—

21: Gatineau

"Gatineau—" The Baroness popped a white chocolate bonbon into her clamshell-pursed lips and rolled it into one cheek like a hamster. Upon the offer of another, she tapped her collarbone and shook her head. "Mmnno, oh no, couldn't possibly―"

Her partner, damask candy bag outstretched, donned a knowing smirk. She drew the bag's drawstrings and tucked it into her overcoat's inner pocket.

The overcoat was interesting. Meaning it looked identical to the uniform of a gestapo. All black, overabundant leather, fascistic precision, badges and medallions, and of course the military captain's peaked hat. High boots, long gloves, and a sallow face within a tall collar. Only upon inspection did the insignia reveal no explicit Nazism: instead of an iron cross, swastika, or SS, it bore emblems of cartoon bunnies, suns wearing sunglasses, and the letters LOL. On her cap, just above the brim, Hello Kitty's face shined pacifically.

Dwelling on clothes, Nazis or no, felt like Clownmuffle thoughts. Murrie banished them and said: "That's how you pronounce it? Gatineau?"

"Oh—" The Baroness held a hand for pause, rolled the bonbon from one cheek to the other, and commenced to chew until she swallowed with an audible gulp. "Yes, you've spoken correctly—though I'm well aware la langue française is known for the, ahem, impenetrability of its, numerous facets—"

Her sharp breath stopped the sentence with the expectation she might continue. She didn't. She motioned at the Nazi's overcoat until the candy bag reemerged and a new bonbon was dispensed onto her palm.

Clownmuffle currently crouched in the gutter, vomiting innards.

"Pronunciation is bottom of my worry list. We only want to find the girl Gatineau. Even a general direction, I have a radar to—"

The Nazi interjected with a sharp smirk and a snaggletooth canine. "Ahaheh! You don't want to know that at all. You don't, you don't."

"Mmh—" said the Baroness.

"Never met a more unpleasant female." The Nazi shook her head and began to draw the strings of her candy bag, adorned with glittery stars and an equally glittery HAPPY NEW YEAR!, but the Baroness snaked her elastic fingers inside and filched another. In response, the Nazi poked her under the lowest rib, in the thinnest portion of the corset. "You, Your Highness, are gonna get fat."

"Untrue, untrue—" Chew, chew.

"So true."

Swallow. "My dearest protégé, you have yet to learn, of the unparalleled wonders, of a Puella Magi's metabolism." Swallow, with more finality. "It is in-con-ceivable to presume one of our nature could ever stray from the zenith of physical fitness—"

Clownmuffle vomited loudly. The Nazi folded her body almost ninety degrees at the hips to see around Murrie at the literally liquefying girl in the gutter.

"Look, you two," said Murrie, contemplating zipping to the next closest signature and asking them instead, "I don't care how unpleasant this Gatineau is. She's the only one who can fix my—companion—so, I'll deal with it. We have no other option. Just tell us."

"Ahoo—Innumerable apologies for my imprudence—We shall of course oblige your humble request for knowledge—"

"She stopped," said the Nazi, eyes fixed on Clownmuffle even as she hid the candy bag under her hat to thwart another heist attempt, "barfing."

"Oh, goodness—Finally! Wait, you're sure—?"

"She heaves any more she turns inside out, ahaheh." The toothy grin returned. "Empty. Nothing left!"

"Phew! Fetch her for me—"

The Nazi marched across the cobblestone street, hooked her finger into Clownmuffle's collar, and dragged her back. Clownmuffle's leg detached in the process.

The Baroness hefted the dome of her outrageous dress by the exoskeletal hoops that maintained its form and teetered on crystal slippers to the decaying body. Assisted by the Nazi, who helped hold the absurd profusion of skirts and petticoats and hoops together, the Baroness bent forward and summoned a clamshell mirror and plucked from it a pearl shaped and sized like the bonbons on which she snacked.

She shoved the pearl between Clownmuffle's chapped and bile-drenched lips, slammed a palm on the base of Clownmuffle's jaw, and forced her to swallow. She also broke off the jaw, but the Baroness smiled as though all were peachy as the Nazi seized her waist and wrenched her to an upright position.

First, nothing happened. Then, Clownmuffle's body thrashed epileptic against the ground and bloody foam burst from her mouth. The Nazi tilted and cackled.

"Oh what the fuck," said Murrie.

"Ahaheh. Watch, watch!"

So much foam spurted that it flowed onto the pavement and mixed with the gutter slush. Murrie stepped back to avoid its frothing. Clownmuffle became a shiny, lavender-tinted bulge in the swell.

"Feels even shittier than it looks, ahaheh." The Nazi bounced around the sidewalk, kicked a quaint brick wall, and swirled her ballerina goosestepper boot in a semicircular arc. "My first time I was like—WOOOOOAH! Ahaheh!"

"Du calme du calme, ma petite amie—AHOO! Du calme I said! You are—too—EXCITABLE—!"

She chased the Nazi around, incapable of catching her until she launched herself layers and all like a missile and pinned her against the wall in a headlock.

"Ahaheh, owowow, ahaheh!"

"DU—CALME—" The Baroness reached under the Nazi's cap and stole the candy bag.

Murrie made a concerted effort to ignore them. She knelt near the foaming heap and tried to discern any Clownmuffle within, which of course was the exact moment Clownmuffle burst upright, fully reformed, spotless, devoid of any injury.

She wore no clothes whatsoever.

As the Nazi and even the Baroness burst out guffawing, Clownmuffle shrank into a ball to cover herself while Murrie fought with her jacket and threw it off still tangled in one sleeve. Clownmuffle struggled to slide herself into it, Murrie couldn't fully escape, they flopped into the snow together. Much closer to Clownmuffle's weird, nineteen-year-old prepubescent body than she ever wanted to be. At least nobody was around to see them. Nobody except the Ottawa clowns, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Eventually Murrie got the jacket off and Clownmuffle got it on. It went down to her knees and the sleeves overshot her hands by several inches.

"Oh, oh—Oh—! Désolée, désolée—" said the Baroness, "Unfortunate side effect of my otherwise unimpeachable ability—Birth of Venus, after all—Sandro Botticelli—You cultured young women surely know such things?"

No. Murrie did not know such things. And she considered herself someone who knew a lot, for her age and social background. Hemet: "The ignorant never achieve." She had taken that to heart and read, and read, and read—but Sandro Botticelli eluded her, and she pinned down the urge to shove her fist down Baroness Bonbon's throat.

"Ahaheh, feels good to see it happen to someone else for a change," said the Nazi.

The Baroness smacked her and uttered a sharp, "Voyeur—!"

"Owowow, not that, schadenfreude. Schadenfreude!"

"Hmph—" She crossed her arms. "You ought to have averted your eyes in respect for her womanly decency, my protégé—"

"Balls about womanly decency, you sure give me quite the ogle when—"

Another smack. "Hold thy tongue!"

Instead, the Nazi extended her tongue and said "nyah-nyah" until the baroness plucked the tongue and pulled.

Their antics worsened. Murrie concentrated on Clownmuffle and sifted the foam in case her clothes had sopped to the bottom. They hadn't. Clownmuffle meanwhile folded and assembled and buttoned and knotted elements of the suit jacket until it better fit her body and concealed everything necessary.

"Eccck," she said, followed by: "Oh, I can speak again." Her bare feet constantly pattered the ground to avoid sticking to the ice. "Good. Telepathy detracts from communication. Something is lost."

