—
9: DuPage?
A banner strung over the thoroughfare read: Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Most text in miasmas, if anyone ever stopped to read it, ranged from German to cryptolinguistic. The terrain had morphed. Far fewer humans populated the roads, most confined now within giant cages advertised like exhibits or curiosities—the Indigenous Savage, Man and Woman Shorn of Society, Freakshow Phantasmagoria—and the tents, ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds fell further back, or were compressed between pillars of Greco-Roman constructions, domed and rectangular buildings from which more contemporary national flags fluttered. Those not in cages ascended the steps to the dark interiors of these buildings, where eyeballs lurked.
One by one died the lightbulbs that once illuminated everything in myriad color. The darkness crept from behind. Sage and Laila funneled the direction they could still see.
Sage knew, maybe not Laila, the miasma fought to keep them contained; the previous notion of relative safety deceived them, it exercised control the entire time, complete mastery of geography, more dangerous than a banal horde that would exhaust the resources of both parties, mist and Magical Girl. It contradicted Sage's understanding of a typical miasma. Supposedly, even large miasmas failed to affect much the existing spatial properties of an area as long as a contradictory magical presence—i.e., a Magical Girl—remained inside it, which meant this degree of distortion pushed the boundaries of known properties. On one hand, attribution of said special properties might fall on DuPage, as the miasma originated not from typical sources but from her, or perhaps at moments of...
Moments of...
Moments of...
Of...
Disregarded the new Aurora as anything but pure function. As a person, who cared? Wasn't the old Aurora so...
Moments of spatial separation, when the magical presences within the miasma neared its fringe, for instance when they all gathered atop the arch. Or perhaps the spatial properties of the miasma only appeared to distort, confused by the... arrangement...
Sage clutched her face and emitted a sheer cry. "I can't think!"
"Understandable," muttered a dour Laila who had never quite stopped shaking. Sage failed to read her blank expression. Did she too realize they would not so easily escape? Did she understand, in mounting terror, that Sage led her only deeper inside, not from malice but because she too could not discern the direction of the exit?
Seven girls from St. Louis: dead. Two Auroras: dead. Laila placed her faith in a bankrupt commander, one too foolish or frightened or stupid to lie down and die herself, her stupid Soul Gem refused to even darken, a taunt to her utter apathy toward the lives she fucked up. The swirl of a realization that tarnished her self-visualization as a learned, empathetic, understanding leader, an antithesis to that Empress—
Heh-heh, heh-heh-heh. Who cared who killed whom? In the battle of moral purity, who ascended? They say the victors write history, but Sage wagered she could perish in such Dying Gaul repose that all would wipe a tear and say, "She struggled." Heh-heh-heh ha-ha heh.
"No," said Laila. Sage, so enmeshed in her thoughts, at first thought it was a response, but Laila stared at something else. Between a pair of ancient temples down a winding path between balloon-strewn trees: the riverside. The mist constrained all view of the opposite bank, so it looked less river and more black lake, but the immense bridge that stretched from one end into the outer perimeter of visibility eliminated any doubt.
"Hah. I thought we moved in the opposite direction..." It was all Sage thought to say. The sight of the river stirred no emotion in her.
Laila, of course, sagged to her knees and floundered. "No. We're back at the beginning. This is where we started. Everything and we're not even close..."
"Don't worry. The miasma couldn't cross the river. Once we pass the bridge we'll be safe." No idea why she lied. She didn't even remember whether she previously mentioned that the miasma had already crossed the river.
But Laila swallowed the whole hook. She straightened and embarked immediately, without a word, down the path toward the bridge, and now it was Sage who followed.
A few steps Laila stopped. She cleaved to the nearest tree and pointed, still wordless, at the beginning of the bridge. Sage strained her eyes and expected some wraith. But when she saw it she too hid behind a tree.
Centurion DuPage, flanked by her loyal lieutenant, strolled along the bank toward the bridge. DuPage muttered something unintelligible either to herself or her companion; either way, the companion said nothing. The distinct discrepancies in their respective postures gave the impression of a comedy duo, straight man and bent man, the kind found in a black and white skit or an absurdist play.
Sage's thoughts turned to Phase 3.
If Sage Rhys only ever had one way to defeat an invincible foe, she never would have entered the arena. Always she had a backup strategy, a hidden trick, wily fox status, one that relied only upon herself, like a true leader right? Her costume, after all, had a third phase, what other girls called a "finisher," big and fancy with an effect deleterious to her allies (of which zero remained) as well as anyone unfortunate enough to exist in her sphere of influence...
"Your look," said Laila. "I don't like your look."
That obvious? Well, Sage had always been better at dissembling her thoughts via text than in situ. Better to approach with a strategy. Or at least a backup for her inevitable failure. The weight of history dropped upon her and she suspected Laurel & Hardy upon the bridge might await their Godot forever which, then, should be the way the world ended. The gaudiest, most cataclysmic bang it deserved... Heh-heh-heh. But she ought to retain her sanity a shred. Consider the world that revolved regardless of her existence upon it.
The Empire must be stopped. Now more than ever. Although Centurion DuPage's power, thermodynamically infeasible, turned on its head the natural order of the universe, Sage Rhys as the Magical Girl Denver had to consider her position in the hierarchy of history. Inexorable forward momentum... The Empire looked, felt, smelled of such capacity now that she had seen the barest sliver of its might firsthand. But she had to make necessary preparations still. If she failed, someone had to claim her mantle.
So she retrieved her cell phone and held it to Laila. "You enchanted San Bernardino's phone so it would function within the miasma. Please do the same for mine."
"Uh. Sure." A pink flash enveloped it; it returned to Denver's palm.
Her first instinct demanded she inform Collins. But her trust in Collins diminished every passing minute no reinforcements arrived; either Collins sent no message or girls didn't want grief cubes anymore. And the former felt more feasible.
Not Collins.
She sent someone else a message.
As she slid the phone back into her pocket, Laila pointed and said, "What's with the plastic?"
Denver examined her phone. Not plastic, but porcelain coated it. She remembered: Aurora's waterproofing.
Enchantments ended upon death. Invariably. Once a girl's soul shook off its mortal foil, their magic no longer existed. Was Aurora still alive? An unexpected wave of relief swept so strongly into her heart that her head had to scold it with a slap of a yardstick; possibly she lived on a technical level but in a process of... digestion that rendered any hope of salvation negligible. (Of course if she hunted down and slew the lamia in time, salvaged the Soul Gem and the remnants of half-dissolved flesh, even that could be restored.) Or Aurora managed to find a way to escape, her stupid vacant face gnawing her hair as she meandered hands-in-pockets and uttered an elongated "Uh"—
Sage hoped for it. She wanted it, visualized it, imagined it, a scrounge of success salvaged from this vortex of failure. Her mind wandered—Forget DuPage, she had to find Aurora. She stepped onto the path and her head oscillated one route to another; her hands kneaded. She had zero way of locating Aurora... her cell phone? She called; straight to voicemail. Shit. She adjusted her visor, then got sick of it and pushed it up her forehead to see better.
No no no. Aurora was strong. She could defend herself. She would carve a path out the serpent's belly with her shards of ice. Sage's faith in Aurora had to match Aurora's faith in her. Her role was commander: instrument of fate. This battle, its boundless historical significance—Yes. A wide smirk broke upon her face. Yes! Everything became so unclouded all at once, so many irrelevant things washed off her body in one rapid torrent. How had she become snagged on such stupid components? How had she ever doubted herself?
"You okay?" Laila's voice an entrancement into the corporeal. "I vote for no fighting. Please."
"Aurora is alive."
