying as a group this time."

Momo shrugged. "Well, you know, Mami and Charlotte need their alone time…"

"Oh yeah. Guess they don't get much of that with Oktavia around."

"Nope," Momo grinned. "And I did promise Yuma I'd take her friend's play…"

"Gilly's going to be the Fruitcake Monkey!" Yuma declared proudly.

"Right. That." Kyoko coughed. She had seen the dress rehearsals, and decided that whatever it was that the playwright was taking, it ought to be illegal. "Uh, yeah. Then probably a couple hours wouldn't hurt."

"Right," Momo nodded. "But you and Oktavia will be doing something on your own, right?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, we always do. Why?"

"Oh, just wondering," Momo said with an impish grin. She skipped along merrily, humming like the child she appeared to be.

Kyoko eyed her suspiciously. "Wait, don't tell me you and Charlotte got one of your dumb bets going again?"

"I'm quite sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Momo sniffed.

"Argh!" Kyoko threw her hands into the air in exasperation. "Every time! Every damn…darn! Every darn time! Seriously, what is with you guys? Oktavia and I are friends, okay? Friends like to hang out! That's it!"

"Whatever you say," Momo said.

Mumbling, Kyoko shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and stomped along. This was their first Christmas together since their deaths, and Momo was going to spend it being a little snot. Great.

Then she looked up at the city and cooled down a bit. It may not be what she had been expecting, but to be honest, she was okay with it. It was a lot like life had been. She still looked and felt the same, for example. She still moved as she had, still ate and drank when she was hungry or thirsty (and quite often at that), and still slept when she was tired. And her magic was there, ready to obey her as it always did.

The afterlife wasn't that much different either. The sun still shone in the sky, wind moved through the trees, the ocean lapped against the shore, and people went on with their lives, even if it wasn't their first one. After all, they were all stuck here together. Might as well make the best of it.

As such, it had many of the same things. There were still cities, still food (and thank goodness), still roads, still books, still rocks, plants, roofs, days, boats, stairs, animals, sand, windows, nights, sunburn, dreams, paper, itches, nightmares, love, hate, laughter, sadness, madness, and joy. And there were still holidays.

Their destination was an open-air restaurant near the ocean called the Tradewinds. It was the preferred meeting place for the Sakuras and the friends they had gone to meet. Personally, Kyoko would have preferred to eat at one of the places more inland and away from the glut of tourists that always clogged the coast, but since their friends had already come off of a long boat ride, it was only polite to split the difference. Still, they had long learned to make their reservations a few days in advance, longer if holidays were involved.

The hostess was a smiling Indian girl wearing a floral patterned skirt and a matching blouse. Her "hair" was tied back in a ponytail that hung partway down her back. That is, if it could really be called hair, as it was composed of several grey power cords that ended with pronged plug-ins. And in the place of pupils, her eyes had two vertical black bars, miming the appearance of a wall socket.

That had been the darkest part of the contract Kyoko had made with that thrice-damned Kyubey, something she hadn't even found out until a few days before her death. Witches, those horrible, inhuman monsters that she had been recruited to fight, had been just like her: children that had been suckered into taking a deal without being shown the fine print. Using too much magic or succumbing to negative emotions like despair or anger caused a gruesome transformation to take place, warping them into mindless horrors that had to be struck down by other Magical Girls. And what bits of them were left behind were used to recharge their killers' magic, sustaining them until the time came for them to become witches in their turn, assuming that they weren't straight-up killed first. It was a downright cannibalistic system, one that Kyoko was glad to be free of.

Fortunately, whichever long-seeing girl that had wished this afterlife into existence also had the foresight to make provisions for witches as well. Upon their deaths, they awoke with nearly everything they had lost restored to them: their bodies (for the most part), their sanity, and their humanity. However, there was still a catch. Some aspect of the witch always remained, a piece of whatever gimmick that had defined their actions. The hostess's hair, for example. Or arms made from linked sausages. Wheels for feet, flowers for eyes, arms "tattooed" with bizarre pattern, and so on. Kyoko had once met an especially bad-tempered girl with a turnip for a head and had not begrudged her for her attitude one bit.

The other major downside is that while most of their humanity was returned, the person they had been was not. Their personality remained more-or-less intact, sure, but their memories were gone, beyond recall. Everything was gone, from their name, their families, their friends, their hobbies, their old dreams, everything. All they had was a general working knowledge of the world they had left behind and the name of the witch they had become. That part had taken some getting used to, given who Kyoko had arrived with.

The hostess's smile grew when she saw them approach. "Hey guys!" she said. "There you are. I was wondering."

"Hey, well, you know," Kyoko said with a shrug. "Sakura time." She held out a candy cane. "Want one?"

"Thanks!" The treat went into the hostess's vest pocket, and she led the trio to the table where their friends were already waiting for them and presumable had been so for several minutes.

There were three of them. The first was a girl who looked a year or two older than Kyoko, with long, golden hair done in twin spirals at both sides of her head and heavy-lidded eyes of the same color. She had a softly curved body that those wooly sweaters she loved always failed to hide, and always seemed to be wearing the same small smile of contentment.

In contrast, the girl sitting next to her was tall and slim, with a dancer's figure and grace. She had the porcelain skin of a china-doll, sky-blue eyes, and short, dark pink hair. A hole had been cut in the back of her pants, letting a thin, black tail studded with red polka-dots hang free. Like the hostess, she was a witch, though had gotten lucky enough to have only gotten a tail and unusually pale skin out of the deal.

The third was the youngest, looking to be a year younger than Kyoko. With her mischievous blue eyes and similarly colored short, messy hair, everything about her screamed "tomboy," something she cheerfully admitted to. She was also a witch, though in her case the changes were a bit more severe. From the waist up, she looked exactly like she had when Kyoko had first met her a few days before they had died together. But everything from the waist down was gone, replaced by a large fish's tail with scales of dark blue, maroon, sea green, and black. As being a mermaid came with certain ambulatory problems, she sat in a wheelchair that had been pulled up to the table.

Mami Tomoe, Kyoko's oldest friend and former mentor, who had died a few weeks before she had. Charlotte, the witch that had done it. And Oktavia von Seckendorff, once known as Sayaka Miki, the naïve rookie that Kyoko had tried to save from herself, and whose surrender to despair had taught Kyoko the final price for her powers. It was her witch that Kyoko had sacrificed herself to save, leading them to arrive together in the next life.

Yeah, there had been a lot that she had needed to get used to.

Oktavia was the first to see them coming. "Hey!" she said, sitting up and waving her hand back and forth. "About time! Over here!"

Grinning, the Sakuras navigated through the tables to join them.

…

"So, how are you settling in?" Mami asked, once Kyoko had decided to come up for air. Their food had been served, and it was common knowledge that it was best to let Kyoko get past the frenzy stage before initiating conversation.

Munching on her French fries, Kyoko almost gave the noncommittal "Fine" answer, but she thought better of it. "Well, things are going good for the most part. But…" She left the sentence hanging for Mami to pick up on.

Mami twisted chicken alfredo around her fork and quirked an eyebrow. "What is it?"

Kyoko shrugged. She looked around the table. Oktavia was pressing Momo for gossip, which she was just a little too gleeful to provide, her little hands acting out a puppet-play of how Kyoko had angrily chased after her that morning. Charlotte was helping Yuma cut up her pork chops in a manner that was downright motherly. And Kyoko was talking to Mami. On the surface, it was normal enough. But given the circumstances… "It's just…weird."

Mami took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "Well, that's true."

"Yeah," Kyoko nodded. She signaled for Mami to lean in closer and lowered her voice. "I mean, it's great, don't get me. It's like I've got almost everything I wanted. Momo's back, you're back, Sayaka's okay, Yuma's happy, we're all together in a cool city and don't have to fight for our lives anymore..."

Mami nodded. "But it's too different."

"Well, sort of," Kyoko mumbled as she picked her plate for odd pieces of bacon that had dropped from her now deceased burger. "I mean, I can get used to it, but damn. There's a lot to get used to. Just waking up and thinking, 'Hey! I'm dead!' is like the least of it, believe it or not."

"I remember what that was like," Mami said, a faraway look in her eyes. "Though I had a much harder time with that last part."

"Really?" Kyoko said, now curious. Mami hadn't really gotten into detail about her own first few months after her death.

Mami nodded. "I think, for me, just learning that Kyubey had been lying was the worst part. And not just about my own fate. Every time I passed a witch in the streets, I couldn't help but think, 'Was I the one who killed you?'"

Kyoko glanced over to Oktavia, who didn't seem to have noticed the seriousness of her friends' discussion. She seemed to be completely at ease, smiling and laughing heartily at something Momo had just said, a far cry from angry, tormented Kyoko had known in the last few days of their life. "Pretty sure they'd consider it a favor."

"I don't doubt that they would," Mami said, shrugging. "But that was just how I felt."

"Well, I already knew about that little rat-bastard's game by then, so for me it's more of the little differences." Kyoko nodded to her sister, the natural one. "I mean, when I found out that Momo was here in town, well, let's just say it's a good thing I was already dead, because that just about gave me a heart-attack!"

"I remember," Mami said with a nod and a smile. "You were rather inconsolable for quite some time."

"Yeah, but then I find out that she's like old now! Like, she still looks like she's nine, but she's almost sixty!"