"Says the MagNet slumlord," said Murrie.

"Dissimilar circumstances."

Clownmuffle arched her spine and checked her backside, posed beneath overdue Christmas lights strung from a decorative balcony, the effervescence of which in conjunction with the remaining seafoam on her hairless arms and legs caused her to shine, like literally shine. The Baroness not only healed Clownmuffle but imbued her with a, a certain beauty, Murrie disliked it. Clownmuffle ignored it, though. Her gaze drifted from her flat ass to the Nazi.

The Nazi quit laughing. "Problem?"

"Why," said Clownmuffle, "are you a nazi."

The Baroness nearly choked on her bonbon and any color left in the Nazi's Aryan face drained. Even her gothy eyeshadow paled. "I—that's not—I'm not a—I'm not that okay!"

"There's a strong resemblance."

"No!"

"Kinda true," said Murrie.

"Noooooooo..." The Nazi shriveled. "I swear, I didn't even know what a nazi looked like, I thought military costumes were cool, I like black, I'm not racist okay...!"

Clownmuffle tilted her head, examined the Nazi from various angles, pattered in an arc around her, scampered close and gripped the poor white supremacist by the waist to pose her, hoisting up the arms, running fingers along sashes and cords and medals, jingling any brass component. "I applaud the detail. Fine material. Stitching—very good. The medals add character. You're a nazi on a public image campaign. Trying to show that the Nazi party can be fun and friendly too. It's a unique image."

Fucking Clownmuffle.

"I SAID I'M NOT A NAZI," said the Nazi. She shot a desperate glare at her companion, who only laughed.

"Oh—Ahoo—Think not poorly of my poor protégé—! I tire ceaselessly to instill within her grand values—liberty—equality—fraternity—In our case, sorority—"

On tiptoe, Clownmuffle straightened the nazi's hat and tapped its Hello Kitty emblem. "This though. Bad. Very bad. Copyright infringement." She ignored the Nazi's flustered rebuttal and scampered back to take in the full picture. "Yes. Fantastic technical aspects, as expected from a military costume, traditional austerity compared to flashier, less utilitarian dress types—" (glance toward the baroness) "—plus the unorthodox mixture of comfortably cute and ominously Aryan coheres better than it ought, due to the medals only coming into focus upon closer observation, which causes the initial impression of Nazism to soften over time, showcasing more whimsy and innocence. Like an argumentative and—petulant woman who, upon breeding familiarity with a new friend, resolves into a more pleasant persona. The main flaw is the hat, it's—One cannot simply bite inspirations wholesale. And it's a centerpiece, too—Tragic. Final score, all elements weighed: 7 out of 10."

The Nazi stomped her foot in protest, but her boot slipped on an icy patch and she landed on her butt, to her companion's general merriment.

"Do me—do me—" said the Baroness.

"Of course. As for your assessment—"

"No, consider the time." Murrie pointed. Both Clownmuffle's ears bled. She had been fully healed a minute earlier and already she bled.

"Absolutely correct." The Nazi rocketed up and withdrew an antique stopwatch from one pocket. "We wanna finish hunting before the New Years fireworks, am I not wrong?"

"Not wrong at all my protégé, not wrong at all—" She crumpled the empty bonbon bag into a tinselly ball and sank it three-pointer style into a trash bin under an awning across the street. "There's not a thing like the New Years fireworks over the Hill—The way the clocktower lights up—C'est fantastique!"

C'est fantastique, Murrie wanted to mimic in falsetto. Yeah we fucking get it you speak French, how fucking cool, Murrie (and Clownmuffle) spoke Spanish and they didn't say sí or señorita every five seconds. Everything, their pointless decadence, playing, laughing, eating candies, Clownmuffle joining in oblivious to her own peril, it stirred nausea in Murrie's belly. One swallow kept it down: At least they weren't hostile. She detected six signatures in Ottawa and descended on the two together, theorizing they might be friendlier if they were already friends with one another. Her hunch proved right, and they avoided a fight with a territorial Canadian when all they wanted were directions. She should be thankful, she told herself. She got lucky.

Still. No—no. Focus.

She said: "You want to go, we want to go. So let's sort things out quick. We only want to know where to find Gatineau. We'll deal with her no matter how unpleasant she is. Just point us in a direction, please."

Her words sucked the cheer out of the space. The jokers quit flirting long enough for a dog's frantic bark to scrape somewhere distant, followed by a metal crash. A siren rang.

"I suppose—no point in hiding it—"

"You want her cuz she can fix that, right?" The Nazi pointed to the contorted metal ring on Clownmuffle's finger, almost severed at one section. "Gatineau and her rocks."

Murrie nodded.

"Okay, just. Just don't get disappointed if she doesn't give you what you want," said the Nazi.

"We're prepared for anything," said Murrie.

"Gatineau's not just unpleasant. She tried to murder me the first night she was supposed to be my mentor. Ahaheh..."

"Positively true—Lured her into the worst part of town, then abandoned her—If not for my timely intervention—!"

Some twinge pinched the base of Murrie's spine: You take the ones on the left. She forced those memories into that same sump where she buried her disdain. "Please. I can detect magic, I know the locations of the four others in this city, even a general territory..."

Another cold, long, silent pause. The Baroness and the Nazi stared at one another, the Nazi's smirk sheepish and nervous. Clownmuffle's bare feet went pat, pat. Pat, pat. She pinched her nose, which bled.

"I imagine—"

"Well, it's New Years, maybe she's somewhere else?"

"I cannot fathom that such a creature as her cares one iota about the holiday—"

"True, true, ahaheh."

"Which must mean she's inhabiting her typical haunt, non—?"

"Where else would she be? What else would she do?"

"And where's that," said Murrie, unheard, although the next line answered her anyway:

"Vanier, that infamous neighborhood of ill repute—Located, where now—? South of the river—?"

"North, northeast? We avoid that place as much as possible."

"Although I've heard reports that gentrification has born fruit—or at least the incipient buddings of fruit—"

Murrie had words to say about gentrification, but she couldn't get mired in this right now, and they had given enough information already. Of the four other signatures in Ottawa, only one was anywhere near the northwest. A single, lonely magical blip on the radar—Gatineau.

They kept talking nonetheless, Murrie had to throw up her hands. "Thanks, alright, thanks, enough. We won't waste your time. Let's go, Clownmuffle."

"Clownmuffle—!" said the Baroness. "I knew your visage rang a few silver bells—I ought to have known when you scored my protégé in that classic style of yours—"

"Yes yeah, it's her, the infamous Clownmuffle, but we gotta go." Murrie grabbed Clownmuffle's wrist and tried to pull her any direction away, but stopped upon the sensation of ripping skin.

The Nazi tilted her head with the same smirk. "Who?"

"I'll explain later—For as you can see, they're in a rush to meet our stony 'friend,' if I may even call her such in jest—Only one last thing before you go—" Her whole papery bulk heaved forward, producing from a dainty purse four bills, Canadian twenties each.

"Oh," said Clownmuffle.

"I insist, I insist—You must take it—'Twas my magic, after all, that consumed your vestments, so it's only fair I finance their replacement—You'll find a department store some two blocks thataway, of a chain sure to be open even this late, even on this day—I insist—"

Clownmuffle took the money without scruples. Murrie might have protested, but she would rather Clownmuffle get pants before they begged Gatineau for help.