"Yeah she's right there." Hegewisch indicated Laurel (or was it Hardy) at the edge of the bridge. "Even if you pin DuPage, she'll—"
"The other Aurora."
"Oh. Good for her. Um—"
"I apologize for my failure to deliver you safely from the miasma."
"Not liking this vocabulary you've got going here, sounds pretty unnatural—"
"I intend to renew my assault on Centurion DuPage and her lieutenant, the other Aurora. I do not require your assistance. In fact. I release you from captivity and encourage you to return to your commander."
Laila, her face idiotic, clung only to her shred of withered tree.
"Alternatively," Denver continued, "You may attempt to flee the miasma on your own. If this direction of the thoroughfare only took us deeper into it, the other direction possibly will lead out."
"I can't—I can't... I won't make it..."
The empathy Denver once felt eroded into disgust. In a world with so much on the line, with the freedom of Magical Girls across the country called into question, and Laila herself a screw in the clanking mechanism, aware enough of what it entailed, yet resolved to do nothing but remain in her harmless place and uphold the cog that twisted the others—Inaction. Laziness or fear. That's what they all felt! Those stupid silly girls on MagNet who claimed they would support Denver, who whined incessantly about Chicago, yet when it came time to stand up and defend against them remained safe and quiet in their homes. Those fuckers, those cowards, those shriveled limp cocks, and everyone behind Denver's back had the gall to accuse her of being "only talk!" PAH. She recalled in wonder the message she sent only moments prior. What moment of enfeeblement caused her to contact those two in particular... the laziest of the lot...
She slapped Laila and knocked her over. "Trash."
Laila rubbed her cheek and hissed. "Oh, I see. Next you'll say that line. Cowards die a thousand deaths... Ha. I know you will."
But no further words needed to be said, and even had she intended to say any they would have been interrupted by the trenchant quiver that pierced the miasma:
"Ah will you come out already. I've known you're in those trees the whole time."
The only creature whose voice came out clearer in the murk than outside: Centurion DuPage. Good, honestly. Better to bring this farce to its conclusion as swiftly as possible. A swell of positive emotion buoyed Denver with each step she took down the cobblestone amid the trees to the banks of the river. Her own Aurora (Au ror a) lived. Her previous setbacks only arranged the stage onto which she now stepped.
She whispered: "Phase 2, activate." And without posing, dancing, twirling, or chanting, her costume shifted form. The wings emerged from her back and her visor formed into a helmet.
Before she activated Phase 3, she had to eliminate the other Aurora, whose power, depending on how it worked (and best not to take chances), might counteract her own. It made sense. That Aurora was the forgery. Hers lived.
(Possibly not for long—)
Hers lived.
(Running on sheer serotonin now?)
It didn't even sound like her own voice in her head. She refused to hear it. Everyone had doubts, only moronic boors lacked them, and only moronic boors became so trapped in them they gave up trying. Doubts were nothing more than a spur to urge one toward rational action. And as a Magical Girl, nothing was less rational than plunging herself into despair. Her only doubts now must be geared toward the battle ahead, the tactics to employ.
She reached the first upward incline where the road became the bridge. Centurion DuPage glowered from the top of the incline. "Isn't this so boring now? We did the whole fight thing. Lie down and die already so I can go back to bed."
Denver opened with an ordinary attack. She manifested five comets. Their arrangement tilted toward DuPage, with at least three approaching her alone, so the attack looked like those Denver used on the arch. But this time her focus remained on the lieutenant, the Reverse Aurora. While DuPage laughed and let the molten rocks bounce off her, Aurora made no movements whatsoever. However, something orbited around her; a yellow sphere, of material inconclusive (possibly gold, possibly light). It hovered about two meters from her head and remained at that radius as it swiveled around her and struck one of the comets. The moment it did, the comet vanished. The other comet headed her way approached from the opposite direction. The orb zipped over Aurora in a dome, touched that comet, and eliminated it from existence as well.
"Yaaaaaawn." DuPage patted her mouth.
Obviously many variables remained untested, unlimited questions remained: Did the orb only devour matter, could it also delete living things—if she stood around several minutes pondering them her enemies would react. For her purposes she had to assume the worst, that the orb could annihilate her even during Phase 3. She must eliminate Aurora to ensure success.
She stormed the bridge onramp—broad enough for several lanes of vehicles coming and going, hemmed by suspension arches and steel cables—and drew close to DuPage in hand-to-hand. She swung her Star Rod at the unveiled chin but behind her visor kept her eyes on Aurora. The orb moved fast, but it did not move instantaneously. To bypass its defenses would require multiple fast attacks—
A hand holding a tome emerged from DuPage's robes and swung at Denver. She backpedaled to avoid and the force of the wind from the strike tilted her off balance. She hit the ground, rolled, flipped up, all in the time DuPage liquefied into a pool of gold, ebbed to Denver's new position, and emerged beside her for another hit. Her speed outstripped Denver's by a significant margin. A bag of seven bricks crashed against Denver's jaw and launched her airborne, across the breadth of the bridge, into the rows of wires, some of which snapped. To avoid hurtling into the river she seized a remaining cable and sliced her hand through the glove down to the bone—thankfully not the hand with her Soul Gem.
The cable drew back like a bow and shot her down to the bridge. DuPage already waited in her projected landing zone. When did the lazy bitch get so fast and strong—Christ! Still midair she swept her Star Rod crosswise and split the air in front of her with a row of five comets. She landed on the back of one, kicked it, angled herself fast against the ground, and rolled out of the landing quicker than DuPage had a chance to reach her. Without stopping to reassess she bounded as far as she could down the bridge and when she landed she had to bound again to keep ahead of DuPage. She managed, between leaps, to whip her wand two more times and summon five more comets each. The arena glowed a dull orange as comets fell weo-weo-weo from three directions, several converging upon Aurora.
Aurora's yellow orb bounced between one, two, three comets at once. Denver flicked her Star Rod and fired a single, fast star.
The yellow orb hovered near the apex of its dome above Aurora, mid-arc toward the opposite side of Denver's attack. She had positioned her comets and herself to ensure this arrangement, she had not simply gotten lucky (of course). As expected, the orb had too much distance to travel and Denver's star traveled too fast. It passed the radial threshold of Aurora's defense and cleaved her stomach. Her mask of blasé servitude cracked, a wild and astonished gleam colored her features, and she dropped to her knees hemorrhaging from half her torso.
Failed to kill her, though. Denver expected that too, and respected her enemy's intelligence enough to discard any notion of repeating her trick. Instead, she—
DuPage brought her book onto Denver's skull. One temple possibly caved, or else her brain turned to mush within the bone, or else it only felt like those things. She did not fall, or fly, or crash into the ground so much as immediately inhabit the ground, teleported there by the blow of the book, cracked concrete in jagged shards around her body, several limbs locked in place by asphalt confines, and a sharp sensation of pain her Soul Gem failed to dull.
Honeymoon ended.
Ah, never had a chance anyway? A futile final stand, more assisted suicide than serious struggle? At least that was what she could always tell herself to avoid the sting of defeat. Like how she could pretend an afterlife to promote final thoughts of a reunion with the person she loved... Over her, DuPage drew back the book and prepared to slam. Aimed, Denver imagined, for her Soul Gem.
"You—floozy! You can't hurt my lieutenant like that."
"Uennnhh," said Denver.
Feet pattered across the bridge. "Wait, wait—Lady DuPage! Please hold your attack!"