"Well, numerical age doesn't mean the same as it once did," Mami pointed out. "The harbormaster, for example, is in her mid-three hundreds."

"Yeah, I know," Kyoko sighed. "But it's still weird."

"That it is."

Kyoko picked at the crumbs at her plate for a bit before continuing. "And then there's Oktavia. I mean, on the one hand, look at her! I mean, she's smiling! She's happy! I don't think I ever saw her smile for real back when she was, you know, Sayaka."

"I did," Mami said sadly. "Though that was before…" She looked down. "Well, you know."

"Yeah," Kyoko said. She knew exactly what Mami was talking about. "Except now, she isn't even Sayaka anymore. She's doesn't even remember being Sayaka. Forget the fish tail, that's the hardest part. Like, does that mean Sayaka's really dead? Can she come back? Or-" She stopped herself before asking if she should come back.

"I understand," Mami said sympathetically. "Me being here couldn't have helped."

"What? Oh no, that part's great!" Kyoko was quick to say. "I mean, still weird, seeing how you jumped from fifteen to twenty-two in a month." She shot a quick glance to Charlotte. "And you got married. To a girl. Which is also something that's a little hard to get used to." She tactfully left out the part about Mami marrying the same person that had killed her. She supposed that she didn't really have a problem with it, considering her relationship with Sayaka/Oktavia, but damn. What a way to kick things off. "But you know what's the weirdest part?"

Mami folded her hands in front of her chest and watched her, waiting.

"It's like, sometimes I think about that last year, and I start wondering…" Kyoko swallowed, feeling a lump build in her throat. Damn it, this was supposed to be a nice, fun holiday lunch. Why did things have to get so heavy? "It's like I wonder if it wouldn't be better if…you know, if I wasn't out that day, so I could, uh, could have come here earlier." Tears started to fall on her plate. "With Momo. And…"

Mami, bless her heart, saw that Kyoko was losing control and gently touched her shoulder. "Do you want to go outside?" she whispered. Kyoko nodded, and Mami led her by the arm from the table. "We're just going to go get some air," she told the others when they looked up in concern. "We'll be right back."

The two of them hastily left the restaurant and kept going until they found a secluded spot behind a tree in a mosaic-tiled courtyard. Once there, Mami silently held Kyoko until the younger girl's shoulders stopped shaking.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Kyoko sniffed and nodded. "Y-yeah," she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "Sorry. Wasn't expecting that."

"Don't worry about it. I had my fair share of surprise breakdowns, my first few months in."

"Oh yeah?"

Mami nodded. "Yes. Like I said, I had something of a guilt problem. I was Kyubey's poster girl for a while, after all. I guess it made me feel a little like a monster."

Kyoko lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Yeah. Well. I weren't exactly no paragon of virtue neither."

"Don't be so hard on yourself. You've been through a lot. And I think you did extremely well in that last year, especially considering that you took in an orphaned child."

"Yuma?" Kyoko let out a laugh. "Ah hell, she was the easiest part. Kinda…kept me grounded, you know? Probably would've turned out a lot worse if it weren't for her." Then her eyes darkened. "'Course, I sort of lost it a little when I found out she had made a contract. And I guess it's a good thing I didn't walk away from that last fight. After Sayaka, losing her was kind of the last straw."

"I didn't know that," Mami said, her eyes sad. "It was around the same time?"

Kyoko winced. She hadn't meant for that to slip out. "Yeah," she said, remembering a tiny mess of green, white, and red, crushed beneath a glowing train wheel. "It was."

Mami held her again, and Kyoko let her. Back in the old days, she would have quickly pulled back in embarrassment, huffing about not needing the help while making a show of toughness. But this wasn't the old days.

Finally she said, "I'm okay," and Mami let her go.

They stood there for a time, watching the ocean. There weren't many people on the beach, which was a rarity. Most of the tourists were spending time with those they had come to visit in their homes or the restaurants. Kyoko couldn't help but feel sorry for those who had to work today. Most of them didn't have family or friends close enough to spend holidays with. In that regard, Kyoko was very, very lucky.

"Hey, Mami?" she said.

"Hmmm?"

"Don't tell anyone I got this sappy, but…I'm glad I found you again."

Mami smiled and put her arm around Kyoko's shoulder in a side-hug. "Me too. Now, come on. They'll be wondering about us."

…

On cue, all six glasses were raised and clinked together. "Merry Christmas!" everyone said, and frothy sweet goodness was chugged down.

While Kyoko and her sisters were in no way ready to start hosting extravagant dinners, there was no preparation needed for eggnog and candy. As such, once they had finished up at the Tradewinds, everyone had made their way back to the Sakura residence for a little sugary celebrating. After all, it was Kyoko, Oktavia, and Yuma's first Christmas on the other side. That alone called for some kind of toast.

Kyoko gulped down the contents of her glass in one go and let out a sigh of contentment. She helped herself to a handful of mints and leaned back into her seat and propped her feet up on the coffee table.

"Feet, Kyoko," Momo said. The technically elder while still physically younger Sakura was sitting next to her sister on the couch and didn't seem all that enthused by her sibling's lack of manners.

"No, it's Sakura Kyoko," Kyoko said around a mouthful of minty chocolate. "C'mon, you should know this already."

Oktavia, whose wheelchair had been positioned next to the couch, gave Kyoko a sidelong look. "Enjoying being the little sister a little too much, eh Kyoko?"

"Tell her that," Kyoko said, motioning to the visibly annoyed Momo. "You wanna know how Grandma here woke me up this morning? I'll give you hint: it involved a glass of water being used in ways not intended by the manufacturer."

This comment set Yuma off giggling but drew stares from all of their guests. Charlottes especially seemed to be rather fascinated by (likely highly incorrect) the mental picture Kyoko's description had conjured.

"True story," Kyoko said calmly.

"Oh, come on!" Momo protested. "I just-" Seeing the looks on the others' faces, she hastily said, "Look, I just dumped it on her face. It wasn't anything-"

"Big sister my most wondrous ass," Kyoko remarked.

Oktavia clamped two hands over her mouth and snorted loudly. Even Mami looked like she was having trouble keeping from chuckling.

Momo closed her eyes. She tried to smile, but it just came out as a very strained looking grimace. "Language, Kyoko," she said through gritted teeth.

Kyoko smirked. "Sorry, sorry," she said. "Forgot there was children present." The heavy emphasis on the word "children" was obvious.

Charlotte looked from one Sakura to the other. "So, I take it you two are like this all the time?"

"Yes, actually," Momo said. "Kyoko seems to think she's funny."

"Hey, I am hilarious. Underappreciated maybe, but hilarious." Kyoko turned to Yuma. "Yuma, back me up here. Who's funnier? Me or her?"

Yuma looked dubiously at her adopted sisters. Then she said, "Kyoko."

"There, you see?" Kyoko said triumphantly. "Yuma knows what's-"

"Especially when you get mad!" Yuma said brightly. She scrunched up her face into a rather silly grimace and bared her teeth with her little hands curled into claws. She looked like an extremely irritated squirrel. "Then you get all red and look like this!"

This got laughter from everyone except Kyoko, who had frozen in place with her mouth still open around her unfinished sentence. Then she folded her arms and muttered sulkily, "I do not." This just made everyone laugh harder.

She took her feet off the table though.

Later, when the conversation had progressed to some boring smalltalk about tides and fishing, Kyoko excused herself to the kitchen for more eggnog. Charlotte and Yuma were already there, with Charlotte helping Yuma fill her glass. Kyoko watched them with an incredulous look.

"You sure you should be drinking that stuff?" she said, and not to Yuma. "I mean, it's got as like three times as much sugar than milk, but even so…"

Charlotte sighed in that barely tolerant way she used every time someone returned to that very tired joke. "Ah ha. Ah ha. Ah ha. No. Milk is fine. I have no problems with milk."

"Well, okay," Kyoko said doubtfully. "I'm just, you know, looking out for your best interests."

Charlotte pressed two fingertips to her forehead. "My sympathies to Momo. All my sympathies to Momo."

Yuma just looked confused. "Is something wrong with milk?"

"No, there's nothing wrong with milk!" Charlotte said, perhaps a bit too quickly.

Kyoko leaned against the counter and filled up her own cup. "Unless it's been curdled and hardened into an orangey substance."

When Kyoko had first met Charlotte, the older girl had struck her as a very forward thinking and level-headed person with a rather sarcastic sense of humor. For the most part, this had held true, which was something Kyoko rather liked about her.

However, there had been one evening in which all six of them had been walking down the street, and someone had walked by eating a Philly cheese-steak sandwich. It was then that Kyoko had learned that Charlotte had a rather bizarre behavioral trigger, one that was activated whenever she was within smelling distance of a certain type of dairy product. The end result had been reminiscent of a half-starved, land-based piranha.

It had taken all five of them, two marshals, and a passing bike courier to pry Charlotte off the poor girl. It had also been unquestionably the funniest thing Kyoko had ever seen, and by great fortune it had not been the last time it had happened.

Charlotte grimaced in a way that was evocative of Momo's grimace from earlier. "Once," she muttered. "I slipped up once, and suddenly that's all anyone remembers."

"Really?" Kyoko said calmly as she took a small sip. "Because I remember three."

"Seven!" Mami called from the front room.

Charlotte slapped a palm across her face. "Why does everybody always insist on picking on me? Every time. No matter where I go, that's all that they ever bring up."