The one who protested was the Nazi. She spurted forward and nearly seized the baroness's wrist before the exchange transpired, although Clownmuffle was quicker. "That's a lot of money, can we still pay rent tomorrow?"

"Du calme, I say to you, du calme—I make it my practice to siphon funds for these holiday—Those bills remained from my savings for your Christmas present—"

The mere mention of this "Christmas present" made the Nazi blush. "Alright, ahaheh..." Her smirk remained, wobbly but toothy.

"Thank you," said Clownmuffle. "You're kind girls."

The Baroness curtseyed, the Nazi scratched her hair under her cap. Murrie summoned her broom and wondered how Clownmuffle would ride wearing just a long shirt. Meh, her problem. She motioned for Clownmuffle to get on behind her.

Clownmuffle sat sidesaddle, pressing her hands against the front of her jacket to keep it down and remaining balanced despite holding onto nothing. As the broom ascended and the Baroness and Nazi waved below, Clownmuffle said:

"Hey. One thing, you two. Murrieta-Temecula, please wait."

Grooooooooan.

"Is this the first New Years you two have been Magical Girls?"

"Indeed—I contracted February this year—" said the Baroness. "My protégé could only be described as a neophyte."

"Advice: These holidays seem like happy times. Safe times. That's a trick. They're the most dangerous times. Despite the joy and celebration, the full loneliness of many only now becomes apparent. I've been a Magical Girl six years, every year a girl in my area dies either Christmas or New Years. Be vigilant."

The odd couple, dwindling below on the black stone road, looked at one another and back at Clownmuffle. "Hey," said the Nazi, "thanks. We'll watch our backs, right?"

"Exactement—" said the baroness. "Many thanks, much appreciation—"

"I wish you happy lives," said Clownmuffle.

They parted. Murrie glanced over her shoulder before she crested the first row of rooftops, past the bloodyfaced Clownmuffle, down the narrow street that seemed a relic of colonial times or a tourist trap designed that way, to the alley that the Baroness and Nazi commenced down. It effused festive cheer, warm lights in the designs of mistletoe or reindeer, quaint patches of snow shoveled into neat piles and no trace of trash. The Baroness and Nazi returned to their antics, no longer audible but expressed through exaggerated pantomime, bodies arching to laugh, to prod, to seize the partner by the waist, to poke a cheek or tousle a lock of hair, and it was such a perfect image, wasn't it? A perfect image of frivolity, apoliticism. Flamboyance and a disembowelment of history, a latter-day Marie Antoinette and her Sanrio anti-Semite, the classic symbols of oppression and racism made saccharine and harmless.

Somehow, Murrie couldn't hate them. Did they annoy her? Definitely. But as she steered her broomstick over the rooftops and they disappeared irrevocably she hoped things ended well for them, she seconded Clownmuffle's blessing: she wished they had happy lives.

She began to wonder if, in forgiving Clownmuffle, she had let go of too much. Part of her wanted to be distressed over her attitude, but the other part didn't care. It seemed like a stage of acceptance: First you hate something, then you hate that you don't hate it, then you don't hate it.

Then you're a degenerate like the rest.

—

Everything about the façade screamed crack house. Murrie knew plenty in San Bernardino, they had a look. You drive down an ordinary street with ordinary homes and suddenly there's one with boarded windows, carless driveway, segments of roof sagging inward, junk on the porch. It wasn't especial dereliction, but compared to the ordinary suburban realm around it, it stood out.

Here, inner city Ottawa, south of the river dividing them from the Quebec of Steph's Arcade Fire, the layout possessed somewhat more verticality, less crack house than crack tower. But it lacked the grandiosity of the Chicago projects. Chicago was a monument. A profusion of soulless obelisks, a critical mass of dispossession. The story of the people who lived in those modern art towers was one of segregation, racial covenants, class exploitation. Who were the dirt people of Canada? From the concentration of signage she'd seen since entering this neighborhood, she assumed the French. And true to French form, even their squalor had a sedate, refined, lachrymose bent.

On the uppermost (third) story, squeezed between abandoned furniture, Murrie and Clownmuffle waited at a door. No light shone under but they pressed their ears to the wood to detect what they knew was inside. It came faint and in whispers, a conversation in a language neither knew. A sharp laugh. All the voices were male.

"If she's aggressive, what's our plan," said Murrie.

"I trounce her. She agrees to my demands."

Sure. From all reports, this Gatineau deserved a trouncing. She knocked.

The voices on the other side ceased, but nobody called to them and nobody answered the door. No footsteps creaked across the floorboards and no iris flashed in the peephole. The conversation resumed.

Murrie knocked again and this time the conversation failed to pause.

Clownmuffle tried the knob. Locked. Murrie stepped from the door and peered between the piled stacks of cabinets and shelves. Down one end of the hallway. Down the other end.

She sensed a miasma. Traces at least. And her senses weren't attuned to such things. But a wraith ambush probably meant nothing to people like Clownmuffle and Gatineau. Gatineau hadn't moved in at least an hour.

Murrie transformed and manifested her wand. No need to smash down someone's door. Tapping the wand tip to the knob, she incanted the magic word, which she had no difficulty remembering: "Alohomora."

The lock mechanism clicked and the door slid ajar. A noxious plume burst into her face and she staggered aside coughing, trying to expel the thick ashy taste deep down her tongue. Whatever toxins drifted in that air stained her instantly, her skin, lungs, under her fingernails. She leaned against a chair for support and it turned out to be a chair from which Clownmuffle had the leg to wield like a stake so it collapsed under her weight and she sliced her palm on a splinter.

Clownmuffle strolled inside. Pressing the blood against the unarmored segment of her pants, Murrie waddled after.

To someone, this world was comfort. The dinginess, the drabness, the total lack of color, the suffocation. Someone had adapted to this terrain. The weaponized air required certain lungs and certain eyes. If outside had been a limp but familiar vision of poverty, the inside was a pocket dimension, a void, something divorced from any external reality. Were there walls? Theoretically.

Through the murk the solitary light of an anglerfish emerged: a bare bulb suspended by a wire. Beneath it a rickety wooden table and four hunchbacked figures gathered around an infinite cluster of bottles and ashtrays.

And it was like,

Oh. They're just normal fucking people.

Three men, all white, all bearded, although with different gradations of beard length, from a trimmed goatee to a brown bushy conniption. Functional winter wear, faded from years of repeated use but no worse than Murrie in her shredded suit or Clownmuffle in oversized 80s pastels fished from the bargain bin. They held hands of cards and smoked cigarettes. Bills swelled in the center. They drank from their bottles and muttered in French and none glanced toward the newcomers except maybe the bushiest.

Only lack of beard distinguished Gatineau. Her general ugliness obscured her age. She ogled her cards and tapped ash into the dregs of a brown bottle. When her peers lulled she muttered something terse and eroded in its beginning and end.

Kyubey perched on her shoulder. His pink eyes punctured the smoke and his fur remained unsullied, like a photoshopped image. You made it!

"Surprised?" said Clownmuffle. Nobody at the table looked.

No, my calculations strongly indicated your survival. I apologize for not helping earlier, but my assessment indicates that psychologically you perform better when you don't rely on others.

The classic pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps line. Ignoring how an aqueous Clownmuffle required Murrie to ferry her the last hundred miles—or did Clownmuffle consider that something she earned? By making a friend?