An even angrier glint swallowed DuPage's eye as she wheeled on the approaching Laila. "And YOU tell ME—"
Laila's voice had changed. No waver. Nor informality. She stopped just outside DuPage's striking range and shot to full attention with military salute, comical due to her missing arm. "Her Munificence the Empress assigned me to this expedition to ensure minimal casualties. As such, I am compelled to inform you that you have beaten your enemy into submission and a subsequent coup de grace would violate Her Munificence's strict orders as to your expected conduct..."
"Aurora." DuPage's ivory arm signaled with aggressive dexterity of her digits. "Kill this little skank."
Aurora, on her side, vomited blood. "Y, yesssh, m-m-m-m—"
Visible tremors shook Laila's body but she remained upright, maintained her salute. "M, milady. Although superiors are permitted and even encouraged to employ physical punishment upon unruly subordinates at their discretion, the murder of a subordinate for any reason other than treason is prohibited even among the Centurions... The, the loyal soldiers of the Empire... must have faith that... their leaders mean only for their wellbeing and development..."
Whatever frigidity she had enacted upon her liquid spine sizzled. Did she have faith in bureaucracy to protect her? Against DuPage? The stupid girl, why run in? The last thing Denver did to her was slap her, and it wasn't like Laila was the kind of person to self-sacrifice. Sage knew her long enough to know that.
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit, fuck. FUCK. Why, why, why, why, why? Who would do such a stupid thing? For her, for Sage Rhys? The people who would die for her had already died, this stupid Laila—augh. The stupid slap. The slap did it. Sage slapped her and called her a coward so she decided to prove she wasn't the first chance she got, no matter how bad a chance it was.
Or was that not it either? Ehh—irrelevant. What mattered was she had DuPage distracted. As Denver gradually extricated herself from the asphalt, she flicked her Star Rod an almost imperceptible amount, not that its perceptibility mattered, as DuPage's entire attention fell on Laila. The sky above remained placid, unbroken. No meteors, stars, or space debris. In fact, nothing appeared to happen.
Laila ironed her stuttering: "Additionally, with Denver incapacitated and her forces annihilated, you have fulfilled your mission and done so, somehow, with no casualties on our side. Flawless victory—far superior to the accomplishment of Centurion Cicero in Minneapolis."
"Cicero, hohh?" DuPage's body slackened; she swayed inward, tilted sideways, arched her back at an angle assuredly impossible if any kind of bone structure existed under her golden robes. She sprouted an arm from her side to tap her cheekbone. "Perhaps I misjudged you, Junior Administrator. Your dick-sucking skills are top notch. Oh phoo, is 'dick' too crass?"
"It's among the list of prohibited words," said Laila. "But I have zero intention of reporting—"
"Laila, jump," Sage shouted.
She had no idea why she shouted it. She knew Laila lacked the reaction speed or physical acumen to make sense of the command. She knew DuPage would benefit from it far more than Laila. Nonetheless something compelled her to say it before she wrenched herself out the ground and launched herself airborne at the same moment her comets crashed through the ground from below and exploded.
Gravity lacked effect on her comets. They fell slower than gravity. She could send them in any direction—only rarely did a direction other than down matter. But on a bridge, empty space between the water and the ground, opportunities arose. Holes burst across the terrain and billowed shoots of fire through which Denver swept until she landed upon a cable and clung to it. Laila failed to jump, so she went flying. But Denver made a conscious decision not to place a comet directly under her. On the other hand, the ground under DuPage and Aurora simply ceased to exist. Flame geysers flung up asphalt chunks and twisted upward steel beams gooey with melted edges. DuPage kicked her feet and landed onto the top of one such beam, no other solid ground nearby, while the full brunt of the attack ripped through Aurora, scalded her face, set the clothes under her armor afire, and dropped her through the void where once existed ground.
DuPage flowed across the remains of her beam, reformed as a solid figure gripping its underbelly, and seized Aurora by the collar before she dropped far. Blood sluiced out the slice in Aurora's belly and cascaded to a splatter against the black water below. The waves flitted and the form of some plesiosaur skidded against the inky surface.
One heave of her arm tossed Aurora onto the solid part of the bridge, where she lay still and burning and in a growing pool of blood. DuPage flowed along the beam until she reached the opposite edge of the hole near where Laila slapped her hands against her legs to stop the smoldering.
"Ooh. Ooh! Phssshaaw." DuPage spat. "Obviously unless I kill her she won't let me sleep."
"Owowowow," said Laila.
"Quit crying and heal my poor lieutenant."
Aurora detransformed. The fire flickered along her civilian white suit. Dubiously dead, but no longer a factor. And some sliver of Sage Rhys buried deep inside a Denver thought this fight hopeless—eheh-heh. The low chortle gurgled in her throat. If she lured DuPage away from Laila she had no fear of her third phase's failure. One swing of her Star Rod sliced the bridge cable and she swung from it to generate an initial burst of momentum toward the end of the bridge. DuPage ebbed after her although no motion within her robes indicated legs. In a few seconds she would overtake Denver, so she hoped the grassy riverbank served an open enough area for her attack. Due to Phase 3's devastating properties, she rarely resorted to it, and as such had little empirical understanding of its exact nautre.
(Funny how under ordinary circumstances, Phase 3's many ambiguities would undermine any faith Sage placed within it, yet now she believed in its success with one hundred percent certainty...) She hit the downslope and allowed her built velocity and gravity's tug to carry her at a slide to the road. Her wings flared their jets to stabilize her and she immediately ducked to avoid DuPage's attack, her position ascertainable on account of her scent, not so much foul as ashy, like a shirt stained by tobacco smoke.
But Denver realized prodigiously slowly that to activate Phase 3 it would prove essential for her to chant the poem. She managed to activate Phase 2 earlier without—but that was a fluke—plus she knew Phase 2... Ah hell. DuPage's second attack was already en route to her face and she hadn't even completed the arc of her evasive maneuver for the first. Panicked, she drew her Star Rod and formed a meteor in front of her to absorb the blow. It partially succeeded; shattered space rock pounded against her too hard for her armor to absorb and she danced back on tilt with the state of her balance uncertain until she finally reined herself upright. She ended several steps from the base of the bridge. For some reason she imagined the street on which she now stood eventually became the carnival thoroughfare, but she wasn't sure and had no right to think such an irrelevant thought. She had a problem to solve, she needed at least ten—no, seven if she talked fast—seconds to transform to Phase 3. But with DuPage upon her and fast and her head racing and the sweat seeping down the inside of her visor; shit she'd fucked up and she was only barely quick enough to summon comet after comet to block DuPage's onslaught.
Until DuPage's onslaught abruptly ceased and Denver had to wait for her most recent space rock to crack against DuPage's invincibility before she saw that DuPage stared at something over Denver's shoulder. At first Denver was reluctant to look, thinking it the kind of childish trick DuPage would somehow pull, the "look over there!" segued into sneak attack, but the dull thud of footsteps at her back convinced her something tangible existed and she took the barest glimpse behind.
ClownmufSAN BERNARDINO lobbed a body at her and, too stunned, she failed to do anything but catch it like a cradled baby, except instead she cradled a teenage girl in a Halloween witch costume. "Hold that," San Bernardino said before she ratcheted her upper body one hundred and eighty degrees to swipe at another girl in luxurious azure furs who dodged back and hurled one of her dual tomahawks. San Bernardino sidestepped and Denver sidestepped and the tomahawk bounced against DuPage's face, at which point it promptly exploded. The girl in azure furs replenished it with a new tomahawk by the time she landed. From the dense mist behind her emerged three more Magical Girls who assaulted San Bernardino with thrusts, slices, and slams likewise ineffectual. A fifth skidded to a halt behind them, turned halfway back the way she came, and shouted through cupped hands: "She's over here! At the base of the bridge!" When her voice carried nowhere, she repeated the call telepathically.