"Because we love you and it's funny," Kyoko said.

Yuma stared blankly at the two. Then she brightened. "Oh, is this about the cheese thing?"

Charlotte sighed again.

Kyoko snickered, but now that her fun was done, there was something else she wanted to ask. "So, um, hey," she said, glancing over to the front room and lowering her voice. How's Oktavia settling in?"

"Oktavia?" Charlotte looked over to the mermaid in question, who was regaling Momo with stories of her harrowing (and likely made up) adventures at the bottom of the sea. "She's doing fine. But why not ask her yourself?"

Kyoko muttered evasively. She wasn't really good at coming up with excuses on the spot.

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. "Ah," she said with a knowing smile. "Well, don't worry. She's doing great. The ocean's been real good for her, and I can't tell you how handy it's been having someone who can breathe underwater out in the kelp fields."

"Has she met any other mermaids?" Yuma asked eagerly.

Charlotte affectionately ruffled her hair. "Not yet."

"Oh." Yuma looked disappointed. "Well, Yuma thinks she should. It's good to find others like you. Like when Yuma found big sis Kyo."

Kyoko raised an eyebrow of her own. "Okay. Aside from the whole magical girl thing, which didn't line up until way later, how are we alike?"

"You were the first person to understand Yuma," came the immediate response. "No one else did." Yuma's brow furrowed. "The other kids kept calling me crybaby. The teachers never listened. Mommy and daddy were…"

Yuma's voice dropped and trailed off. Kyoko and Charlotte exchanged an uncomfortable look.

Then Yuma suddenly started smiling again. "Anyway, that's all over. I'm not even sad about dying, because now I have two big sisters!"

She gave Kyoko a quick hug, and then wandered back into the front room, carrying her glass with both hands. Kyoko and Charlotte watched her go.

"Uh, wow," Charlotte said once she was out of earshot. "That was…surprisingly dark."

Kyoko pursed her lips and nodded. "Yup." She knocked back her glass with one go and found herself wishing that there was more in it than just eggnog. She didn't drink (nor would Momo ever let her, probably even after she came of age), but there were some instances where you just needed something stronger.

"You know, I never did hear the whole story how you ended up with her," Charlotte remarked.

Kyoko shrugged. "Nothing really to it. Her mom and old man got eaten by a witch, and I killed it…" She shot a glance to Charlotte's tail and quickly amended, "Uh, defeated her before she could get Yuma. She didn't have anywhere to go, so I just started to look after her, I guess. Tried to keep her from making a contract too, but things…sort of got out of control." She sighed. "And, well, they ended on a sucky note."

"Right." Charlotte winced and uncomfortable scratched the back of her neck. "Uh, sorry about that. That was a pretty personal question."

"Eh, no worries," Kyoko said with another shrug.

"Yeah." Charlotte frowned, no doubt wondering how to gracefully climb her way out of the awkward pit she had dug. She must of have found one, because she suddenly perked up. "You know, Oktavia has been asking about you."

Kyoko brightened up as well. "She has?"

"Yeah. She misses you a lot."

Kyoko blinked. "We hang out every weekend," she pointed out.

"I know," Charlotte said as she leaned against the wall next to the refrigerator. "But I guess that's not enough." She lowered her voice even further, so that only Kyoko even had a chance of hearing her. "Don't tell her I said this, but she really wants you to take Mami up on her offer."

Kyoko winced. Back when she, Oktavia, and Yuma had arrived in Freehaven, it had become pretty obvious that Oktavia, being half fish, would be staying at the Nautilus Platform with Mami and Charlotte. Mami had posed the possibility of taking all four of them in, but the sad fact was that the Nautilus Platform was simply not designed to house that many people. Even four was pushing it. The weekend get-togethers worked as a compromise, but Kyoko often found herself wishing that they were more frequent. She liked having Oktavia around. They got along well (ironic considering their first meeting had sort of involved a homicide attempt. It was probably for the best that Oktavia didn't remember that part), and she was the only member of their group that really was around Kyoko's age.

"I know," Kyoko said, her face screwing up. "And damn, I wish I could. But I can't leave my sisters." She nodded toward the front room. "I mean, I just got Momo back, and Yuma needs me around, and…"

"We've been talking about that, actually," Charlotte said. She smiled. "It seems the good old Nautilus Platform is overdue for a little remodeling. We've been talking about adding a second story and expanding the outside. Maybe even add another building."

Kyoko's eyes widened. "Wait, really?" she said eagerly.

"Yeah," Charlotte nodded. "I mean, it probably won't happen for a few years at least. We're still figuring out the costs and whatnot, and already it looks to be ungodly expensive. I mean we've got a lot saved away, but we're talking a huge dent here." She shrugged. "Still, if it does end up happening…"

"I, uh." Kyoko rubbed her chin as she considered that possibility. The Nautilus Platform was admittedly a pretty cool place. Sure, she would miss being able to just up and wander around town whenever she felt like it, but if it meant all of them together under one roof, it just might be an acceptable tradeoff. "Huh."

Charlotte straightened up to leave, patting her on the shoulder as she passed. "Well, think about it. It's a lot of people for one house, sure, but I think we could make it work."

"Yeah," Kyoko said thoughtfully. "That'd be nice"

Charlotte was about to leave the room, but paused by the door. "Oh, by the way, where are you and Oktavia planning on going tonight?"

Kyoko glowered. "Yeah, cute."

"What? I'm just curious."

Kyoko folded her arms. "Yeah, you and Momo both. C'mon, do we gotta go through this every time?"

Charlotte smirked. "Why Kyoko, whatever are you talking about?" She waggled her eyebrows and left.

"Goddamn it," Kyoko muttered as she poured herself a third glass of eggnog. "Freaking bet." She was honestly tempted to go kiss Oktavia right now in front of everyone, just to mess with everyone. She didn't think of the blue-haired mermaid in that way, but the look on their faces would be worth it.

At least she was pretty sure she didn't think of her like that. Though come to think of it, it really wasn't that unpleasant of a thought. Oktavia was pretty cute, and if they really were going to end up living together, then, well…

Realizing the line of thought she was starting to wander down, Kyoko hastily gulped down her eggnog.

…

Later that evening, after an appropriate amount of merrymaking back at the Sakura's townhouse, the six of them again took to the streets and broke off into pairs. This was their tradition whenever Mami, Charlotte, and Oktavia would come ashore to visit. Momo would take Yuma out shopping or to see a film (during which Kyoko had to continually remind herself that Momo was now old enough to babysit Mami), Mami and Charlotte would spend a romantic evening together getting all lovey-dovey and canoodley, and Kyoko and Oktavia would go hang out.

"So where are you guys going, anyway?" Kyoko asked as Charlotte zipped up her jacket.

"Margaret's Homestyle Steakhouse," Charlotte said.

"Ooooh, swanky. Dibs on the doggie bag?"

"No," Charlotte said.

"Aw, come on!" Kyoko protested. "Momo never takes me there."

"No."

Kyoko folded her arms and huffed. "You're just mad because I was teasing you earlier."

Charlotte smirked. "Yes. No steak for you."

"Knock it off you two," Mami said. She nodded at Kyoko and Oktavia and smiled. "Stay safe, and have fun!"

Kyoko and Oktavia watched as they walked away, hand in hand.

"Yeah, that still weirds me out," Kyoko said, shaking her head.

"Hmmm?" Oktavia craned her head to look over her shoulder. She pushed a lock of shaggy blue hair from her eyes. "What does?"

"Them. Mami." Kyoko nodded after the departing Tomoes. "Being married and all."

Oktavia smirked. "Okay, you're not going to complain about her marrying the witch that killed her, are you? Because you are the last person to be throwing stones about that."

Rolling her eyes, Kyoko dug her knuckles into the top of Oktavia's head. "We ain't married, Chicken of the Sea."

"Ow!" Oktavia slapped her hand off. "Stoppit!"

Kyoko did so. "Anyway, that's not what I meant. I mean just her being married. Settled down and all. She used to be Mrs. Duty and Protector of Righteousness and all that." She shrugged. "Well, I guess it ain't the weirdest thing, but hey. They are pretty cute, I'll give them that."

Oktavia laughed. "You've never seen them fight."

"They fight?"

"Sure. I mean, not often. But Charlotte gets really cranky sometimes over stupid things, and then Mami gets all passive-aggressive, like…" She lowered her voice in a frankly terrible imitation of Mami's. "'Well, I can see that you've decided not to be reasonable, so it's probably best that we don't speak of this any longer.' Then that just pisses Charlotte off more, and they're a pain in the butt for the rest of the day. Seriously, the last time they were at it was because she couldn't find the coupon book and thought Mami had left it at the grocery store, for Pete's sake."

"Well, huh," Kyoko said, staring. "That's dumb."

"I know, right! And I'm just sitting there on the couch thinking, 'Uh, guys? Can you not do that here? I can't exactly leave.'" She laughed again and rolled her eyes. "And then, I kid you not, I see the stupid coupon book lying under the couch. Of course, they got all embarrassed when I pointed it out. Poor Charlotte was in a snit like right through the next day."

"Huh," Kyoko rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Well, damn. She really is married."

"Yeah," Oktavia sighed. "But that only happens every now and then. Most of the time they're pretty cool."

"What's it like anyway?" Kyoko asked curiously. She motioned her hand vaguely in the direction of the ocean. "Living on a big platform thingy in the middle of nowhere?"