Gatineau flopped her cards on the tabletop and spat. She snapped the top off another bottle and swigged. One of the beardmen won the round and raked the money, so she slid another bill to the center and received a new hand. "Wheech," she said, "of you ees, Vizcarra?"

It sounded like more French at first but the word "Vizcarra" oriented Murrie. She pointed to Clownmuffle.

"And who the fawk are you?" An imperceptible finger flicked the stub of her cigarette into Murrie's breastbone, hard enough to sting.

"Murrieta-Temecula."

I explained to you she might also come, said Kyubey. Remember?

Gatineau shrugged. "How old, fille?"

Murrie said her age.

"Bah, fawking sick of thirteen-year-olds, get the fawk outta my face."

Please, Miss Côté-Lalumière. There's no logic in bickering. It'll be best for everyone involved if you repair Miss Vizcarra's Soul Gem as soon as possible. Do you remember our deal?

Gatineau considered her cards. The cigarette rolled along the ring of teeth embedded in her lower jaw. While a beardman murmured French, Clownmuffle tapped her chair leg against her knee, producing a hollow gong. "So you struck a deal with her," she said. "Funny. I recall not long ago you refused to even give me her name. Wasn't worth it. Not energy efficient? Some such argument."

The situation has changed. Your health has increased in value. It's quite simple, really. Nothing that should cause any alarm or suspicion.

"He thinks you can avert some catastrophe," said Murrie.

The poker round ended. Gatineau lost again, but this time she wagered less. The midsized beardman accrued the winnings and shuffled the deck. Cards flicked around the table with careless precision.

For some time the card game continued in silence save the occasional francophonic quip.

Well, Miss Côté-Lalumière? I've outlined the terms of our deal to you in great deal, and you claimed they were satisfactory. I ask you, please uphold your end quickly. Miss Vizcarra's state has declined—

"Well I fawking said I want the other beetch gone but you don't fawking listen to that so watdefawk?" She spat her cigarette into the ashtray and lit another, hands trembling, using her cards as a shield for the flame.

What a nobody. The hype went nowhere, Gatineau was rudimentary unpleasant. Clownmuffle at one point described her as misanthropic, but she sure got along fine with the beardmen. A Hollywood misanthropy that substitutes mere rudeness for true hatred of humanity. "Sure," she said, "I'll go."

"Stay," said Clownmuffle. "You're my friend. You have no reason to leave."

Grimacing, Gatineau tossed her cards out of contention and let another beardman earn his keep. "Fawk. Fawk."

Two beardmen partook in a conversation lasting three whole lines of dialogue.

Your power only takes a few seconds, said Kyubey, so I'm confused why you're wasting time. Miss Vizcarra, please provide your Soul Gem. Miss Leyva, please leave. It would be illogical to jeopardize everything over something so insignificant.

"Yeah, it's fine." Murrie stepped backward, struck a bureau, reoriented. "No point to get into an argument over something dumb. I'll be outside."

"I want you to stay," said Clownmuffle.

Miss Vizcarra, I guarantee that in the almost nonexistent chance of a fight, Miss Leyva would be absolutely useless. There is really zero value to her remaining in this room.

"There are other reasons."

I cannot conceive of any.

Shit. Clownmuffle's nervous. Or maybe she's prideful? Did she want Murrie to remain for reassurance or simply to deny Gatineau's slight? Both reasons were idiotic. Kyubey for once was absolutely right. She turned and hurried for the door, only to no longer see it until the air of smoke parted and she walked straight into it.

She rubbed her eye and felt so dumb but when she glanced back nobody even watched her. Gatineau rearranged her cards and Clownmuffle pried the twisted ring from her finger. Except the finger came off before the ring did. That at least made it easier to remove the ring, which she then plopped on Gatineau's edge of the table before discarding the finger atop the mound of a nearby trashcan.

The missing finger captured Gatineau's attention. She watched it as, divorced from its body, it quickly decomposed to mix with rinds and peels. "I am reminded. I'm not doing this sheet for free, no?" Her gaze flicked to Clownmuffle.

Murrie paused with her hand on the doorknob.

Of course not. I don't understand why your memory has suddenly become so faulty, even by human standards. I will provide you with—

"Not free for her," said Gatineau. "I want something from her, too."

That's ridiculous. Given the level of time and energy you needed to heal her, my terms are already exceedingly generous—

"It's fair," said Clownmuffle. "To get something, I must give something. Want me to fight wraiths for you? Sure. For a day, a week. Month even. When I'm healthy I'm efficient. I won't need much for myself."

"Tsssh." Gatineau lost another hand. She jabbed her fingers into her eye sockets and rubbed them in small circles. She stubbed her cigarette on her thumbnail and lit another. "Fawk that. That's what Monsieur Cube gives. Cubes, cubes. I'll have all the fawking cubes I need, no? I want something only you have."

Miss Côté-Lalumière! Our deal—

"You do not understand, Monsieur Cube. In this fawking scenario I actually have a good fawking position for once." She received a new hand and immediately tossed the cards back to the dealer. "You need something, only I can give. She needs something, only I can give. I get the maximum I can get, non? Is this not your 'logique,' monsieur?"

Your supposition relies on the fact that only you can restore Miss Vizcarra's Soul Gem. However, I have a specialist who can take the powers of others. I prefer not to resort to the elimination of a useful Magical Girl, but—

"Ah yes. Your specialist who takes the powers. I know all your specialists, I am good friends with so many. Which was she again? Sepulveda, non? Bad luck, bad luck, monsieur. I heard she died in Minneapolis last week. Baaaad bad timing. Don't feed me boolsheet like I don't know my current fawking events."

There are other Magical Girls with similar abilities.

"Where? China? India? Look at this gem." Gatineau held Clownmuffle's ring toward the lightbulb. Her three beardmen glanced, realized she was still not talking to them, and returned to their game. "Ooh, so bad. Never seen one this bad. How long will she last?"

Please, Miss Côté-Lalumière. What you intend to ask of Miss Vizcarra could kill her. If she dies—

"It's fine," said Clownmuffle. "Whatever she wants. I'll do it."

"She won't fawking die anyway. I can restore her gem just enough to keep her alive. I will keep your precious fawking person alive for you, fawk." She lit a cigarette only to realize she already had one pressed between her lips. Unsure what to do for a moment, she stuck the second next to the first. "As long as she lives in the end, you don't care what I do, non?"

"I won't die," said Clownmuffle.

Miss Vizcarra, please trust me. There is a decent chance it will kill you even to hear what she wants from you.

"Then I'll heal her a bit first, fawk. Fawk." She spat out both cigarettes, lit a third, and inspected Clownmuffle's ring, twisted, bent. "This, it's all very seemple. You're all being fawking infants, it's so seemple."

You are taking risks with the fate of this world, does that mean anything to you? If you refuse to abide by the terms of the deal we both agreed upon, then I'll be forced to renege on my terms as well.

"Non, non." She swayed upright into the room's mist, as vaporous in her motions as the smoke that enveloped her, and tapped the tabletop with two fingers to draw the attention of her beardmen, to whom she then sludged some French. The beardmen nodded, half-raised hands in farewell salutes, as she rolled along the round table's edge through all the staggered angles of the room. "I get both deals. Both deals, are we in agreement? Or no deal."