The astonished armistice between Denver and DuPage ended with a hissing, strained-teeth chortle from the latter. She brushed some hair mussed by the combustive tomahawk back into position and twirled her hands overhead. "I'm too exhausted for this malarkey."
"Put me down!" The witch kicked Denver's elbow. "Hurry, they're whittling her bit by bit. Eventually she'll fall apart. I can do it—I have an idea."
"Murrieta-Temecula...?" The longer and stupider the name, the easier for Denver to remember it. From recollection, she had powers of flight and magic detection. Coupled with her calumny on MagNet, her appearance here made logical sense.
The delayed realization came amid the stultifying slurry of voices caught in the miasma's net as the azure tomahawk girl and her companions encircled San Bernardino five versus one. One of the gaggle broke away and rushed at Denver. Or, more accurately, Murrieta-Temecula. Yeah... That made sense too. Murrieta-Temecula wanted San Bernardino dead. Kyubey discouraged such melodrama between Magical Girls, and hired so-called "specialists," also known as Terminatrixes, to eradicate troublemakers.
She blocked a slashing claw with her Star Rod. Doing so required she drop Murrieta-Temecula, who hit the ground on her rear. It became so difficult to think with so many damn people in her head, but her combat reflexes remained sharp. Truthfully she thought nothing of the horde of Magical Girls who dropped atop the arch, so baffled and so enmeshed in the blood boil of battle. But if they were Terminatrixes—or rather one Terminatrix with the power to project multiple forms at once, something her rumor mill had brought to her attention previously—if they worked for Kyubey...
Then they or she couldn't be here by accident?
IF ONLY SHE COULD THINK. Instead she kicked the claw girl hard across the road. Murrieta-Temecula scurried from under her feet while more Magical Girls emerged from the mist to compound upon San Bernardino. They each called with new voices, fought with new powers, flashed with new colors. Sage stumbled back, disoriented, as several swept past her toward Murrieta-Temecula, who dashed around the road in a bizarre semicircle that wheeled onto the onramp, dove between the first two supports of the bridge's left side, and passed along the banks until she hurtled full tilt at both the brunt of the Terminatrix's forces—and San Bernardino. Nobody cared about Denver anymore, least of all DuPage, who rolled back and forth on the ramp and lolled out her tongue. The entire pulse of the battle surged toward Murrieta-Temecula, thirty or so figures converging upon her from every angle, her arm held high and a wand clutched within it while she hollered in animalistic fury. That was her "idea"? To sprint into thirty trained killers and—
Denver's molasses brain built enough sugary matter upon the roof that it caved and poured the sludge inside. Those scratchy, distorted, half-audible voices that drove her mad ceased when she whipped her wand and spawned a wall of comets around Murrieta-Temecula that absorbed several ranged attacks. Before they landed and exploded, she weaved between them, grabbed Murrieta-Temecula, and bounced up a summoned staircase of more comets until she stood two stories above the ground and everyone except San Bernardino stared up at her.
"Wait," said Denver. "This is not the girl Kyubey sent you here to kill."
"Yes I am!" To avoid the comet's flaming tail, Murrieta-Temecula leapt back into Denver's arms rockabye baby style but nonetheless struggled against her petulantly. (Denver's own special boots protected her from the fire.)
"Yeah, pretty sure she is," said a girl below. "Drop her or you're caught in the crossfire." Guns, bows, bolas, and boomerangs pointed at her.
Denver cleared her throat. She observed the crowd and knew she better speak soon or become swiss cheese. Among the bobbing heads she noticed San Bernardino, who gave a silent thumbs up.
A speech. She spoke:
—
DuPage became a Magical Girl in a bathtub of her own blood.
What a stark, awesome image. She loved to think about her own wrists slit. Not in a boohoo depressed way, ew gross. Sad people disgusted her and sadness remained a foreign emotion. Mmnnn. Hatred, yeah. She felt a lot of that at the time. But her current titillation at a distanced and objective revisiting of the favorite moment of her life stemmed from a sort of fascination with her mortality, the physicality of her flesh and especially blood. Her body never felt real when it remained in one piece. More like plastic or playdough. But when she opened herself up?
And she'd never slit her wrists solely for thrill. That aforementioned rage, hoo. Dragged her deep. Had oodles to do with her wish. But she was glad she did slit her wrists and survive to remember it because at moments like these, dreadful boring moments—was murderducking Denver giving a speech? Did she leap up those rocks to TALK at all these Magical Girls? Hrrk—she could replay the sensation in her head, envelop it, almost relive it. These thoughts helped her fall asleep at night and she still prayed she might manage to sleep even though the thirty or so girls gathered around her blathered so much stupid noise she knew it to be impossible. But she tried anyway:
The master bathroom, invaded one weekend while her parents went to a classical music concert as part of their unending struggle to become white people, a speckless space speckled only by the blot of her clay body resolving into dew within the hottest water the mixture managed. She used a kitchen knife instead of a pussycat baby razor blade. Her primary oversight being that it became difficult to slice the second wrist after the first stopped moving exactly how she liked, but her ingenuity prevailed when she pressed the knife against the lip of the tub blade up and ran the second wrist across it.
That moment especially—ooh. She rolled against the bridge ramp and let her hair get mussier than usual. Denver's dumb speech voice droned into a nothing hum, like an air conditioning unit. That big vein in her wrist, she loved to poke and prod it, shuffle it out of position and back into it, and when cut it burst like a crushed cockroach. The tubwater became so red so fast she soon could no longer see or sense her body below the line. Head, shoulders, arms, and wrists: In that moment only those components of Yasmin Esfahani existed.
In that moment, the red waves of the bath parted and the blood-streaked face of the white rabbit surfaced. Its soulless eyes peered from matted fur and it said:
—
"Society has rejected you, human or otherwise. You are the castaways of this world." Her hand motioned upward, fingers splayed, as her grip around Murrieta-Temecula tightened. "Criminals perhaps, psychopaths—I've heard it. I've never believed it. What kind of psychopaths would accept the full brunt of society's ire yet perform its most critical, its most dangerous, its most grotesque function?"
"It's a job," said one below.
"Let her talk," said another.
"She'll just blab long enough for the mark to zip off on her fucking broom again."
"Nah she dropped the broom, I have it." A girl in World War I officer's regalia held it up.
"She'll make another."
"That's not how her power works."
"How do you know!"
"We have intel reports, dipshit! Did you not pay attention to even the basics?"
The argument swelled and dragged other girls into it. Denver attempted several times to shout loud enough to overcome the noise but each time terminated with a gurgled, unclear syllable that died inches from her lips. Her comet slowly descended toward the small round pyre her lower comets had already created; eventually she would lose her position and fail to unify anyone. Just like on MagNet, where sure, the Seattle sisters and San Francisco and Calgary could powwow and protest their hatred of Chicago, describe action hero scenarios in which they punted Chicago's collective ass into Lake Michigan, but when Chicago actually invaded somewhere? And Denver asked each of them personally, "Will you help me save St. Louis?" Then they all had a convenient excuse to stay home.
Her words failed then. And that was via text, her specialty. She knew those girls. These girls, these projections of a Terminatrix unseen, what did she expect? The scene in the movie where the protagonist gives a speech that glues everyone together against the true villain? Was that her fantasy? Even now, even this late in the game? When she knew the only reason she shambled into this honorary Rust Belt city was to expedite the suicide she feared too much to achieve literally? Eheh-heh. Eheh-heh. Eheh-heh. Could've saved the plane tickets if only she had the courage to slit her wrists in a bathtub and wait for her gem's energy to run out trying to resupply her blood. Let the Law of the Cycles swallow her...
