I'd like to say that no Kyubeys were harmed within the making of this chapter, but I'd be lying.


Rose and Pearl looked around, but nobody was visible. Pearl searched for fleeting flashes of white, while Rose wasn't quite sure who they were looking for or what kind of threat their uninvited guest posed. Pearl was tense as a wooden board with a black belt. Her eyes darted from window to widow, her ear perked for the slightest disturbance of noise. Then, she heard it: The soft echo of footsteps on metal. The unfortunate problem was she didn't know where they were coming from, even though they were getting louder. By the time that Pearl realized that the two of them were right under an air vent, it was too late. With a clatter of an air filtered dropping, Kyubey descended from the ceiling. His white fur glistened in the afternoon sun.

"Salutations, Miss Diamond," he greeted telepathically, his expressionless eyes turning to meet Rose's. Although, it was a mistake to take his eyes off Pearl. Within a flash of nothing, Kyubey was impaled in sixteen gruesome different ways. Rose forgot to gasp. It was as if she had taken a break from breathing to fully absorb the death of an innocent animal. The blood that hadn't splattered onto Rose or Pearl dripped on the ground, slowly forming a red puddle. It didn't seem that Kyubey had any bones, muscle, or organs to speak of; he was just a living powdered doughnut with raspberry filling. And that's when the creepiest part for Rose happened: Kyubey kept talking.

"Gracious, I'm sorry that you had to see that. My name is Kyubey, and I am an extraterrestrial that is responsible for the production of magical girls."

In response, Pearl kept searching. "Where's the other one?! Show yourself, coward!"

"For the sake of this conversation continuing, Miss Atlantica-Honō," Kyubey retorted, "I'll have to decline that request. Now Miss Diamond, I know that you've been forced to absorb quite a lot of information, but if we had an enlightening conversation, I believe that an understanding between us is a certainty."

At this point, Pearl was trying her luck and lobbing spears through any air vent she could find. "She will have none of your lies! Rose, don't listen, please!"

"Lies?" Kyubey parroted. "Young lady, it's rude to make unbased accusations. Incubators have never given misinformation, and it's unlikely that we ever will." Pearl only groaned at this, continuing her stab-a-thon at random walls of dead metal. "The only thing that would appear to be lie is our ability to grant wishes," Kyubey continued, "and that part of our duty is hardly an exaggeration."

"You grant wishes?" Rose piped up, not sure whether to make eye contact on Kyubey's corpse or some other direction.

"I most certainly do," Kyubey high-pitched yet even voice rang out in Rose's mind. "It's somewhat of a bottom-line payment for becoming a magical girl."

Rose guessed that the noise that came out from Pearl could be heard from several blocks away. It was some kind of conglomerate of Rose's name and the word 'no,' without sound too much like 'nose.' Rose made a mental note to make it out of the building before someone who happened to hear them called the police.

"So, you make people into magical girls in exchange for granting their wishes? I don't under-(Pearl, not now, I need to know) I don't understand, what is it that you get out of it?"

"It's not about what we benefit," Kyubey patiently explained. "It's how the universe in general benefits."

Pearl was scrambling to cover Rose's mouth, but Rose, having a quite a few inches on her, managed to keep speaking. "Oh, so you believe the world is a better place within the time magical girls are alive? Like, do you tell them to be (Pearl, quit it!) secret superheroes? That's… kind of a tough pill to swallow, Kyubey. If witches are anything like what I've seen, they're not worth magical girls being around in the first place."

Around this time, Rose expected Kyubey to lose patience with her and tell her to shut the hell up, but Kyubey's voice remained even. "On the contrary, we designed each stage of a magical girl's life to benefit our goal, especially their transformation into witches. You see, when that transition happens, a witch releases far more energy than what it took to grant its wish as a human. This way, Incubators and magical girls work together to fight entropy and the heat death of the universe."

Rose knew about the theory of heat death from a documentary she watched on a field trip to the science museum, and she remembered the knot in her gut when the narrator said not to worry about it. Pearl, on the other hand, had other things on her mind. She had climbed out a window and started to look for the second, unseen Kyubey outside.

"Pearl said that witches kill a lot of people. Is that true?" asked Rose. She didn't like the mood she getting from having this talk. There didn't seem to be a right answer, and that scared her.

"Unfortunately so," said Kyubey in the exact god damn tone of voice as he used from the moment he met Rose and died. "But that's what the new magical girls are for: To fight witches before they hurt anyone. And we've taken a survey: The magical girls do indeed feel like they're making a difference. That's also the reason I've approached you today, Miss Diamond."

"What reason?"

"To make a difference. From the subjective data I've gathered, you would have the power to destroy an army of witches before you'd turn into one yourself. You, Miss Rose Q. Diamond, have the most potential to contract into a magical girl I've seen in-"

Silence.

Pearl popped her head inside from one of the higher windows. "His other body was on the roof."

Rose discovered that she needed a deep breath. "We should leave. I think I hear sirens."

Pearl jumped to the floor and untransformed, unsure on how to comfort Rose. "Do you know a place to get clean clothes? Your uniform still has some blood on it."