Kyubey hopped off her shoulder as she rose, bouncing off the head of a beardman and landing on the handle of a broken cabinet. He said nothing and Murrie had to think Gatineau had him in a bind. She might have derived satisfaction in it if she hadn't started to wonder what exactly Gatineau wanted from Clownmuffle and whether she were as normal as first thought. As Gatineau approached her she stepped aside and into an object, a tall African mask on a pole, which wobbled when its triangle nose jabbed her spine. Murrie sought a reason for its existence and found none.

"It's all very seemple. Come, I'll show you, Vizcarra. You too, eediot fille." She opened the door and stepped into the detritus of the hallway. Clownmuffle followed close and Murrie, after steadying the African mask, departed too.

They walked single file down the hallway, down the stairs, out the doorway, into the street. Along the way Gatineau tossed the ring over her shoulder and commanded Clownmuffle to make it a gem. Clownmuffle complied, but it required maximum effort. Murrie held her as she swayed treacherously into a fence and a fresh deluge of blood streamed down her face. The polished luster of her skin had completely faded, she was gray as ash or a wraith, parts peeled, faster than before. Nonetheless, the ring became a gem. Clownmuffle survived the transformation. She returned it, a withered opal stump dripping black water, to Gatineau.

"Sheet, you're fawking resilient. That's good. That's what I want. That's why it has to be you. Fawking others like us, too damn weak, oui? Fawking thirteen-year-old beetches. Can't handle nothing. Boy doesn't like them, they cry. Boy likes them, they cry. That kind of sheet. Pathetic, non?"

Her fingers snapped, she transformed. Her dull clothes became a flowing verdant gown, embroidered with silver in shiny thin lines that ran intricate patterns down to her expansive flounce. She might have even looked pretty if not for the cigarette still clenched in her mouth and the dead gaze in her eyes.

"It's very seemple for me, see? Watch."

She pried the cigarette from her teeth, tapped the corroded gem with the unlit butt, and Clownmuffle shrieked. She clutched her throat and slammed against a brick column beside her before Murrie could stop her. For a strangled moment of fear Murrie thought she might become epileptic, thrash wildly, rip off parts of her decaying body in the process, but it was a single sharp moment, and the next moment Clownmuffle bent over and panted into the ground.

The gem in Gatineau's palm had reformed. Partially. A "leetle beet," as you might say if you had an insufferable French accent—

A light blipped out on Murrie's radar. She had stopped paying much conscious attention to it once they met Gatineau, but the abrupt change triggered her senses like an ambient noise unexpectedly ended. Ottawa had seven signatures―six locals and Clownmuffle―now only five locals. Someone in the city had died.

The tendons tightened in her chest. She kneaded the notch at the base of her throat to revive the breathing, closed her eyes, and crouched to better examine her radar. Six signatures remaining, please don't let it be one of them, not one of them, and after Clownmuffle even told them to be careful―

It wasn't. She caught two signatures close together in the general area where they had encountered the Baroness and the Nazi. They were both alive, it hadn't been either of them, and Murrie sagged a tremendous gust of air out her unstopped esophagus.

Then she felt like an asshole. Someone had died, some young girl in this same cold air under these same gleaming icicles in this same bilingual city. Not someone she met but someone she might have. If they had asked the girl who died for directions instead, if Clownmuffle gave her the same warning she gave the other two, would this girl have lived? Would one of the Baroness or Nazi or both have died?

Murrie opened her eyes and scampered after a Clownmuffle and Gatineau drawing ignorant into a new passageway between the buildings. She wondered about this dead girl she had only ever known as a light in her mind, a blip on a radar. Did she speak French? If so, did she mix in French words when she spoke English? Was she young, old? Was this her first New Years as a Magical Girl? Did wraiths get her or Cycles?

Around the world, Magical Girls were dying. One had probably already died since. She never met this girl, she had no reason to be affected, yet somehow it affected her. She teetered on the precipice of tears. She yanked her head to the side and instead loosed a phlegmatic sneeze. Her nose ran and she wiped it on her cuff. In Chicago, she had felt the lights die the same way, one after another. At one point she lost count. Over ten. And she had even known them, at least a little, yet nothing affected her then, maybe it had been adrenaline, fear for her own life, determination to rescue those still alive, it felt like a different world then, but even in this world the death had followed her.

Silly―Sentimental. But she thought about the Baroness and the Nazi. It hadn't been them, but it could have, and in the end all Magical Girls shared a certain kinship of experience, even Clownmuffle, even Gatineau...

After a long walk, which led them to what seemed a different part of the city, nicer, full of leafless parks and homely architecture, a skyline on one side and a bright yellow river on the other, Gatineau stopped before a hatch set into the ground in front of an unassuming apartment. The hatch had a padlock and a detransformed Gatineau, after discarding and lighting another cigarette, fished her pockets for a key.

Kyubey hadn't followed them, but he or another body of his poked his head from a second-story windowsill. I implore you to reconsider, Miss Côté-Lalumière. Even partially healed, Miss Vizcarra will not react well. Can you not see the importance of the situation?

"I won't die," said Clownmuffle.

The odds that you will die are high enough to cause me concern, said Kyubey.

"I won't die."

The death of the unknown Ottawa girl lingered in Murrie's head. "Let's at least be careful."

"I'm always careful."

Yeah right. Before Murrie rebutted, Gatineau turned to her, slinging a key on a ring. "You―fille. Since you fawking want to follow me around so much, I guess you can see. Maybe it kills you too?"

If it could kill Clownmuffle, then―No, Murrie decided, immediately and without hesitation, that she would follow.

Once everyone's intentions became clear, Gatineau shrugged, absorbed another intake of smoke, and undid the lock. When she hefted the basement hatch, though, only stone waited beneath it: a solid, seamless wall of rock. Murrie predicted a practical joke before she remembered Gatineau's power, and Gatineau transformed and discarded her cigarette onto the rock face. Where the orange dot of flame struck, a straight cut like those in quarried marble split across the middle and the rock parted to reveal a few steps dwindling into total darkness.

"No rails," spoken upon the lighting of yet more tobacco, "watch the step."

They descended. Gatineau's cigarette served as their only light, fading and flaring with her breath, bolts of light flowing down the silver veins of her gown and then retracting like pumped blood. The stairs spiraled and an aural pulse rose from the pit in the center. Down, down, down. The distance soon became absurd, unreasonable, and no sense of an exit remained above, although Murrie had not shut the hatch behind her. No sewer system would go this deep. Deeper still, and deeper still. The same rhythmic clacks of the same soles upon the same steps. Ten minutes passed. More. The signatures of the other Ottawa girls rose upon the Z-axis. The monotony broke only when Gatineau discarded her cigarette into the center and lit another, and in these moments the little ember vanished into nothingness before its light revealed any floor or walls.

Murrie wondered how many cigarettes could possibly be kept on a person.

The temperature gradually increased. By some point it actually became warm. Sweat beaded on her forehead. What was this, a geothermal vent? Did they burrow deep enough to reach mantle? The constant circling, the constant lack of progress—she hated these circles, it only made her thoughts circle too, wondering the same things about their destination and the intention of their host, at several points she considered summoning her broomstick and rushing down the center until some bottom emerged.

She didn't. She followed Clownmuffle. She wiped her brow. Her eyes had adjusted long ago but only the outlines of the staircase became apparent. She watched Gatineau and learned only that she lit her cigarettes not with a lighter but by scraping two fingernails so brusquely together to spark. Magic had to be behind that maneuver. Maybe she could harden her own bones like gemstones. This girl might even be older than Clownmuffle, did that make her even harder to kill? Was there a cutoff point, like if you survive a certain amount of time as a Magical Girl, you then become immortal? She considered that Kyubey had not leaned too heavily on threats to have her terminated.