"The Lady," said a newcomer girl who stumbled out the mist, and at the word "Lady" all argument ceased. "The Lady would like to hear what Miss Rhys says."
Nobody spoke a single word after that. They merely turned each set of eyes toward Sage.
Fuck. Where had she even paused in her speech? Oh yeah—she continued:
—
"I want to make everyone feel what I feel right now."
If that is your wish, I would prefer if you prefaced it with the phrase 'I wish' and also more clearly defined the exact emotion you mean. Also, please hurry, as you will lose consciousness in approximately nineteen seconds.
It was correct. Her vision bleared and the parts of her body that still existed swayed. She bit her tongue and blinked.
"I wish... to make people feel this, this..." And how would she describe this emotion? Fury? Before she cut herself open, that's the word she would've used. Something had shifted. "This despair."
That is a powerful wish! The size of your Soul Gem will be quite large. The thermodynamic ramifications fascinate me. I'll be interested in observing your career as a Magical Girl... If you could even, by definition, be called one.
His face faded away as from the bloody lagoon rose a ball of gray light.
—
"You are not rejects of society, no. You are its lawkeepers. You don't do what you do because Kyubey told you. No..." She considered her scant knowledge of these projections. That they seemed to have distinct personalities and egos, yet beholden to their Lady. "You serve another, one whose own sense of justice guides you. Correct? You are not the Incubator's slaves. You follow your leader and her cause. For you, it is not simply a job."
She feared a rebuttal. But if what she imagined she knew about this Terminatrix's power proved true, there should not be one. These thirty-odd Magical Girls gathered around her must be the souls of those the Terminatrix terminated. And for such souls, plucked from degenerates, maniacs, people even Kyubey deemed undesirable, to serve the one who effectively killed them—then either some cause united them or their Lady had brainwashed them to believe so.
None rebutted her. She inhaled. Her comet had descended half its initial height.
The true challenge was pretending to convince the projections to whom she ostensibly spoke while actually convincing the Lady who ostensibly listened.
"There is a girl in our midst the Incubator will never tell you to terminate. She's useful to him. And yet, she is an existential affront to the fabric of Magical Girl society. This Magical Girl—if you could even, by definition, call her one—murdered seven Magical Girls this past night. Seven. How many Magical Girls did this this one I hold in my arms murder? This one you're all so intent on striking down with the full fury of your retribution?"
Eyes narrowed, others averted. "Zero," a few tepid voices imparted. Someone attempted a justification: "She intends to kill this short chick." A few fingers aimed at San Bernardino, who became increasingly indistinguishable from eclectic mob of Terminatrix girls.
"Ah, the girl who was fighting to protect her. Truly this girl, Murrieta-Temecula, is a threat worthy of your immense power and wide array of talents. Yet that girl behind me on the ramp, Centurion DuPage, not only slaughters Magical Girls willy-nilly and would gleefully do so again, but does so in a way contrary to the very essence of Magical Girldom: She creates wraiths. They flow out her Soul Gem."
Cries of "Bullshit!" Et cetera.
Originally, at this inevitable juncture, Denver planned to call on San Bernardino for verification, but she discovered someone better: Laila, emerging at the top of the bridge's onramp, a weak and semi-conscious Aurora supported by her remaining arm. Denver's finger shot toward her with such rigidity that Laila flinched despite being some distance away. "Tell them!" Her forceful shout piercing the miasma. "Laila, tell them the power of Centurion DuPage."
Laila tried to step back as thirty-odd pairs of eyes directed toward her together but the weight of Aurora prevented such sudden movements so she only managed to sway in essentially the same position. She also apparently lacked confidence in her ability to project because her response came telepathically:
—
Her last moments as a human were mostly liquid, so as a Magical Girl her corpse flowed like it too. Being a Magical Girl disappointed her. The others she met quivered with a fatal fear. Of wraiths, of their own emotions, of everything. But she had nothing to fear. Wraiths ignored her. She walked among them unmolested. If she killed them, they allowed it. If she grew desolate or furious or bored and her Soul Gem darkened, when she used her power the despair flowed out and became innocuous wraiths. Kyubey inspected, prodded, measured her. When she slept, or pretended to sleep—eventually he shed all pretense of concealing himself—he harvested hair fragments, skin flakes, saliva.
She became incapable of death and because of her ability to eject her negative emotions like steam no longer even wanted to die.
Everything simply became dull.
—
You can't... But it wasn't Laila's voice. Denver didn't recognize it, but she assumed it was the Aurora supported on Laila's shoulder. Classified. Revealing Centurion DuPage's powers to... anyone without proper clearance... is a treasonous offense.
And Laila, dolt she was, buckled beneath this idiotic statement. She froze; her face went blank. The words "classified" and "treasonous" constricted her as inviolable barriers.
"Shed your ties to this sham Empire, Laila," said Denver. "Their failure here is assured and will prove the first of many failures to follow. Leave them and join me, Laila. Tell everyone the truth of what has transpired here. Unmask the unnatural perversion of a Magical Girl who generates wraiths rather than destroy them."
Wasted words. Laila was always a coward, and a true coward, the most insidious, worthless kind, locked herself in the closet of a sinking ocean liner because she was too afraid to go outside. Or perhaps. Or perhaps she saw what Denver pretended she didn't, that her ship sailed ever onward, unsinkable, and that the winning side in this conflict had been clear since the onset. Eheh-heh? Like a coin flip where seven millennia of butterfly effects had predetermined the outcome. The comet nearly touched the ground now and Murrieta-Temecula grew restless and started to squirm. She hissed: "Hurry and say something else, you're not making progress here!"
But it was San Bernardino who spoke next. "It's true. Centurion DuPage inverts miracles to curses." She stood proudly as though her totally ambiguous line proved everything, but it mostly made the Terminatrix girls glance between each other with dubious expressions.
So Denver swept her hand. "Look around you if you don't believe me! This miasma is not natural. Have you ever seen one so large? Have you seen the sheer number of people it's ensnared? A conglomerated lump of despair and hatred and sadness and evil this large could never appear without a source. And that source is the girl there on the ramp, Centurion DuPage!"
She finally had to hop off the comet before it hit the ground and exploded. Chunks of rock zipped past or plinked against her wings. She sought another way to prove that DuPage created the miasma, somehow the key seemed rooted in it—as though if she only proved it, the Terminatrix would have no choice but to join her side—was that the logic of desperation? Or did she legitimately read a kind of interest in their faces? They listened as long as they had, hadn't they? Maybe she should ask DuPage herself what her power was. For some reason she suspected DuPage would have no qualms about blurting it as long as she could laugh at everyone's incredulous faces.
It proved unnecessary. From the mist ran a Magical Girl, the same one who had brought a message from the "Lady" previously. Everyone turned to her before she even slowed to speak, and those nearby stepped away to form a neat circle around her.
"The Lady," said the messenger, "says that Miss Rhys tells the truth."
Next came the sting that it didn't matter. That it changed nothing. That the Terminatrix was Kyubey's slave and would continue along her assigned course and do nothing about the obvious greater threat.
Sure enough: "However." Predictable, really. Sage was stupid to ever expect this to work. "However, the Lady dislikes the smell of Miss Esfahani's soul. She says she does not believe Miss Esfahani can be redeemed."
Centurion DuPage, all flicker of recognition lost, had rolled on her slope the entire speech without comment, interjection, or protest, despite Denver's blatant machinations against her. At this word from the Lady, however, she wrenched upright although crooked from the approximate location of her hips to the approximate location of her neck.