Oktavia cleared her throat. "Well, you know you could always move in and find out. You know, like they offered."

And back came Kyoko's knuckles. "And I told you already, as soon as they remodel the Nautilus Platform big enough for six people, we'll move right in. Much as I like you guys, when it's a case between you and Momo and Yuma, then it ain't exactly a content."

"Okay, okay!" Oktavia said as she wriggled out from under Kyoko's hand. "Point taken! Jeez, do you sharpen those every morning or something?"

"Heh." Kyoko held up her hand and made a fist. "Around here, there probably is a way to do that."

Oktavia sighed and shook her head. "Oh, let's just go before you get ideas."

"Sounds fair to me." Kyoko grabbed the wheelchair's handles and spun it around. "Where do you want to go, anyway?"

"Dunno. Just walk until we see something interesting."

Freehaven didn't have the same reputation as some of the other cities Kyoko had heard of when it came to holiday festivities. There was a town up in the mountains called Pinespire, for example, that apparently turned itself into Afterlife Disney every year, complete with a seizure-inducing parade on the night of Christmas Eve. Freehaven didn't quite match that level of dedication, but as Kyoko wheeled Oktavia through the plaza, she felt that they should at least be considered a close second.

A monolithic living tree rose up from the center of a fountain, so tall that even though the town square rested at the foot of the hill, the glowing crystal star that crowned the tree's tip was nearly level with the hill's peak. Its branches were adorned with gem-studded bulbs the size of beach balls; what had to be a solid kilometer of garlands of gold and silver spheres that were too large to be called "beads;" and life-sized rocking horses, female Christmas elves, reindeer, angels, and a couple Nativity scenes that could have housed the actual thing. Kyoko had no idea where the tree had come from or where it went once Christmas was over, nor did she know how they got the damned thing decorated so quickly. One evening she had gone to bed, and when she woke up, there it was.

The fountain that spread out around its base was the size of a decent-sized swimming pool normally splashed away with intricate water patterns, but it was now frozen solid, with skaters happily zipping and twirling this way and that. Beyond that, the rest of the courtyard was covered with actual snow, magically produced and prevented from melting. Getting Oktavia's wheelchair to navigate the uneven frozen terrain was a pain in the ass, but worth the effort. Snowwomen and snow forts dotted the courtyard, and at least three full-fledged snowball wars were in already in progress.

"You know what I noticed about this place?" Kyoko remarked as she brought Oktavia's wheelchair to a stop and sat down on the fountain's edge.

Oktavia blinked at her. "Uh, you mean this place in specific, or…"

"I mean the afterlife." Kyoko drew up on leg and wrapped her arms around her knee as she looked out over the miniature winter wonderland. "It's like we don't do anything by halves. Every chance, and everyone is all like, 'Look what we can do now, bitches!'"

Oktavia gazed up the tree's immense height. "You know, I don't have any problem with that at all."

"Yeah, I guess I don't either," Kyoko laughed. She pulled a couple of chocolate bars from her pocket and tossed one to Oktavia. Unwrapping the other, she bit into its corner and said, "Hell, I figure, if you can't have fun and show off, then what's the point?"

"Hmmm." Oktavia nodded in agreement. "Charlotte says that once we're all settled in and used to things, they'll take us all to Pinespire for Christmas. Apparently they and their friends there have this yearly snowball fight that can get pretty crazy. As if in, the rules actually say it doesn't end until one team is all unconscious."

That made Kyoko laugh harder. "Oh man, for real?"

Oktavia grinned and nodded. "My hand to God. They showed me pictures."

"Heh." Already, Kyoko was running various strategies though her head. "You know, I think I'm going to like it here."

Later, once they had had their fill of snow, they decided to go window shopping. The narrow, cobblestone streets and bustling crowd made getting Oktavia around even more difficult, but at least people were willing to make way for them. "You've really got to get some sort of fancy, magical gadget for this thing," Kyoko grunted as she warily navigated around a tight corner. "Like, something with legs. Or wings. Or one of those Professor X floating things."

"Professor Who?" Then before Kyoko could answer, Oktavia said," Wait, never mind. It'll take too long and I won't get it." She shrugged. "We've been looking into that, actually. They've got a few that'll work, but they're like crazy expensive."

"Yeah? They can afford to own a private ocean platform, but they can't splurge on a freaking chair? Because that's just-"

Then they heard the sound of a crash, followed by yelling.

Kyoko and Oktavia exchanged confused glances. Then, with caution and curiosity, they moved up to the next corner to see what all the fuss was about.

Some sort of altercation was taking place. Two warmly dressed girls were hastily moving away and refusing to look at the person behind them, who was angrily shouting challenges and obscenities after them. Well, "ranting" would probably be a more accurate description, as it wasn't evident exactly what she was so angry about. She was just obviously angry.

Kyoko recognized her immediately. "Aw crap, it's her," she groaned.

"Huh?" Oktavia stared at the angry girl in bewilderment. "Who's she?"

"Crazy Annie."

"Crazy Annie" was a relative newcomer to Freehaven that had been gathering a fair amount of infamy over the last few weeks. She was thin, horribly thin, to the point where her limbs resembled sticks and her face could only be described as "emaciated." Also, everything about her was just a bit too long, from her arms to her torso to her face and her pointed chin. She seemed to be made up of all harsh edges and sharp corners. Her clothes were shabby and torn, with a filthy, grey beanie pulled down over her unwashed violet hair. Her eyes were naturally of the same color, but were shot through with red lines.

Furthermore, she had no legs. She wore a long, black skirt, but was noticeably floating almost a full meter off the ground, with no feet visible beneath.

"Yeah, just keep walking!" she called as she flipped two middle fingers after the swiftly retreating girls. "Fuck you, and fuck your merry Christmas! Go to hell!"

"Wow," Oktavia said, still staring. "Uh, okay. Who's Crazy Annie?"

"Tell you in a minute," Kyoko said. She planted a foot against the back of Oktavia's wheelchair, tilted it back, and swung it right around. "Let's get out here before she-"

Too late.

Crazy Annie's crusted eyes zeroed on the pair. They narrowed, and Kyoko got the sudden feeling that Christmas was about to get a little less merry.

"Hey," Crazy Annie shouted as she floated down the street toward them, looking eerily like a ragged, unwashed banshee. She spread her arms in a "come get some" manner."Hey! You guys got a problem? Huh? You guys got a problem?"

Kyoko's eye twitched. She wasn't exactly proud of the self-centered nihilist her family's death had pushed her into becoming, and had taken great lengths to separate herself from that mindset. Like most of the newly dead that wound up in Freehaven, she had gone through the counseling sessions, had gone through the emotional therapy for her various PTSD-related issues, and had taken extensive anger management courses. They hadn't been fun, and had quite often forced her to experience things she would have rather avoided, but for Momo's sake she had endured, and had to admit that they had helped a lot when it came to reshaping herself.

But Lord, sometimes that part of her threatened to resurface, and she longed to unleash her inner delinquent and break her knuckles over some idiot's forehead. Now was most definitely one of those times.

Taking an extra moment to compose herself, she said in as calm a voice as possible, "No, we don't."

"Oh yeah?" By now Crazy Annie was practically in Kyoko's face. Kyoko tried to look away, only for Crazy Annie to move with her. By God that girl reeked. "I saw that look you gave me. So what, I scare you or something? I bother you, so you just gonna run way before the nasty girl gets you? Is that it?"

Oh, please try something. It's been so long. Just give me an excuse. Biting back on that line of thought, Kyoko kept her mouth shut and tried to move forward.

"Oh, what, you don't have anything to say?" Crazy Annie kept moving with them. "You mute or something? Cat got your tongue? Huh?"

Kyoko wished that was the case, as she was having a hard time keeping it restrained. If this nutcase didn't get out of her face soon, she was going to suffer a major moral relapse.

Though surprisingly, Oktavia broke first. "Look, will you just get lost?" she snapped. "We weren't bothering you, so beat it already!"

This of course had the opposite effect. "Oh, so you think you're tough, fish whore?" Crazy Annie snapped, directing her attention to the wheelchair-bound mermaid. "You wanna go, is that it?"

Proving that no matter how she looked and what name she wore, Sayaka was still Sayaka, Oktavia shouted back, "Yes, I want to go! I want to go away from here and away from you! So you go away and leave us alone!"

Despite the strong smells she was picking up, Kyoko didn't detect any alcohol on Crazy Annie's breath. Which as far as she was concerned made the nutcase fully responsible for her actions. "You got five seconds to walk away and leave us alone," she said, her voice low and chilly. "If you don't, I'll make you regret it."

"Oh, what?" Crazy Annie gave Kyoko a rough shove.

And with that, months of hard work and self control went right out the window.

Kyoko's first punch caught Crazy Annie on the side of her scarecrow face and spun her around. This was followed by two hands clenched together up swung up into her gut. Crazy Annie made a gurgling sound and instinctively tried for a sloppy punch. It didn't have much of a chance of connecting, especially since a red, diamond-shaped shield had just materialized in the air to meet it. Crazy Annie's knuckles banged off it with a metallic clang and crumpled to the ground with a cry of pain, tightly clenching her bruised hand.

Banishing the shield, Kyoko took a step forward, fully intending to stomp a mudhole in the punkass's face, but Oktavia quickly seized her by the arm. "Okay, okay, chill!" she pleaded. "She's done!"