At a certain point, the hum from below adopted a new character. After several more revolutions, it became clear it was a voice.

Not an intelligible voice. Just a voice. And even as they descended and the voice became louder, it never became intelligible. It was a voice making noise, random, meaningless noise. More goat than human.

They reached the bottom. The ground was flat, smooth, and stretched in all directions. The exact geometry remained unclear and only the stairwell they departed distinguished the dull black terrain.

The voice continued. It came from every direction and no direction.

This is your final chance. Kyubey's voice from an equally indistinct direction. Murrie caught his eyes high on the stairwell.

"Ah, wheech would be best?" Gatineau gazed into inconsequential directions as though they held great consequence. In her cigarette's light Clownmuffle became only half a face.

Then she tapped a wall that until then Murrie thought was only a void. A white line split from floor to twice Clownmuffle's height and immense doors of stone parted. Delirious light streamed through, blinded Murrie; she squinted, then covered her eyes.

When she took her hand away, a spotless shining room confronted her, a room of every conceivable variety of precious stone, arranged into patterns like silken strands, except in such a space it was thick rivulets of crystal, lapis lazuli, amber, peridot, blood beryl, sapphire, garnet, emerald, hues contrasted in meticulous variety, different shades placed in contention to magnificent effect, everything swirling or seeming to swirl to a central pillar of translucent ruby, and the effect of the entire thing was such that only once Murrie's eyes were guided to this pillar did she realize:

A human being was encased inside.

Gatineau tossed her cigarette against an amethyst whorl, and the amethyst opened its mouth and devoured it. She lit another.

"So." Murrie lingered at the entrance, although Clownmuffle had followed Gatineau inside. "So this is what you do? Collect people?"

"Oui."

"Kill them, taxidermy them, place them in display cases—"

"Oh non. Non. People who are dead are useless, non? The body, soulless, it's ugly? The value is the life. See."

Upon a marginal movement of the wrist, a straight line spread up the ruby pillar and parted like two vertical lips. The human inside spilled out but was caught by a quartz slope that rose from the ground. A woman, nude. Mid-20s maybe, short blonde hair and gaunt. Her head lolled semi-sensible as the quartz morphed into a throne that perched her body upon it in the most regal manner her akimbo limbs allowed. Her compressed chest spasmed with breath as Gatineau placed a cigarette between bloodless lips and lit it for her.

This bitch. This fucking bitch. Clownmuffle merely killing people had been bad, but this—torture, suspended animation, zoological reduction, dehumanization—to call this "misanthropy"—and for a time Murrie had thought Gatineau was merely rude. She should have expected something like this but—and Kyubey had wanted to cut a deal with her, with generous benefits... The Baroness, meanwhile, used her power to help Clownmuffle and asked for nothing in return, even gave them money—she sank to her knees. She clenched her hands into balls and rubbed her knuckles against her temples. Gatineau stroked her captive's hair, whispered something in French, and withdrew from somewhere a cellophane-wrapped slice of meat which she tossed to the girl like a fucking dog. The girl regarded it dully, then recognition flashed in her face and she tore at the wrapper with her fingernails.

These people, with Clownmuffle it had been, it had been vengeance, retribution for lives taken, these lives still existed, a rescue—but even if they killed Gatineau what about the others, trapped within tons of solid stone, for surely there were others and this was not the only room—

"How long would you want me," said Clownmuffle.

Gatineau watched her captive eat. "That's the problem, non? With us. It's bad, with the grief cubes? Meat's easier to get. I do not want to waste the good sheet on you, but at the same time, there's something about our bodies, it's different than humans, non? Monsieur Cube won't let me fawk with his precious magic girls, and even if I could, all of them are fawking thirteen-year-olds, I don't fuck around with damn thirteen-year-olds. Fawk that. But I understand you are much older..."

"Nineteen."

Blood from the steak ran down the woman's chin, down her chest, pooling into her seat, and the minerals absorbed it. Any trash, any liquid, any imperfection disappeared into porous holes that opened and then closed, mouths hidden everywhere in every wall.

"Nineteen. And in a position where Monsieur Cube must allow me. Good, good. Very opportune, you might say. The lives we live, it's a balance? The physical elements of survival, weighted against those you cannot hold. We all must live on more than bread..."

"Just tell me, how long."

"Ehhhh, given I don't want to spend cubes on you, and how Monsieur Cube will give me sheet if I keep you too long, let's say, one day? Twenty-four hours?"

Clownmuffle broke into a wide grin. "That's it? That's all?"

"Oui."

The voice that spoke in tongues still filtered from the darkness outside the room, and Clownmuffle's laughter matched it, resounded in a similar pattern of nonsense, total hysterics. She fell onto her back and rolled, she kicked her feet, and despite her thrashing no pieces of her even fell off, although she did bleed and the crystals and sapphires drank the blood deep. She didn't care. Would Murrie had expected different? She didn't care what Gatineau was doing here to these people. It was one day trapped in amber like a Jurassic mosquito, perhaps excised for some moments of physical torture, the kind a Magical Girl might withstand even if a human could not, and then—Presto. Fixed. All woes ended.

"You're fucking sick, you're fucking sick," Murrie flung impotent fists through the air. "I know you don't give one shit what I call you but someone has to call you it so here I fucking am, you're a sick fucking bastard—"

"Ah, now it's revealed why I hate you fawking thirteen-year-old beetches, non?" Gatineau wiped some brown liquid from her captive's lower lip. The captive had revivified totally and now watched Gatineau rapt and meek.

Clownmuffle returned to coherence. "One day. Kyubey said this would kill me even to hear it. But I feel better than I have in days. Amazing—one day."

"Ah, well, I have not yet explained the entirety of my intentions," said Gatineau, as her hand slid down her captive's chin, down her chest, and between her legs.

Clownmuffle ceased laughing.

The captive ran her fingers carefully along Gatineau's downstretched arm, leaned her head against Gatineau's shoulder, and purred like a cat. Her legs started to—started to—it made Murrie sick. And then the wall behind Gatineau split open and a series of golden shelves cascaded outward, stocked with a neat and organized assortment of implements—

If the implements had been blades, saws, spikes, razors, anything like that, Murrie might have understood better, but it was nothing like that, it was things—she had never seen these kinds of things before, she had a vague knowledge of some of them, and her face flushed with heat even to look. Meanwhile the quartz throne descended into the ground but out of the floor and ceiling shot chains of—of—Murrie didn't fucking know all her goddam gems, she wasn't a fucking encyclopedia, something kinda teal colored, the chains shot out and clamped around the captive girl's ankles, wrists, neck, they pulled her taut, stretched her, positioned her, and yet the girl wasn't crying out or fighting, or even giving in dejectedly, her eyes were gleaming, she was grinning, she opened her mouth and made another feline purr and watched as Gatineau pulled from the shelves a—

Clownmuffle ran screaming bolting slipping bouncing into edges and abutments, gouging deep gashes in her butter skin as she struck something, revolved, flung her legs out from under her and fell, clawing and scraping, snapping off her fingernails, her shoes squeak-squeak-squeaking until finally they caught a seam between two types of stone and gained traction, even at this moment only propelling her at a drooping angle into the darkened central amphitheater and the promise of the stairwell etched in faint lines from the chamber's light, and Murrie ran after her, an immediate response before she had time to process it, her head even still half-turned toward Gatineau's display, and the glimpse she caught sent an unbidden tremor through her body and a tingling upon her skin, then the sight was gone, Clownmuffle had already reached the base of the steps but her progress had slowed because one leg had snapped under the knee, and now the percolation of the tongue-voice grew and coalesced into the form of a male whirling out of the darkness from some opposite corner. Murrie skidded to a halt although Clownmuffle kept crawling as the man, not exactly nude but wrapped in translucent silken attire that undulated with his many exaggerated movements, golden rings jangling around his wrists and ankles, reached her by the stairs and seized her wrist, she grunted a savage "let go" but he said:

"Are you the one who doesn't like dogs?"