"Can't be redeemed? Me! Uncalled for."
The messenger girl glanced at DuPage but continued as though she otherwise lacked corporeality. "By contrast, the Lady would very much enjoy the soul of Miss Leyva..."
Miss Leyva. Meaning Murrieta-Temecula. Tch. Had Denver had a chance to notice the Terminatrix's Kyubey-mimicking insistence on using the real names of Magical Girls, she would have had a better concept of her odds of success.
She tossed Murrieta-Temecula toward San Bernardino and left the girl's fate in somehow better hands. The Lady's final word served the end of all diplomacy and the gaggle of girls shifted again to eradicate their mark. Bodies surged around a solitary Denver who in the end at least had herself to follow her. The sound, the motion served as the perfect cover.
"The unlimited darkness of the universe folds inward upon itself. Man ascends ever higher toward celestial heaven but finds instead of stars only the stygian hunger of the void."
She spoke it as a whisper although it carried louder than her speech. Whether DuPage heard or not hardly mattered, because she did nothing to stop it, either too blocked by bodies or too overconfident in her invincibility.
"Phase 3, activate."
Denver's armor shimmered black and stars, galaxies, aurorae danced across her body. The miasma had already darkened everything but it yet grew darker in a sphere around her as she held aloft her Star Rod. The five-pointed star at its tip pulsed, trembled, cracked; its points split from the body and turned inward to pierce it. The yellow center unpeeled like a blooming bud until all gleam of gold became only an orb of total black.
In Phase 3, Denver had no capacity for movement.
The ground beneath her shattered in a circle and the chunks of earth and girls too close hovered upward uncontrollable. Toward her collapsed Star Rod.
"The fuck is this!" "Help me!" One had the perspicacity of thought to cry: "Black hole!"
The chunks of dirt fell into Denver's vortex. They swirled and swirled and no matter how large they were they passed through the eye of her Rod. Not the Terminatrix girls—the moment the danger surfaced, a force like they were all tied to invisible string wrenched them out of the pull and into the miasma's darkness beyond, in the direction where their Lady waited. It must be part of her power to recall her projections at any moment, which was fine. Denver had no real desire to destroy the Terminatrix, despite her worthlessness. She had no real desire to destroy San Bernardino and Murrieta-Temecula, either, but they were unfortunate enough to be caught in her pull. San Bernardino bought herself time by planting her pole in the ground and clinging tight to it, even as she clung Murrieta-Temecula tight to her chest like an infant sister, but Denver knew from experience: her field only grew.
The cracked circle around her hollowed into a bowl or inverted dome of dirt as everything, rock or road or root, crumpled into the black hole. San Bernardino's pole bent and her fingers slowly slipped. The closest supports of the bridge snapped and the cables twisted toward her. Laila tripped as she, at the edge of its reach, tried to backpedal from the field, and the dropped Aurora slid down the slope.
Oh God Denver what are you doing!
Run, Laila. I'll be fine—you will too if you stay away.
Her black hole even devoured the miasma, and in a sphere around her the air became clear, cold, and free of malaise. It felt as though the force was strong enough to suck the despair from her Soul Gem, a fantastic feeling filled her—God! It seemed so clear. Why would she have ever hesitated about using this ability? Why did she schlepp out nine trash Magical Girls when she only ever needed herself? Keeping them around had inhibited her own strength. The vanity that cultivated a self-image of "leader"... And to think most of the time she forgot Phase 3 existed. As though she sealed it away in her mind, never to open.
No need for St. Louis. No need for San Bernardino. No need for Aurora. Neither of them, new or old. Sage Rhys devoured the world.
While San Bernardino dug herself and Murrieta-Temecula deeper into the soil for safety, DuPage had never had a hope. She had positioned herself on a slope in the center of a flat road, with nothing but solid concrete on any side of her. Her progression toward the growing black hole was—irreversible. Incontrovertible. She had managed to remain standing, she hadn't fallen and slid on her side like most. Her entire body whipped like gelatin or even liquid, her robes aflutter and flecks flying off to mix a little gold into the darkness, her face distorted and stretched, her veil merging with it, a look of stupefied—dare she describe it such?—fear etched in what solidity remained, that was it! That brashness, the entire conflict crushed in one idiotic instant that Denver knew she would forever kick herself for not entertaining sooner, and this CLARITY. God, what a feeling, the hopelessness as DuPage ebbed closer and closer, quicker and quicker every inch she neared the source of the pull, nothing to save her, her own Aurora face down and not even transformed (and good too, Denver still had to be mindful of the possible effects swallowing Aurora's own sphere of unlimited destruction might cause)—Die. Die. Die. Die. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die! Spin in space for eternity, let the center of nothingness be your personal Tartarus!
Save us, said Murrieta-Temecula. But nobody could save anyone. Only Sage Rhys balanced the fates of—
A sphere of ice surrounded her.
Her black hole ate the ice away instantly, but more ice replenished it just as quickly. The ice entangled all the characters arranged: DuPage, Aurora, San Bernardino, Murrieta-Temecula. Only Laila, escaped from the black hole's tug, was too far away to become encased.
Uhhhhh... it's okay, boss. We have them trapped now...? You'll hurt the innocent if you keep it up like that.
That voice.
Sage knew she never died. And... she was right. San Bernardino, Murrieta-Temecula. What, what the fuck had she been thinking? She instantly deactivated Phase 3.
That voice, said DuPage.
That voice, said DuPage's Aurora.
That voice, said Laila.
How did they—
An arrow more ballista bolt than arrow tore through the circle of ice that surrounded her and pierced her body. But the arrow was not made of solid material and it did not pierce her body. It was made of water; it splashed against her, doused her entirely.
The water scalded with a heat she had never felt before.
Its sizzling hiss corroded her armor and soon her skin. She only felt it happen because it ate through her visor and eyeballs just as fast. Her unshaping body oozed onto the goo that was her knees as she pressed her hand with her Soul Gem against the nearest wall of ice to protect it. Her arm, eaten through at the elbow, fell off. Parts of her body sank into parts of her body, she became liquid herself.
Sight, sound, smell, sensation ceased. She soon failed to become aware of a body at all, liquid or otherwise, only that same blackness as when she lost her head in the river.
Ah. It was finally quiet. All those voices, all those people talking at once... It had really rattled her, hadn't it? No wonder she had become so nutty at the end. Noise, noise, noise. Only those moments of clarity when the Lady made the others fall silent... That was the kind of power she wanted to wield, to make everything quiet. Everything else revolved around that central tenet, no?
Aurora had such a soft voice. It stilled all the buzz. It made sense Aurora would be the one. When she spoke, there was nothing else...
Nothing else.
—
Stumbling down the slope from the bridge to the enormous cluster of ice that had swallowed everyone else, Hegewisch had to bite the back of her hand to stop herself from swearing. In her head it echoed anyway: fuckfuckfuckfuck. She lost her balance, hit the base at a half-tilted fall, and rolled up to circle the mound of ice to the entrance carved by the arrow of water.
At the sight of what was left of Denver she lurched aside and may have vomited if she had anything left in her deflated stomach. "Fuck," she said.
"Uhhhhh... I don't think that's appropriate, Junior Administrator?"
Two almost silent footsteps stopped at her back. Hegewisch turned, and as she expected there stood Denver's Aurora, the Goldilocks girl with her hair wound around her finger rather than stuffed in her mouth.