Kyoko stood in place, staring down at Crazy Annie as the idiot kept moaning over her hand. Turbulent emotions warred within her. Part of her was screaming at her to regain control, that she was better than this. But another was insisting that Crazy Annie needed to be taught some manners, and was doing so quite loudly.

"Kyoko," Oktavia said in a low voice. "Come on. You beat her. It's over. We can go now."

Taking a deep breath, Kyoko clenched her teeth shut and held it until the red left her vision. "Okay," she growled after she exhaled. "Okay. Let's just-"

Crazy Annie started crying.

It wasn't some overdramatic scene performed as a plea for sympathy. Nor was it a quite, restrained session of gentle weeping. She had curled up into the fetal position and started letting out the big, choking sobs and groans of someone who was utterly miserable and didn't give a damn about who saw.

Kyoko and Oktavia stared at the wretched little bundle, neither of them exactly sure what they should do. Kyoko now felt a confusing muddle of anger, irritation, bewilderment, and, surprisingly enough, pity. This wasn't the first time she had fallen afoul of one of Crazy Annie's temper tantrums, though she doubted that the other girl even remembered. Those incidents hadn't exactly left her with any warm feelings towards the belligerent asshole, but damn it, now she just looked so pathetic.

Sighing, Kyoko looked down to Oktavia, who merely grimaced and shrugged helplessly. Then she looked up and realized that, surprise, surprise, their little altercation had attracted a fair amount of attention. Several bystanders were grouped around them as tightly as the street would allow, and from the look of it, none of them were really sure how to react either. One of them, catching Kyoko's gaze, lifted her hand to her ear, thumb and pinky extended, and mouthed the word, "marshals?"

That would probably be the smart thing to do. The marshals were the local equivalent of the police, and getting Crazy Annie off the streets would be better for all them. Except Kyoko knew that this wasn't the first time the marshals had picked her up, and her past indictments didn't seem to have done her any good. Besides, she was probably near the end of her goodwill with the authorities. Freehaven was happy to help those with personal problems, but those who stalwartly refused and continued to cause trouble tended to get tossed out. It sucked, but it happened.

The rational part of Kyoko told her to just walk away. It wasn't her problem. She wasn't responsible for Crazy Annie's issues. She had enough of her own to deal with.

Then Kyoko looked back down at Crazy Annie, who was still crying and cursing under her breath. Kyoko couldn't really remember the last time she had seen someone look that unhappy.

Then she glanced over to Oktavia realized that that wasn't true. She did remember.

Closing her eyes, Kyoko inhaled sharply, sucking her teeth in frustration. Then she let it out and muttered, "Oh, goddamn it."

…

The closest coffee shop didn't let them bring Crazy Annie in with them. Apparently she had been there before, and now wasn't allowed back in. However, after some convincing and a hefty tip, one of the baristas agreed to bring their order out to them. Kyoko wasn't about to leave Crazy Annie by herself, or leave Oktavia alone with her.

To be frank, she was still surprised that Crazy Annie had come with them at all. Maybe bruising her knuckles had taken the fight out of her. At any rate, she hadn't resisted when Kyoko had grudgingly helped her up and allowed herself to be led to the coffee shop.

"Thanks," Kyoko said, accepting the tray of hot chocolate from the uneasy looking barista, who simply nodded and quickly removed herself from the situation. She handed one to Oktavia, who very much looked like she wanted to be somewhere else, and one to Crazy Annie, who was sitting silently on the bench next to Kyoko.

"Uh, here," she said.

Crazy Annie took the Styrofoam cup from her without comment or expression. She took off the lid and stared at its warm, brown contents and the creamy foam sitting on top. Her lip twitched, and she sniffled a bit.

Then she hurled the entire thing in Kyoko's face.

Fortunately, Kyoko had been warily watching for such a reaction and quickly threw up a shield and jumped back before any of the stinging liquid could splash against her. "Hey, what the hell?" she said indignantly. "A: Don't waste food! And B: What the fiery hells is wrong with you?"

"Fuck off!" Crazy Annie snapped.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," Oktavia sighed. "Seriously, what is your problem? We're just trying to help!"

"I don't need, or even want you help!" Crazy Annie sneered. "So go away and leave me alone already!"

Okay, enough was enough. "We were!" Kyoko nearly shouted. The, realizing that they were very close to making a scene, she lowered her voice and said, "We were leaving you alone, but you got in our faces and tried to pick a fight! You got one, and you lost! So now you want us to leave you alone, after we tried to be nice. Come on! What do you want already?"

Crazy Annie glared balefully at them. "Nice to me? Ha! Why would you do that?"

"I dunno, 'cause you looked pretty miserable? Why wouldn't we?"

"Because you never do," Crazy Annie retorted. "Yeah, I remember seeing you around. You've never given me the time of day. Why get all nice now?"

Kyoko opened her mouth to point out that she had never beaten her up and made her cry before, but Crazy Annie wasn't done. "Oh wait, I know. Because it's Christmas." She said that last word like it was a curse. "Everyone's got to be nice on Christmas. Help the poor and unfortunate on Christmas, but screw them the rest of the year! Those two bitches you saw me yelling at? You know what they did?"

"Uh…"

"They saw me sitting there and tried to give me money. And you know what? I've seen them around too, lots of times." Crazy Annie moodily folded her arms and stared down at the street. "They've never stopped to help me before. They always just do what you tried do: look away and keep walking! But now they wanna be all charitable? When tomorrow they'll just go back to pretending I don't exist. Fuck that. Fuck that and fuck Christmas."

"I-"

"Seriously, who cares about Christmas? It doesn't mean anything. Santa ain't real, and it ain't even Jesus's real birthday. And even if it was, we ain't exactly part of his jurisdiction anymore." Crazy Annie spat. "I hate Christmas. Same thing, every year. Everyone's being all fake and acting like they're all charitable. Ha! They don't care. They just wanna feel good about themselves."

Kyoko wasn't sure if she felt sorry for Crazy Annie or was irritated by her. Compassion hadn't really worked, so she went with irritation. "Well, maybe people wouldn't keep avoiding you all the time if you weren't such a jerk to everyone you see! Seriously, every time I've seen you, you're cussing at people for looking at you wrong and trying to punch them in the face!"

Crazy Annie sneered, but didn't say anything.

Kyoko sat back down. "Seriously, what's your problem? People leave you alone, and you get pissed. People try to help you, and you get pissed. Hell, I'll bet you get pissed if someone just asks you for directions to the bathroom. What the hell do you want?"

Crazy Annie glowered at her, but ended up looking away. She shivered, and said, "I want to get out of here."

"Huh?" Oktavia said. "You mean out of Freehaven?"

"No, you idiot! Out of here, out of this miserable excuse for an afterlife." Crazy Annie glared out at Freehaven's clean streets and happy people. "I mean, look at it. Second chance at life, they call it. Gimme a break. Everyone here is just playing make-believe. Come here looking the way we did and feeling the way we did, but none of it is real. We don't have any bones or organs or anything. We're just bags of gas made out of skin. We get hungry and eat, but don't really need to. We get tired and sleep, but don't really need to. You get burned up, frozen stiff, shot in the head, drowned in the sea, and yeah, it feels real, but we always come back, so who cares? We can't die, so nothing's really needed. It feels real, but it ain't."

Kyoko frowned. "So, your point is…"

"My point is none of this is real!" Crazy Annie pointed at her skirt and legs it didn't contain. "Look, I'm a witch, okay? Big shock, I know. So I don't remember being alive, but I still know what it was like! You couldn't get enough to eat? Well, you're dead. Something keeping you from breathing? Dead. Too cold or too hot? Dead. Too sick? Dead. Sword through the stomach? Dead. Break your arm in half?" She cackled. "Hell, even if you survived, it's gonna stick with you until something else kills you. You could get killed by anything, and all the stuff that didn't still left a mark. So everything you did to survive had a fucking point. It had a meaning! It was real!" She motioned contemptuously to their surroundings. "This? Nothing kills, and nothing really hurts. So it ain't real. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a big stupid game that I never asked to play but got forced into anyway." Her lips twisted, and she hunched over and put her face in her hands. "And I can't leave. I'm stuck here. It doesn't matter how far I go, I'm still stuck in the same Hell!"

Seeing that Crazy Annie had come to the end of her rant, Kyoko opened her retort, to point out that she was full of crap, that she was just being a whiny misanthrope who couldn't see the forest for the trees and it was her own fault that her life sucked so much, but found that she couldn't. Because to her horror, she realized that Crazy Annie was right. And not only was she right, but she was making many of the exact same points Kyoko had made when she had first arrived.

As well-adjusted as Kyoko might be now, her first few days in had not been happy ones. Coming to terms with one's own death had been hard enough, but between Sayaka's loss of identity, trying to reconcile with Mami and getting used to the fact that her former best friend had married her own killer, Yuma being convinced that they were in Hell and her abusive dead parents were coming for her, and just dealing with how incredibly weird everything had become…well, she had become a little difficult to live with. What was more, she had spent a great deal of time pointing out essentially the same things Crazy Annie was angry about. To her, she had fallen into a world of dollhouses that was either filled with children pretending to be adults or adults who never got to be children. It had galled her to see everyone just going along with it when, to her, it was clearly some kind of Incubator con, so why wasn't anything doing anything about it?