Which meant nothing but it forced Murrie to half-turn toward the open door of the gem chamber where the captive was now chained onto all fours with Gatineau leaned over her from behind, one hand placed upon the girl's gaunt side and the other perched on her own chin, head tilted and gaze equal parts coolly cocksure and apathetically inquisitive, although her eyes were set on Murrie and Murrie found herself glued to the spot, watching the rhythmic motions of hips, the ecstasy on the captive's face which seemed to have transmogrified into that of a bullfrog, the way the girl's hands were now trapped inside the floor to hold her still, only the dancing man's hands clambering further up her own arms broke the spell, he held her at the shoulders and leaned in to—sniff—her, at which point she kicked him hard in his thigh and broke away to chase Clownmuffle.

Her heart, lungs, ribs pounded inside her. The blood rolled down the steps in waves and only the constant screaming assured her Clownmuffle had not entirely melted. Telepathic voices cut in, first Kyubey's:

Please! Charlie Vizcarra, listen to me! You must remain calm. Your vitals are plunging! With your Soul Gem in its current state—Miss Leyva, you have to stabilize her!

Then Gatineau's: Pah. She said she had nineteen years. Was this a lie? This is what I expect from fawking thirteen-year-olds. But no female that old hasn't either done it or wanted, one side or the other.

Given how long it took to descend, they'd be climbing forever, and Murrie would never reach Clownmuffle in time. That was what she thought, until she rounded a spiral segment and the open hatch blazed ahead of her. It felt like she had only gone up three flights. But Clownmuffle had fallen just outside, on the dead sidewalk, looking dead herself, and Murrie slipped in her blood climbing out and got liquid Clownmuffle all over.

"Clownmuffle, Clownmuffle, listen to me."

The pieces had not fallen off her so much as she had simply shriveled. The form bundled in the torn clothes could have been a kindergartener. Her skin had a few obvious abrasions but even the parts that were whole seeped blood through the pores. Murrie knelt beside her and said the only thing she could: "It's okay, it's okay..." But when she reached to stroke what remained of her hair Kyubey commanded:

Physical contact will only harm her further.

Oh. Okay. She drew back, unsure what to do. Why had this affected Clownmuffle so much? It... it wasn't that awful. Or was Murrie only saying that because—Nngh. Clearly it made an impact. Could it really kill her? Could it?

"Look. Look. You don't have to do that. You don't have to go back down there. She can't force you. It's fine. It's fine. You're safe now. Clownmuffle. Charlie. You're safe, it's okay, it's okay."

The blood infant rolled over. Mzzzgn. Mhhhyttll. Nnnnnkkkh. Nnnooo. Nooo. Noooooo. No. No! Noooo. No!

"You can get fixed, you can get fixed in another way, we'll find a way, don't worry, you can get fixed—" Why was she so desperate to save her? "—This is nothing. It's over. It's gone."

It's the only way. It's the only way! It's the only way. It's the only way and oh no no no no not again not any more no no no no no

Here I am, Steph. Here I am pulling your killer back from the brink. "It's not the only way. We can fight her, can't we? Beat her up. Hurt her until she'll heal you just to be rid of us. That's the Clownmuffle way, no?" She winced, unsure why she had mimicked one of Gatineau's speech patterns, but it drew no downturn in Clownmuffle's horrid state. "Trounce someone and make them your friends after? That's what you said you'd do to... us. Me and Hemet. I remember that's what you said."

I can't beat her. Not her. I can't beat her. Not her.

Murrie had sorted Clownmuffle's wreckage and found her Soul Gem. It was fucking bad.

"I'll do it. I'll do it instead. I'll take your place. It's just one day. It's not that bad. Don't worry. Don't worry. I'll take your place—"

"I said I wanted no fawking thirteen-year-olds."

She turned. Gatineau leaned in the open portal back into blackness, her green gown streaked with fluid of uncertain origin. Her omnipresent cigarette flared as she extended an expectant hand toward Murrie and Murrie gave her Clownmuffle's gem.

A single tap caused the corroded sides to form back inward, petals in reverse bloom, but it wouldn't eliminate the despair, only make it easier to handle.

"I make nobody come down there," she said. "They all know exactly what to expect. I tell them everything. I find them on the fawking eenternet."

Murrie was about to protest, to call her a liar, it felt instinctual to say such a thing, but a moment's thought and she said nothing.

"You know." Gatineau smirked. "Yes, you know. You get it. If only you were a leetle older, maybe I'd take your offer."

The eyes sliced clean through her. She thought of Stephanie and crumpled inside, she thought of Gatineau in the gem room bent over—She banished the thought. God. God. Steph, you would be so ashamed. You would be so ashamed right now.

Clownmuffle had stabilized. Maybe. It was hard to tell. She ceased making those noises. Gatineau had restored her a lot—maybe as much as halfway. No fresh blood slopped out, but plenty of blood remained.

In the distance, over the rooftops, fireworks erupted.

They dazzled the night sky, red green blue yellow purple and orange, mingled in fantastic arrays, rattling the silence with pure and spectacular bombast, everything aglitter, like the gem room. The gem room in the night sky. Their current position was not too far from the festivities. She sensed the others on her radar—the Baroness and the Nazi, close together, in the direction of the rockets. So they had managed to catch the fireworks after all.

January 1, 2014.

"Happee New Year," said Gatineau as she spat her cigarette and wiped wet hands on her gown. More fireworks went up. But these streets were silent.

"So it's just perversion." Murrie sat in Clownmuffle's blood. "Not even murder."

"I do what pleases me," said Gatineau. "If I do not, I die, non? I have carved into this world a reason to live. And so, I live. I prefer life. Those who live below, they prefer life—a certain form of life—that is why they came. Do you not prefer life, fille? Et toi, ma petite amie?" Her slipper prodded the bundle of Clownmuffle. "Do you not prefer life?"

"Look. Gatineau." Murrie stood. The blood clung to her inside her clothes. "She's got some kind of trauma. Regarding... the kind of stuff you do down there. Something in her past. I only kinda know specifics." She thought back to the conversation in the snow, among the four bare trees. Clownmuffle had said: "He would have killed me otherwise." Clownmuffle had said: "The thing I was doing back then, it would have killed me." Murrie could connect dots. Murrie knew from Steph and MagNet what many young girls did for cash. Murrie imagined herself, in that position, in the position of the captive downstairs, she tried to drum up empathy for their aversion, she knew logically she could understand it, and yet the thing she wanted to say to them was "so what." A brief moment of unpleasantness, a single day and then a cure for your cancer; she would have said yes in an instant. Did that make her somewhere bankrupt? In some capacity cold, distant, emotionless? In some area a Clownmuffle herself, sneering at those who couldn't cut it just because she could?