Of course, the moment Hegewisch finally heard her speak, she understood everything. Her voice, or vocal patterns, whatever you called it, were unmistakable. The elongated "uh," the spacey pause between clauses, the pitched interrogative. The tiny blonde girl looked nothing like the person the voice usually belonged to, but did it have to? The Empire had ways of changing one's appearance via magic. Anyone, if the Empress willed it, could look like anyone.
Hegewisch exhaled, closed her eyes, and mustered her resolve to exist as a real human being in the world still.
She bolted upright and saluted at smart attention. "Centurion Cook! I am fully aware of my verbal transgression. To rectify my error and ensure I avoid similar transgressions in the future, I implore you to dole upon me whatever punishment you see fit." This line tended to placate superior officers (assuming their mood was good) into only moderate punishment, which was about the best Hegewisch could hope for after dropping one of the cruder words in the lexicon. But she blurted the whole spiel on autopilot, barely even conscious of a need for her usual anxiety: All the while the sight of Denver's remains lingered in her head.
"Given the circumstances... yeahhhhh, I think we can let this one slide." Aurora, or Centurion Cook, motioned for Hegewisch to stand at ease as she passed by her into the dome of ice.
Centurion Cook, what are you doing? shouted the other Aurora, although the lengthy pause before she started indicated she had been waiting for DuPage to shout it first. If you do not release Centurion DuPage and me from this ice, we'll have no choice to construe your actions as treasonous. Correct, milady?
DuPage remained silent.
"Nahhhhh... I'm doing exactly what our munificent Empress asked." Cook crouched by Denver's arm, which had separated from the rest of the mess. It had maintained far more of its form than any other element of Denver's body, with palm and fingers distinct and visible, so when Hegewisch glanced at it in the corner of her eye she could overpower her nausea. From the palm, Cook plucked Denver's Soul Gem.
Someone shoved Hegewisch aside. Clownmuffle, somehow freed from Cook's ice, and who Hegewisch had just started to think had been unusually quiet during the proceedings. How did she escape? Her typical meme magic at play again? Well, she had half-buried herself to escape Denver's black hole, so she had probably only been partially covered in ice...
Not that it mattered. She had a bent pole in one hand and advanced upon Cook as though nothing meant anything, which to her it probably didn't.
"Give me her Soul Gem. Now."
"Nnnnno," said Cook.
"Laila, support me."
Did... did she not hear Laila blather excuses to Cook in the most deferential mode possible? Did she completely fail to read the situation? Did she truly expect Laila to drop everything and turn against yet another Centurion? And how did Clownmuffle herself expect to beat Cook when she walked straight into a dome of her ice and had the hissing remnants of Denver on the hollowed-out ground beside her? Blood stained every inch of her tuxedo, most of it ripped to tatters, most of her skin also ripped to tatters. One foot dragged, one shoe AWOL entirely. A row of needles lined her thigh, a small dagger was lodged between two ribs on her back. She lacked two fingertips and one eye drooped.
"Okay," Laila said. She drew her pistol, pointed it at the back of Clownmuffle's head, and undid the enchantment the instant before she pulled the trigger.
Even with so little warning, even at this range, Clownmuffle managed to turn halfway before the ordinary bullet took off a sheer plate of forehead and splattered half her frontal lobe across the ice. Clownmuffle sagged to one knee, then incredibly gripped her pole tighter and used it as leverage to begin to rise, shaky and slow.
Cook waved her hand once and a sheet of ice enveloped Clownmuffle before she got far. "Thanks, Junior Administrator... That fight coulda gone on a bit." She slid past Clownsicle and strolled out the dome, bending her back to stretch her arms and expel a yawn.
"Still good condition, whoa." Cook inspected Denver's Soul Gem. "She used her finisher and everything... Yeah, I'm impressed. It'd definitely be real bad if I, uhhhhh... You know. Smashed it. Something bad would happen. So I hoped she'd be weak enough I could hold on to it a bit and let her go natural-like... Law of the Cycles? You know anything about that, Junior Administrator?"
She knew everything about it. She could embark on a lengthy discussion, the kind the Empress demanded sometimes, but she figured Cook's question as rhetorical.
No, she had to speak: "I believe, that something good happens to girls to die from the Law of the Cycles, while girls who just die... just die. That's all I'm allowed to say, milady."
"Yeahhhhh... I know. What do you think, Junior Administrator? Does Denver deserve to have something good happen to her?" She turned her face to Hegewisch and smiled. "I think she does...?"
"Y-yes, milady."
Cook cradled the gem in her hands and stared into the miasma. "You made things difficult for me, Junior Administrator. Didn't expect you to even be here... Didn't expect you to get captured. If I spoke, you'd know it was me right away... So I had to pull that little stunt with that big snake girl. You know? No hard feelings."
Hard feelings? For faking her own death? Why would Hegewisch give a shit about that? Or did she mean luring Hegewisch into a dangerous situation with the lamia wraith?
(Or—and this was maybe Hegewisch's paranoid side speaking, spurred by a night subject to DuPage's whims—was Cook's original plan for *Hegewisch* to die to the wraith and she only switched things up when Denver saved her?)
She decided not to think about it. She was too damn tired to think about it.
"Yes, milady."
Cook drew back her hand and tossed Denver's Soul Gem into the darkness. A pang of unhappiness cut inside Hegewisch, sure Denver got bonkers near the end, but to throw her to the wraiths like that...
But the gem did not disappear into the night. It stopped in the middle of the black wall and hovered, a clear gleam in the otherwise murky park. No—not hovering. Something held it. A long black claw almost indistinguishable from the black behind it held the gem between two immense curved fingernails. The barest traces of a slight increase in the darkness formed the base outline of a massive shape, like a human silhouette magnified from its original form, except here the silhouette had form and corporeality as the seven-foot body opened vertically along its midsection to briefly unfold two batlike wings and place Denver's Soul Gem inside.
On either side of the figure appeared more vibrant, more defined, more real figures: about thirty total.
"The Lady accepts your offering," said a spokeswoman. "Miss Rhys will be a valued addition."
"Who are you?" Hegewisch said. When beside a superior officer, it was bad form to make oneself too relevant, but she wanted to know that Denver would be safe. "What will you do to her?"
"Her soul shall be redeemed," a different spokeswoman said unhelpfully.
If by redemption they meant Law of the Cycles—Hegewisch could live with that. She guessed. She knew God cared for all she could. This rotten death-wreaked world had no better end than actual, honest-to-God heaven. Denver, Rhys, whatever her name was. She deserved a little happiness.
"There's another here the Lady desires." Every time a different girl spoke. Nobody emerged as a particular mouthpiece for the shape in the middle. "Isabel Leyva—Murrieta-Temecula—the girl with the witch hat. You have her encased in ice. Hand her over and we'll go."
Cook kicked a clod of dirt with her foot. It broke apart and settled as powder on her sneaker. "Lots of you... But Clownmuffle gave you trouble? Maybe she's right, and Magical Girls get weaker the more you put in one spot? And you retreated from that black hole lickety-split sooooo... that means you can die right? Even if you're only projections or whatever?"
"We don't want to fight you. We only ask for a girl who has nothing to do with you."
"Uhhhhh... But she has a lot to do with me? I captured her and Clownmuffle both. They're gonna be my new friends now? Or the Empress's friends at least. I wasn't in your meeting, Junior Administrator, but wasn't that the order to DuPage—Convert those you can?" She tilted her head in appeal to Hegewisch.
"Milady, I regret to inform you I am in no condition to fight..."
"But I am? Yeahhhhh. I feel powerful right now. And my magic's great for wiping out lots of wimps in one go. Couldn't let DuPage beat me there. Sooooo I think I got this?"