Then she had found Momo, and then decided right there and then that she didn't care anymore and never once regretted it. She had simply had a rough adjustment period and had lashed out in anger, that was all. Many people did.

But now all of her old doubts and suspicions were being thrown back into her face, and she realized that while she had decided to stop questioning the circumstances behind her new and much better life, she had never gotten her questions answered. So how was she to answer Crazy Annie if she didn't really disagree with her?

Thankfully, Oktavia had no such problem. "So you go around picking fights with people who like being here because you don't?" the blue-haired mermaid said incredulously. "How does that help anyone?"

"Shut up," Crazy Annie muttered.

"I'm being serious!" Oktavia leaned over the wheelchair's armrest toward Crazy Annie. "Look, I get it. We thought a lot of the same things, Kyoko and me. And, okay, we got over it and learned to like it here, you didn't, fine. But, uh, if you hate it here so much, then why don't you leave? Because you can, you know."

Kyoko winced at that. There actually was a way to "die" for real and move on, but the method in question was frowned on by most people in Freehaven, including Kyoko herself. It involved signing up with a certain someone that went under the dreadfully melodramatic name of Oblivion. Most people Kyoko knew thought that Oblivion was at the very minimum an exploitative asshole, if not an outright fraud. But that didn't keep thousands of people from going to her every year.

"What, Oblivion?" Crazy Annie snorted. "You think I haven't thought of that? If I could, I would've filled out an application years ago!"

"Then why don't you?" Oktavia said.

Crazy Annie sniffed. Her eyes were starting to tear up again. "Because I can't! I mean, I could, but I can't right now, not yet. Not until I…" She squeezed her eyes shut and looked away with a pained grimace. "Aw, fuck."

Feeling unusually awkward, Kyoko fidgeted in her seat, wondering what she should do now. She wanted to hear exactly what it was keeping Crazy Annie from seeking out Oblivion, but didn't really want to force her through something that obviously painful. Sometimes she wished she was still her old, tactlessly blunt self. Yeah, she had been a jerk, but it made getting things done a lot easier. If Crazy Annie wasn't going to talk, then what were they supposed to do? Pat her on the shoulder and wish her good luck?

She exchanged an uncomfortable look with Oktavia, who looked as uncertain as she did.

Then Crazy Annie breathed out a frustrated sigh and said, "Okay, look. It's my sister, okay?"

Kyoko blinked. "You got a sister?"

"Yes, I got a sister! Or I had one, anyway." Crazy Annie swallowed. "We, uh, came here together, so I guess we died at the same time. Hell, with me being a witch and her…not, it might've been…well, you know."

Kyoko and Oktavia traded another glance. Yes, they did know. There was a lot of that going around.

"Anyway, yeah, we stuck together for a few months. Figured we'd make our own way here, you know? Face it together, and all that." Crazy Annie's shoulders shivered. "But then something bad happened. Something really bad. We got caught by some really nasty assholes, and they, uh…" She coughed into her sleeve, and quickly moved on. "Look, I got out. Some people came and saved me. Got me out, took down those witchfuckers. Okay, fine. That's great. But…"

She fell silent and stared down at her hands. Kyoko and Oktavia waited for her to continue, but she didn't move.

Finally Kyoko couldn't take it anymore. "And…your sis-"

"I don't know!" Crazy Annie thundered, making Kyoko jump. "She wasn't there! They didn't find her! Nobody knows where they took her or what they did to her or if she still being held by some other asshole somewhere or if she's free and looking for me or if she's already with Oblivion or…or anything!" Her body started to shake as the sobs came back. "I've been…looking for her for…thirty-nine years…but I can't find…"

Kyoko slowly breathed in and exhaled. "Holy crap," she muttered.

"Nothing holy about it," Crazy Annie sniffed. "The second part's right on though."

Kyoko sat silently, fingers fidgeting around her cup. Things were now making a whole lot more sense. It hadn't been that long ago that losing her family had warped her into a belligerent asshole, and while she hadn't fallen apart to the level Crazy Annie had, she had only walked with that burden for a year. Crazy Annie had been weighed down by it for almost forty times that long.

Also, their situations had another difference as well. Kyoko's family had been dead. Gone beyond recovery. There had been no hope of salvation there. And while it had destroyed her, it at least had provided complete closure for that part of her life. In Crazy Annie's case, knowing that her sister was out there somewhere probably kept that small, desperate flicker of hope alive, while her constant failures gnawed away at the rest of her. No wonder she was the way she was.

A passing marshal took note of them and stopped, frowning. She approached the trio, nodded toward Crazy Annie, and said in a low voice, "Everyone okay here? Is she bothering you?"

Crazy Annie didn't respond, though her neck and jaw tensed. Looking stricken, Oktavia quickly motioned for the marshal to leave as quickly as possible while mouthing, we're fine, we're fine! Looking dubious, the marshal said, "Okay. Well, let me know if there's trouble." She gave Crazy Annie a look of warning and walked down the street corner. She tried to look casual about it, but Kyoko still caught the sidelong looks she was sending them.

Once she was out of earshot, Kyoko said, "What's her name?"

Crazy Annie's face contorted, and it looked like she was about to snap back with something rude, but then she appeared to think better of it and just mumbled, "Nikki. She's, uh…" She sighed and reached into one of her overcoat's pockets and pulled out a grimy photograph of a smiling girl with a round, cherubic face and a head full of blonde curls. She looked around Yuma's age.

Kyoko frowned and glanced from the photograph to Crazy Annie. The two of them didn't look anything alike, no trace of familial resemblance whatsoever. She considered commenting on this, but then decided that it didn't matter. Crazy Annie was obviously a witch, so with all of her memories of her past life gone, if she and the magical girl she had arrived with declared each other to be sisters, then that made them sisters. It wasn't like any of them had actual blood anymore. "Wow," she said. "And you've heard nothing?"

"Didn't I just say that?" Crazy Annie put the photograph away. "Learn to listen."

"And nobody can help you?"

Crazy Annie shrugged. "Can't. Or won't. It's all politics, you know?" She pulled off her beanie and ran her shaky fingers through her hair, making both hair and fingers even more greasy. "She disappeared in one territory, so all the others can't be assed to look into it. Because it's outside of their jurisdiction. Because they don't wanna upset people. So they just let her stay in whatever piece of Hell she's burning in, because God forbid they annoy some fatass sitting behind her gold-encrusted marble desk all day to save a little girl!"

"Jesus Christ," Kyoko muttered. Even here on the other side, some things really did never change.

Oktavia slowly sipped from her cup. "Is that why you're in Freehaven?" she asked. "To find someone to help you?"

"Help me?" Crazy Annie let out a derisive snort. "Here? Not bloody likely. Whole town's filled with nothin' but gutless pansies who wouldn't lift a finger if it meant scratching the paint on their pretty little dollhouse. Knew that much coming in, so why bother?"

Kyoko's face screwed up in confusion, not because of the insult, but because things weren't adding up anymore. "Wait, what?"

"What, you gone deaf again?" Crazy Annie hocked from the back of her throat and spat, sending a green gob to the street. "This fucking city's full of lobotomized-"

"No, no, not that," Kyoko interrupted. "I mean, why are you here then? If you don't think you can get help here, why come here at all?"

"What's it to you?" Crazy Annie sneer.

Oktavia looked from the look of bitter contempt on Crazy Annie's face to Kyoko's, which had now gone utterly blank. Recognizing it for what it was, she slowly breathed out and muttered, "Ho boy, here we go…" and sunk into her coat, bracing for impact.

As for Kyoko, her eyes were now wide open and focused on Crazy Annie with raptorlike precision. She carefully set her cup aside and turned fully in her seat to face Crazy Annie directly. "So hey, how long have you been looking for Nikki again?"

Her nose wrinkling, Crazy Annie drew back. "What's it to you?"

"How. Long?" Kyoko said again.

"Thirty-nine years! Jesus, I swear it's like talking to a mannequin!"

"Right," Kyoko said, her voice lowering to a dangerous level. "Okay, I'll try again: how long did you actually spend looking, and when did you just give up and decide to wander around raging at people like an asshole?"

Oktavia sighed. "Oh, here we go. My kingdom for legs and concrete bunker."

Crazy Annie went completely still. "Excuse me?"

"You gave up, didn't you?" Kyoko said. "It's was too hard, so you gave up. Your sister's out there having God knows what done to her, and you won't do a damned thing about it."

"You…" Crazy Annie's fingers curled up into claws. "You little shit-"

"How long ago was it? Five years? Ten? When was the last time you were even within a hundred kilometers of where you saw her last?"

"Shut your mouth," Crazy Annie growled.

"The hell I will!" Kyoko jumped to her feet and leaned forward to jab at Crazy Annie's chest with her finger. "You think you're the only one who's lost someone? The only one who's had bad shit happen to them? I lost my whole goddamned family because of my stupid wish! My dad, my mom, and yeah, my little sister! My fault! And you can bet if there was even the tiniest chance I coulda done something to save even one of them, nothing would stop me, especially nothing stupid like government bullshit!"

Now Crazy Annie's entire body was shaking. She had hunched over with her hands pressed tightly against her ears. "Shut up," she said hoarsely. "Just shut up."

"Kyoko, chill," Oktavia said urgently. "You're going to get us all in trouble."