The thought formed a cavity in her stomach. She watched the fireworks and her melancholy deepened, she now understood Clownmuffle's warning to the Baroness and the Nazi, those two girls who would soon be on their way to the apartment they may or may not be able to afford when rent was collected tomorrow, to their bed where they would do what Gatineau did in the murk; it was, after all, the ultimate form of connection between two people. The final barrier of intimacy broken, the way individuals became one. No?

"Please," she said, after Gatineau said nothing, "please look at her. She can't do it. She doesn't even look nineteen so I don't get your problem. I look older than her. You have to admit that, right?"

"It has never been about looks."

What a fantastic location to show restraint, or maybe it wasn't even restraint but mere personal preference, something about the psychology. Murrie couldn't probe. She couldn't understand, so much of this topic exceeded her reach. She had read and learned and debated, she had listened to all Steph's teachings, she had a knack for remembering phrases, sayings, slivers of advice, she had developed a precocity she believed far advanced for her age—but this topic had never drawn close to her, explored only in dreams or as a tangential, unspeakable entity lurking on the fringes of her comprehension; dirty jokes told by her cousins, so comedic to be stripped of any ulterior motive or meaning; a bitter reminder once a month in the form of blood-soaked sheets.

I am willing to double my initial offer, said Kyubey, in a way that made Murrie angry the skinflint had not brought forward this possibility previously. Twice the quantity of grief cubes.

"Non. I am very eenterested in Vizcarra now. She is a fragmented human being, I can see. Very eenteresting."

"You said nobody comes down there unwillingly," said Murrie. "Look at her." She flung a hand out; Clownmuffle appeared to be asleep, which was probably best. "If you extort her to this, how unwilling will it really be?"

"Oh, but that's only the start. I can make her willing. I want to make her willing." Gatineau shook her head, smiled. Watched the residue of the final fireworks, which ended without grand crescendo. The dots of the Baroness and the Nazi departed from their position. "I said I would heal her, oui?"

At this rate, Clownmuffle wouldn't even survive a day. (And why is this a bad thing? Let her die. Let the Cycles take her as she's mercilessly fucked by this deranged pervert, isn't that the kind of thing you'd like to see?) No, no. No. No. And she was imagining it, too. What it would look like. How Clownmuffle would cry and make those unintelligible sounds of anguish, she imagined it wasn't Gatineau there but Steph, and then it wasn't Clownmuffle there but—ughughughnonoNO. Kill her. Kill her worthless degenerate self right now in this blood just debone her and let her flesh flop.

Why did the topic need to go in this direction. Why did it need to be... obscene. If they could stick to the strictly moral, the strictly logical, the strictly political, it all would have been so much easier, these were things she did not want to confront and facing them they reflected, mirrorlike, upon her, imprinting her, tainting her, the filth inside as well as outside.

Clownmuffle stirred. She rolled. Murrie couldn't linger on her own problems. She had to do something. Save her, let her die, she had to make a decision, and the worst part was feeling like her decision didn't matter, like Clownmuffle would live or die as Clownmuffle pleased. No. Fuck that. Fuck that. The stupidity of the situation collapsed upon her at once and she thought about where they were and what they had seen and what was at stake and got down and seized the fleshy homunculus by the shirt which split apart at the seams as though it too were affected by Clownmuffle's degeneration, and why the fuck not, were her clothes not her most important attribute?

"This is it then? This is how and where you die?"

I can't. I can't. I can't.

"You'll fight—ha!—you'll fight the kind of monsters we've fought. You'll fight anyone and beat them. What's it about this? The lack of control?"

I can't. I can't. I can't.

"Man. To think. Steph and I should have just come at you with a, with a dildo or something..." She hesitated, her confidence sapped by a harsh laugh from Gatineau when she said the word. She doubted her ability to speak any sense to Clownmuffle, for a moment she had a fantasy of giving some rousing speech—Now she felt like no speech could affect. There was an illusion, she had always felt it but it intensified after she met Steph, that words were like magic, if you said just the right ones in just the right order it unlocked any person, persuaded them to anything. Maybe that was possible, but Murrie had to look at herself and realize she had none of those words.

She remembered the fleeting, transient emotional connection she fostered with Clownmuffle in the snow. She remembered Gatineau bent over her prey.

She remembered Kyubey: Clownmuffle is the kind of person who performs better when she doesn't rely on others.

Well. She stood up, rubbed her hands on the cold blood all over. "I guess you can't," she said, and turned a few lazy steps toward the street. The Baroness and the Nazi were moving toward their apartment to enact a nightly ritual. Which of the pair commanded the other, in that situation? Or did they have a more egalitarian relationship? Was such a thing possible?

Miss Leyva, you need to talk to her! Miss Côté-Lalumière, do something!

"Is desperation an emotion," said Gatineau.

"He's not even desperate," said Murrie. "Even now he's holding back resources."

I have the resources and I'm willing to expend them, but they're too far away. Distribution of resources is as important as the resources themselves.

They laughed. Poor Kyubey. He must have believed Gatineau would prioritize the utilitarian over all else; he could never have understood. Murrie only needed to look once at the ornate care that went into her chamber to know that whatever sustained her, it was her life below that truly kept her alive. But Kyubey had no clue.

Gatineau offered a cigarette. She took it. It was different than weed, she coughed even though she had a tolerance to the other stuff.

Minutes passed. An occasional car even passed. Its lights glittered across the bloody pool but it passed without slowing. Nobody saw anything.

It became clear to Murrie, pacing the sidewalk, getting sick of her cigarette, grinding it into the ground, that Clownmuffle was not going to die. She would have already. Kyubey would keep begging them otherwise. Nothing Murrie said or didn't say mattered. Clownmuffle didn't need her. Her "best friend." Clownmuffle needed nobody. Steph said all relationships were founded on power, mental or physical or social, that the powerful had to cede some of it for the relationship to work, but not too much because true equality would stagnate and deflate the connection. Clownmuffle never ceded power. She never ceded any part of herself. She could never actually have friends. She would always be the loneliest girl in the world, and she didn't even care. Her friends were clothes. She preferred mannequins.

Murrie suddenly hated everything. She wanted to leave. Everyone waited for Clownmuffle to do something. Gatineau didn't care, and Kyubey, like Murrie, knew nothing he said would make a difference. Kyubey believed a human-to-human conversation might make progress, but he was wrong, because Clownmuffle was not a human being.

Ten minutes later, Clownmuffle stood up. Shakily, wobbling. But she rose. Lifted by her own arms and legs. Mentally steeled to what she had to do to restore herself.

It disgusted Murrie. Clownmuffle disgusted Murrie and Gatineau disgusted Murrie and Murrie disgusted Murrie. As Clownmuffle turned toward Gatineau, Murrie summoned her broomstick.

One day, said Clownmuffle. One day only. Then you heal me.

Not even childhood trauma could stop her. Not even a weakness formed when she was still vulnerable.

Gatineau only smirked, she had anticipated this outcome. Kyubey said nothing. Good. Save the world, Clownmuffle. If you're a force of nature, at least be one for the right side.

So while Clownmuffle descended into the darkness, led by a suddenly gentle hand from Gatineau, Murrie took to the skies, soared over Ottawa, and caught up to the Baroness and the Nazi before they reached their apartment.

This city had an opening now, after all. Maybe she'd take it. Live life with the frivolous and wash her hands of all the shit.