The line of Magical Girls on the fringe of darkness stretched past the road on both sides. Deep pangs of migraine settled into Hegewisch's skull even to contemplate another battle heaped onto the fifty she already fought that night, more corpses piled. At least the Cycles left no corpse... Maybe she could pray to God for Denver's soul. And everyone else who died. It seemed unfair that girls who had their gems shattered could never go to heaven. Not even a morality merit system. Dumb luck. Only more evidence of God's weakness—a flawed system limited by lack of true omnipotence.
"You won't give her to us?"
"I guarantee you guys don't wanna fight me..."
The line of Magical Girls faced the lone Cook for several silent seconds afterward, their faces dull in each a unique way, Cook's dullest of all.
Then, they apparently agreed that they did not want to fight Centurion Cook, because without another word the thirty Magical Girls faded away and the black shape disintegrated into the miasma.
"Awesome...!" Cook shot double thumbs-up Hegewisch's way. "The Empire'll have two new recruits. I'm excited. I guess you got that sourpuss face cuz you gotta do the paperwork?"
"Yes, milady."
"Ha ha, I know you're lying. Now for the real thing the Empress sent me to do..."
She circumnavigated her ice dome at a lazy pace that Hegewisch matched with rigid, stringent strides in slow motion. Her ice was so clear that it was possible to see all the figures inside it, even despite the miasma—or maybe the ice kept the miasma out. They passed Aurora, who had transformed back into her armor but apparently had no space to summon her ball. Occasionally over the past few minutes Aurora had interjected limpwristed protests about Cook's treatment of her superior, but they had fallen to background noise and she only seemed to say them for posterity. Cook stopped before the bulk of ice that contained Centurion DuPage.
You braindead lackey, DuPage said, these words apparently so well-chosen she had spent the last few minutes pondering them before speaking. So the Empress wants me gone, huh?
"The fact that you've already jumped to that conclusion says a little about how justified she might be...? Maybe I just wanted to keep you safe for a bit."
It's so easy to see what the Empress is doing. She wants to eliminate anyone who knows who she really is. She's kept it a pretty small list until now anyway. You, me, the Handmaiden. So yeah, you're an idiot, Cook. She used you to get rid of me and then she'll get rid of you next.
"I doubt it? You're a bad girl, DuPage... really dangerous too. If you wanted, you could use your power in Chicago and wipe out half our ranks like BWAH...! So we had to get you out of the city and make sure you didn't suspect a thing until the very end. And she couldn't remove her blessing without you suspecting something, sooooo kinda tricky?"
Hegewisch, exhausted and slow on the uptake, only now started to piece together the situation and understand its ramifications. The Empress wanted DuPage gone. Fucking whoa. The Empress actually made a rational decision for once. Truly amazing.
"Really, only one person could have pulled it off... Meeeee, of course."
Cook reached into her ice. Where her hand pressed against it, the ice became liquid. It formed a watery cave just wide enough for Cook to slide her arm inside. She pressed her hand against the folds of DuPage's cloak at her midsection, carefully pulled the fabric apart, and reached deeper, into DuPage's body. She had her arm inside up to the shoulder and her face pressed to the ice and her tongue pressed against her upper lip and she shuffled around while DuPage remained immobile inside the ice.
Then Cook's face lit up and she smiled as she pulled from out of DuPage her crystal ball—the one she used to summon the miasma. The cave in the ice widened to let it pass, and the moment Cook plucked it out and held it in both hands the ice sealed back up and left DuPage locked inside.
You idiot. You numbskull. You braindead pawn. You self-effaced goon. You nincompoop. You... you, you horseradish! You're making a mistake, Cook. A big, fuddgubbling mistake.
"I like the cute words you make up when you try not to swear." Cook turned the crystal ball around in her hands and stared into its milky whiteness, which glowed with a faint effervescence.
If you break it, you'll regret it. Scratch that—you're already going to regret everything, it's just that if you break it you'll regret it a lot, lot, lot faster.
"Yeahhhhh... I know. Thanks to Junior Administrator here, the Empress has an idea of how things work? That breaking your Soul Gem could create something truly evil? So don't worry, I'm not gonna break it." She tucked the crystal ball under her arm. "The Empress wants it for something anyway. Who knows what? But she asked to make sure I got the gem for her. Otherwise I woulda let Denver suck you into space..."
No matter what you'll regret it. Kill me you'll regret it. Don't kill me you'll regret it. Unless you give me BACK MY GEM RIGHT NOW YOU WILL DEFINITELY REGRET IT.
"I'm sorry, DuPage. Even after everything, I consider you a friend? Yeah. I like you. And I don't think what the Terminatrix said was true. I think you can be redeemed. You're not so bad... But I gotta do what the Empress says? Yeahhhhh... uhhhhh... So I'm really sorry..."
She started to walk away from DuPage's body.
OH DON'T YOU DARE PULL THE "NOTHING PERSONAL" CARD ON ME YOU LITTLE KAH—KAH—KAH—COCKSUCKER! COCKSUCKER! IF THE EMPRESS WANTS ME GONE BECAUSE I LIKE TO GET DRUNK FROM TIME TO TIME THEN YOU SURE BETTER WATCH YOUR BACK—IF YOU'RE NOT TOO BUSY GETTING FUCKED FROM BACK THERE ALREADY! YOU THINK SHE GIVES A SINGLE SOLITARY SHIT ABOUT WHAT I DO COMPARED TO WHAT YOU DO? WHORE! WHORE! WHOOOOOORE!
As Cook walked, and Hegewisch walked behind her with occasional glances over her shoulder, the ice dome broke apart. Smaller chunks split from the main, while other parts liquefied into a flowing stream. The bits of ice that encased Clownmuffle, Aurora, and the witch girl—who had apparently passed out—bobbed along the growing stream and followed Cook, even travelling up the slope onto the bridge.
HUGE FUCKING MISTAKE COOK. I WILL BE BACK. YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME LIKE THAT. I WILL COME BACK AND OBLITERATE YOU. AURORA—AURORA. YOUR POWER, USE YOUR POWER AND BREAK OUT. I KNOW YOU CAN.
"Aurora won't help you," said Cook. "She's realized by now that if there's a vacancy in the Four Centurions she's one of the most likely to fill it...?"
WHAT. WHAT. WHAT. WHAT.
I. I'm sorry, milady, said Aurora. I'm sorry. If the Empress demanded it, then what can I do? I'm so sorry. I'm so—
CRUSH YOU. EAT YOU. I'LL EAT YOU ALL. YOU'LL ALL DIE. I WON'T FORGET. I WON'T DIE AND I WON'T FORGET. I'LL COME BACK. YOU'LL SEE. I KNOW SOMETHING YOU DON'T. I'LL COME BACK. I'LL KILL YOU. I'LL RUIN EVERY ONE OF YOU. I'LL COME BACK. I'LL—
Cook progressed far enough along the bridge with DuPage's Soul Gem under her arm that the tether between it and DuPage's body severed. DuPage fell silent. Her body fell dead. Cook stopped midstep, lowered her head, and sighed.
Silence. Silence was best right now. Nothing for Hegewisch to say.
"What about the people trapped in the miasma?" Hegewisch said. Although DuPage died, it remained.
"A squad of Chicago's strongest is already on its way to disperse this evil... Bahhhhh. When you think about it, DuPage really did have a bad power. Maybe if she had a different wish, things would've gone better for her?"
"Nobody's wish made them happier," said Hegewisch.
"It's true. So very true..."
Together, ankle-deep in a brook of water that swept along the bridge, they crossed to the other side.