Kyoko didn't feel like listening. But then, she never did when she got like this. "And hey, news flash genius! You're fucking immortal! You can't die, you've got abso-fucking-lutely nothing so lose, so you can't be stopped! What's holding you back?"

"Shut up!"

"And you know what? I don't believe for a second that everyone's as apathetic as you're saying. I think you just hit like two dead ends and threw in the towel." Kyoko swung her finger out at the town. "So go out there and do something! Raise some hell! Go tell your story to the media! They love sob stories like yours, and you'll get a motherfucking line of people like three kilometers long all ready to go storm whatever dungeon you want! Get in good with those Viking guys, the ones with the spikes and-" She glanced over to Oktavia. "What're they called again?"

Oktavia sighed. "Hell's Valkyries."

"Right! Them! Or the Steel City Sirens! Or those Second Life guys! Did you even give them a call, or did you just figure, 'Ah, those assholes over there weren't any help, so why should I even bother?' Admit it, that's exactly what-"

Crazy Annie's hand lashed out to strike Kyoko across the face, stopping her rant dead in its tracks. This was followed by a wad of spit, and Crazy Annie shot off from the bench, not down the street, but up and over the buildings and out of sight.

Kyoko stood frozen in place, staring at the empty bench while a sour cocktail of anger, chagrin, and frustration twisted in her stomach. What in the world had just happened? Why had she snapped like that? She looked around to see several passersby staring at them, and she closed her eyes and grimaced. Damn it, she really had screwed that up.

Oktavia silently handed her a handful of napkins, and Kyoko slowly wiped Crazy Annie's spittle from her face.

…

The walk back to the town square was a slow and quiet one. Kyoko's steps were heavier than usual as she pushed Oktavia's wheelchair through the streets, while the blue-haired mermaid sat with her hands in her lap and her face downcast. There was still a little under an hour before they were to meet up with the others, but neither of them really felt like doing anything else.

There was a firework show scheduled to take place over the ocean soon, so the place was packed by the time they got there, with all the benches and chairs already claimed. Kyoko parked Oktavia's wheelchair next to the wall that separated the beach from the street and leaned over the wall with her arms folded on top of it and her chin resting in their embrace.

For a time, neither of them said anything. They just watched the early evening tide as it drew up on the shore and receded and listened to the happy holiday babble all around them. Christmas carols continued to play from unseen loudspeakers, filling the air with cheer that couldn't reach them.

Oktavia looked up at the sky. The afterlife's night sky was a strange one. It had a moon, exactly the same as the one back in the world of the living. But there were no stars. There was a sun, yes, but no stars. Maybe it was a reflection of the artificiality of the place. Their little world was all that existed in this universe, with light provided solely for their benefit. It was a nice set-up, but at the moment, Oktavia couldn't help but feeling a little alone. The question of whether there was anything out there was answered. This was all there was. This was as good as it was going to get.

Kyoko looked down at the ocean. Tons upon tons of saltwater, filled with all manner of sea life. In some places it was deeper than the oceans back home, and stretched for kilometers. But as Kyoko looked out across its expanse, it really didn't seem all that large. In fact, she felt like she was just looking at an exceptionally large swimming pool. Maybe that's all it had ever been.

She shifted her weight, turning her head to glance at the merrymakers all around them. Then she looked down at her friend, who was leaning back and staring upward with a troubled expression on her face. "Hey, Oktavia?" she said.

"Hmmm."

"You think I was too hard on her?"

Breathing out a heavy sigh, Oktavia leaned forward and shook her head. "Well, you were kind of mean, yeah."

Kyoko grimaced. "Yeah, I don't know why I did that. It's just…" She thought a bit, trying to figure out how to best put her feelings into words. "She just made me so mad, you know? It's like, I was looking at her thinking, 'Wait, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your sister's out there somewhere, and you can't die or really get hurt, and you're whining that nobody will do your job for you?' Like, how in the hell hasn't she found her yet? Why in the hell is she all the way over here?" She groaned and pressed her fingertips against her forehead. "But it's not like she's invincible, and she's been trying for so long, so of course she'd be all bitter. I don't know, I just wasn't thinking straight."

Giving her a wry look, Oktavia coughed into her fist. "Yeah, uh, I'm thinking that maybe you were projecting a little bit there, just a tiny bit."

Letting out a snort, Kyoko went over and sat down on one of Oktavia's armrests. "Yeah, no shit Sherlock. Lose my sister once, and suddenly I got issues. Who woulda thought?"

"Well, look on the bright side," Oktavia suggested. "Maybe it's what she needed to hear. You know, to get her out of her rut."

"Maybe," Kyoko admitted. She slouched over her knees and twiddled her fingers together. "I dunno, I just don't like being the asshole again, the one that goes around acting like a total prick to people because it's what I think they need to hear."

Oktavia sighed. "Because of me, huh?"

"Yeah," Kyoko admitted. "Because of you. Hell, because of a lot of things. You weren't the first one I-" With a sigh of her own, she shook her head and abandoned that line of thought. "So, do you think she was right?"

"Huh?" Oktavia tilted her head to one side and blinked. "About what?"

"About this." Kyoko gestured to the ocean, and then to the town. "About all this being fake and pointless. Because I kinda thought the same thing when I first got here…"

"I remember," Oktavia said. She frowned, thinking hard.

"I think…" she said at last. "I think that maybe she does sort of have point. Maybe we are all just playacting. Maybe this place only feels real because we want it to be. But…"

Raising an eyebrow, Kyoko tilted her chin up and looked at Oktavia from over her shoulder.

Oktavia leaned in to lightly wrap her arms around Kyoko's waist. Resting her head against the redhead's side, she said, "I think the important parts are real. We're real. I'm real, you're real, Mami and Charlotte are real, Momo and Yuma are real. We're together, and that's real. And darn it, I think we're entitled to some happiness by now. So even if this place is a weird knockoff of the real world, might as well make the most of it, yeah?"

Kyoko dubiously looked down at her. "What are you doing?"

"Cuddling."

"I can see that. I mean why?"

Oktavia turned her head to grin up at her. "Because your skinny butt is taking up my armrest and its cold."

Sighing, Kyoko idly twirled a lock of Oktavia's hair around her finger. "This doesn't have anything to do with Momo and Charlotte's bet, does it?"

"Huh? What bet?"

"Never mind." She considered telling the mermaid to just keep her hands to herself, but found that the contact really wasn't at all unpleasant. She really wasn't the cuddling type, but hey. There were a lot of things she was doing now that she would never have allowed herself to consider only a few short months ago.

Still…

She idly flicked her fingers behind her and waited, with Oktavia still holding onto her. The two of them sat together, staring out at the sea.

"I wonder why they still use the same songs," Oktavia said suddenly.

"Huh?"

"The Christmas carols," Oktavia said, motioning her head vaguely in the direction of the loudspeakers. "It's still the same ones from back when we were alive. If time moves faster here, you'd think they'd've come up with some new ones."

Kyoko blinked. She shifted around to look down at the mermaid in confusion. "Wait, you remember all that?"

"Uh, yeah?" Oktavia tapped the side of her head. "I still got most of the general stuff. It's the personal stuff that's gone."

"Oh." Kyoko wondered if she should comment on that, but decided to leave it be. See? She could be tactful. "I dunno. I guess with new people always coming in, they want to hear the stuff they're used to." She shrugged. "Besides, all the Christmas carols were already super-old anyway. It's not like they've come up with any new ones back there either."

"Huh." Oktavia frowned as she thought on that. "I guess that makes a bit of sense when you put it-"

At that moment, the single shield-plate that Kyoko had summoned finished its job in the courtyard and made its way over to her, delivering what it had been sent to retrieve. Kyoko then dumped the two handfuls of snow down the back of Oktavia's collar.

"-thhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy!" Oktavia yelped as cold slush slid down her back. She jerked and thrashed in her frenzied attempts to get it out while Kyoko slid off the armrest and managed to retreat two steps away before collapsing to the ground in laughter.

"Ah, ah, ah," Oktavia gasped as she flapped the back of her jacket and shirt to shake it all loose. Then she turned to glower at the unrepentant redhead, who was now all but rolling on the ground in hysterics. "You…you dick!"

Tears were rolling down Kyoko's face. "Oh man. Your face!"

"Now my shirt's all wet and freaking cold!"

"I know!" Kyoko grinned. "Feels real, don't it?"

Oktavia was now all but seething. "Yeah. Well, so will this!"

A small, glowing wheel appeared between her hands, and she wasted no time in hurling it right at Kyoko. Kyoko, who had anticipated such a reaction, let it smack her and send her tumbling. She accepted it as the price for that beautiful expression on Oktavia's face.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Oktavia felt that Kyoko had undercharged and was now sending wheel after wheel at her, forcing her to summon up a full wall of shields to prevent her face from being flattened. "Take that!" she shouted. "And that! And that!"

It was then that Kyoko remembered that using offensive magic on one another was sort of against the law and noticed that they were already drawing attention. "Okay, okay!" she shouted. She held up a spear with a newspaper stuck onto the tip and waved it about like a white flag. "Truce, truce, before we-"

And then the fireworks started, and all animosity was forgotten.

They watched as the starless sky filled with bursts of colors, exploding in ways that would never have been possible back in the world of the living. Giant snowflakes collided and erupted into white sparks that trickled down like actual snow. Gingerbread women danced with each other across the bay, spreading rainbow glitter in their wake. Christmas stars went supernova, and Santa Claus (or Santina? Santana? Whatever, she had boobs and no beard, that much was evident) sped across the sky in her sleigh and exploded.

After about half a minute or so, Kyoko shook her head. "What'd I tell you? They're just showing off now."

"Well, duh they're showing off. That's the whole point of fireworks. To show off."

"You know what I mean." Kyoko glanced to her and gestured out at the display. "But hey, who can blame them? If it were me, I'd do the holy crap that's Crazy Annie."

"What?" Oktavia jerked up and looked around wildly, as if the belligerent wandered were about to pop up at them. "Where?"

"There!" Kyoko pointed at a part of the sky unfilled by fireworks, over the town. There, a tiny figure could be seen shooting up over the hill.

Kyoko snatched up the bit of newspaper she had used earlier and touched a finger to it. The nail glowed, and the newspaper twisted around and changed shape, becoming a pair of gem-studded binoculars. Through them, Kyoko watched as Crazy Annie flew higher and farther, a look of determination on her skinny face.

"Whoa," Oktavia said, covering her eyes and squinting. "Where do you think she's going?"

"Dunno," Kyoko said. She lowered the binoculars and let them fade back into newspaper. "But wherever it is, she's in a real hurry."

"You think she's going after her sister?"

"Probably." Kyoko couldn't help but smile. "She looked real determined."

"Wow." Oktavia glanced over to her and grinned. "See? You did get through to her!"

"Hope it was in a good way then." Despite her rocky history with her, Kyoko flipped off a supportive salute in Annabelle Lee's direction. There was a big journey ahead of her, and she was going to need all the goodwill she could get.

Then Kyoko frowned. Something was weird about the sky. "Hey, Oktavia?" she said, pointing. "You see that, don't you?"

A white spot had appeared about the town. At first it looked like a bit of luminescent smoke, but then another appeared, this one further down the beach. Then another showed up over the ocean.

"Yeah, I do," Oktavia said. She sounded confused. "You think it's part of the fireworks?"

Kyoko glanced around. From the look of things, other people were starting to notice them as well, and no one seemed to know what to make of them. "I don't think so. I mean, they do the fireworks every year, so you'd think someone would-"

The white patches suddenly started spreading like cracks in the sky. The fireworks stopped immediately, and a siren started to sound.

The pit of Kyoko's stomach flooded with ice water. Oh crap, this was definitely not supposed to happen. All around them, the babble of voices grew louder as people's confusion gave way to fear.

"What's going on?" Oktavia said, reflexively grabbing onto Kyoko's arm. "Kyoko, what's happening?"

"I…" Kyoko watched with wide eyes as the white spread faster and farther, literally devouring the darkness of the night sky. "I don't know…"

Then someone's voice came over the loudspeakers. "Everyone, please remain calm and return to your homes! We will provide you with an explanation for this phenomenon as soon as one becomes available, but until then-"

"Look!" someone shouted. Kyoko looked. And she became afraid.

The top of the Christmas tree wavered and became indistinct. The crystal star seemed to dissolve into a million tiny pieces that were then sucked up into the white. And then the rest followed, from the top down.

It's coming lower, Kyoko realized. That white stuff. It's coming… Then she saw the buildings at the top of the hill break apart as well. Oh crap.

The dam of fear broke. People screamed and everyone started running this way and that. Kyoko stood frozen in place. She knew she needed to get moving as well, but where would she go.

Then she looked out over the ocean and realized the answer.

"Come on!" Kyoko gripped the handlebars of Oktavia's wheelchair and shoved it onto the beach. Moving it over the sand was a bitch and a half, but she gritted her teeth and pushed with all of her might.

"What?" Oktavia said, her hands gripping the armrests with white knuckles. "Where are we going?"

"The water!"

"The water?" Oktavia shifted around to stare at her. "What good will that do? You can't breathe underwater!"

"Yeah, but you can!"

"What are you-" Then Oktavia's eyes went wide with horrified realization. "Oh no."

Kyoko glanced over her shoulder. The whiteness had descended halfway down the hill. Everything above that line had simply ceased to exist. "Look, it's fine! I'll drown, and you take me somewhere safe and revive me, okay? It'll suck, but it's better than…that!"

"Kyoko…"

Growling, Kyoko shoved forward, dumping Oktavia out into the surf. The blue-haired mermaid lay in the shallow water, blinking in fear and confusion.

"Get moving!" Kyoko shouted as she waded into the surf. "It's either this or-"

Then the surface of the ocean was consumed by pale patches and Kyoko realized that it didn't matter.

It's nothing, Kyoko realized as she numbly watched the white devour the sky and the ocean. Literal nothingness. That's what we're seeing.

"Kyoko?" Oktavia said. She sounded terrified.

With nowhere to go, Kyoko sat down in the water next to her. Her hand dipped down to grab Oktavia's. Oktavia saw the look on her face, and she went almost as pale as the nothingness that was rushing to meet them. Their fingers squeezed tightly together.

The white reached them and Kyoko closed her eyes. She didn't want to see what happened next.

Oblivion.

…

Beep. Beep. Beep.

With a startled gasp, Kyoko jerked awake. She lay frozen in place, heart pounding wildly as her wide eyes stared at the glowing letters on the digital clock, proclaiming it to be seven in the morning.

For a brief, terrifying moment, she had no idea where she was. She was in a bed, yes. It was dark, yes. There was an alarm clock wailing at her, yes. But her mind was filled with a confusing muddle of sounds, images, and feelings. Something was coming to get her, and she needed to escape with…

Who?

There was a name, a very important name. A brief flash of blue eyes passed through Kyoko's mind, but as soon as she tried to seize it, it slipped away. She frowned. There was something to do with a mermaid on a beach. And Christmas carols. She had no idea how beaches and mermaids fit with Christmas carols, but those two images stuck out in her mind, accompanied by an overpowering feeling of terror and loss.

It was then that she took notice of the room she was in. Queen-sized bed. Bare table. Silent television, drawn drapes, and bags of fast food and snacks. A hotel room. She was in a hotel room.

Gradually Kyoko's heart rate began to slow, and her mind crawled its way out of the swamp of images and emotions it had sunk into. Right. She wasn't on a beach. She was in a hotel room. She was always in a hotel room. It had been a dream. That was all. Just a dream.

With a sigh, she reached over and turned the alarm off. Then she flopped over onto her back and stared up at the shadows that covered the ceiling. Damn, what kind of crazy, acid-induced dream was that? Mermaids in Christmas? Not only was that one of the silliest things she had ever heard of, she had no idea why it would have affected her so deeply. For God's sake, she's had dreams about her father coming back to drag her into Hell that hadn't upset her that much.

Kyoko sat up and let out an annoyed groan, but to her surprise it came out as a strangled-sounding sob. Wait, what? She touched her fingers to her eyes and found that they were wet.

Had she been crying? What the hell was going on here? Kyoko didn't cry. She had run out of tears months ago.

"Screw this," she muttered, and hurled away the blanket. She was wasting time.

As she did every day, Kyoko went about removing all traces of her presence. A bit of magic returned the bedcovers to their neat and pristine condition. The bathroom was thoroughly searched for any evidence of her usage of it. Any stray fragments food wrapping was gathered up and put into the bags.

But though it was imperative that no one come across any indication that she had been there, Kyoko's movements were halfhearted and sluggish. For some reason, she just couldn't shake that dream from her mind, even if she couldn't remember it. The harder she tried, the more it drifted away.

Breakfast was a leftover burrito and a couple of chicken wings, all that she had left. Then, once she was done, she stole out of the window and into the city.

Once she was outside, it was easier to focus. The fresh air and sounds of the waking city helped clear her mind. She disposed of the bags in a dumpster and swiftly made her way down the street, her legs falling into a familiar rhythm.

"Damn, I gotta cut back on the junk food before bed," she muttered. She massaged her forehead with her fingertips and sighed. Lunch was fine, but maybe it was time to upgrade her evening meals a bit. There were nice restaurants that did take-out, right?

Then, as she was passing a news kiosk, she caught note of a breaking story.

Seven year-old girl dead from stress-induced heart failure. Authorities say parental abuse is to blame.

Kyoko stared at the picture of a child with green hair and sad blue eyes. Though she was reasonably certain that they had never met before, the dead girl's face was giving her the craziest déjà vu. Below the picture was the poor kid's name. Even before she read it, her mouth was already forming the words, "Yuma Chitose."

Kyoko swallowed. Her shoulders and arms were trembling, but she didn't know why. For some weird reason, it was like reading her sister's obituary again. But she had never heard of this girl before, so why was it affecting her so personally? Yeah, it was a sad story, but so what? This sort of thing happened all the time.

Maybe it was the similarities between this kid and Momo. Both had been killed by their parent, whether directly or indirectly. That had to be it. Just painful associations was all.

Shaking her head, Kyoko quickly walked away from the kiosk, her hand pressed against her forehead. She really was wigging out today. Hopefully she would find a witch soon. A good fight should help her stabilize. Unfortunately, witches had been sort of scarce lately. Maybe it was time to move on.

Sighing, Kyoko continued to move briskly down the street, as if a quickened pace would be enough to outrun the feeling of loss that followed her footsteps.

…

Well, this was probably the most depressing note I've ever ended a Christmas special on.

Uh, Merry Christmas everyone?