—

25: Dede Thorow the Dolorouse Stroke

The Christmas holiday had finally ended, Sidwell Friends School had resumed classes. The lots-of-fun science teacher sprung upon them a welcome back pop quiz, "to make sure you're still sharp." So everyone sat in their desks scribbling chemical coefficients while the teacher in his plaid sweater vest and bright bowtie marked the whiteboard with the night's homework assignment.

One student in particular had almost finished the test. She double-checked her answer to the penultimate question, found it bulletproof, and commenced the final. She took a moment to glance at her fellows, none of whom seemed overly disconcerted about the whole thing. A few had already finished, their test papers upside-down and their thumbs twiddling as they read the assignment written on the board. Sidwell had an elite reputation, where even a valedictorian elsewhere might struggle to shine. But this student was unworried by all that. She had a certain celebrity to compensate for only average excellence.

What did worry her was the white rabbit atop a plastic skeleton hanging by the door.

Your business, bunny?

Senator Luce will make her move today.

Kinda busy, if you couldn't tell. It can wait until night.

She plans to attack within the hour. If you hesitate, the wraiths she spawns will cause massive destruction.

It took a lot of willpower not to contort her face into a grimace, although if anyone saw her they'd probably think she was having trouble with the test. (Which might be even worse for her image.) She instead concentrated on the final question, a trick but transparent.

It's hard enough to slip out during the night. It'll be even worse during the day. There's a camera with at least three armed guys watching me even now, you know? And two more outside the window.

I can easily tamper with primitive human surveillance technology and confuse your guards. You don't need to worry about that.

She reread her final answer. Stupid Senator Luce. Why'd the rabbit let her hang around so long anyway. No other Magical Girls were allowed into the city, but the Senator and her little lapdog could go wherever they pleased. Apparently he needed Luce for something or other, or maybe he let her in considering she did get elected and all. Whatever.

I guess if she really plans to attack this city, I better stop her.

I knew you'd understand. The rabbit hopped off his skull and trotted toward her. I apologize for leaving this up to you. I attempted to stop Senator Luce's ambitions earlier, but unforeseeable circumstances caused my attempts to fail. Now, you're one of few Magical Girls in this region with the power to fight her.

Odds of success?

Truthfully, quite low. Her strongest soldiers are formidable in their own right, and her power grants them invulnerability. However, I've received information from a source of dubious reliability that Senator Luce is destined to fail. Put stock in that what you will.

The girl smiled. Low chances, the fate of the country on the line, vague prophesies, alright. Now it was starting to sound like something worth skipping class for.

I would offer the few Magical Girls I have at my disposal to help you, he continued, but the indiscriminate nature of your abilities—

Yeah, they'll just get hurt.

She flipped over her test paper. The rabbit bounced onto her desk and then her shoulder. Although nobody else could see him, which often led her to think maybe she was just insane, he felt real enough. Plush and velvety, like a stuffed doll.

Alright, she said, let's save the country, woohoo. Her dad would be so proud.

I'm glad you're cooperative. After this class period ends, you'll be able to leave the school undetected. I'll tell you where to go next.

Sure thing.

The teacher called time on the test and told them to turn them in to the front.

—

Upon her throne the Empress reclined. The fireplace had extinguished and the purr of some external motor replaced its crackle. What light existed came from an uncertain source located behind her, so that her long shadow stretched down the steps of the mezzanine onto her two chief Centurions gathered: Cook—Cicero.

Tactics had been discussed, plans set, no longer did any utilitarian purpose remain for their conversation, and the appointed day of Theophany had come.

"It is not our custom," said the Empress, "to reveal unto thee as much as we have in these past twenty-four hours. Yet we shall have you know that we cannot disprove that Sayaka Miki is indeed God's messenger; we can only cast reasonable doubt upon the assumption. Actually—

"Actually."

She exhaled, and her breath strained long and jagged through her lips, and she looked to the faces of her subordinates, and she closed her eyes.

"Let's speak more frankly. I think you two have deserved it. Maybe even the third in my possession," and she tapped DuPage's crystal ball by her side. "Although I trust Aurora, Joliet, and Hegewisch to a great degree—some things I must withhold from them. I wish to eschew the elevated diction, if only for a moment, as we ride to what may prove the final battle for some of us, or even all."

Her words fell upon them. It had been a long time for speech, and it was clear on each of their faces that they desired action.

"It's possible Sayaka Miki is correct. I will not say probable, but I will say possible. It is possible we will fail, we will die..."

Her voice trailed. She was uncertain of her intention with this final addendum, perhaps she spoke only because time remained to speak, and she had long become unaccustomed to the leaving silent of open spaces. She looked to her shelves, perhaps she should read a book instead, and fill the silence with the words that resonated in her mind. But she wanted to speak. She had seen so many die, and she had wished she had said certain things to them she never did, because she always imagined she had time, time, time.

But this was stupidity. She needed to place before them a front of total confidence, regardless of her feelings and fears. If she wavered, they would waver. Cicero, she could tell, at least partway believed the warning. And Cook—the Empress had never pierced Cook.

She didn't want them to die. They had each helped her in some way, and when she gave them her blessing she did so not out of a ceremonious boon from liege to liegeman but out of a true desire for their safety—a desire she could not in all honesty say was replicated with Aurora... or even, sadly, and she understood how sad it was to say, Joliet.

"I have seen many die in my time..."

So many. So many deaths it undid her. So many deaths she at many points intended to invoke the clause in her immortality; so many she once even discharged a gun at her grinning Soul Gem and survived only by the failure of her aim.

"I have sunken low. In my many years—perhaps this shall surprise you—in my many years I have been—a harlot, a thief, a killer, and a whore."

She let those words settle and tried to detect any change in their demeanor. But they were well trained.

"It was only in such depths of depravity I learned I needed something more to feed myself than the carnal pleasures of this world. But I did not learn this lesson on my own. Do you know who taught it to me?"

None did.

"Her." The Empress held up DuPage's Soul Gem. "She was a companion, I have had so many before, simply someone to kill endless time with. She hated everything about this world. Everything. She wished death onto it. Her ire infected everything near her. Even later, when the three of you met her, you surely felt the corruption of her hate...?"

"Yes, Your Munificence," said Cicero.

Cook merely loosed a low "ahhhhh."

"She filled me so full of hate I couldn't take any more. It burst out, overflowed. I knew I had to do something. I had to change something..."

No. She wasn't telling the story correctly. How could she? Some things even she could not bear to reveal to them. DuPage had even hated her; she had hated DuPage; they hated one another so much they became special, in a sense, to one another. DuPage, who had no end to her hate, only hated more, but for the Empress, it became a sort of... love. Hate and love, love and hate, they seemed to her in that moment two sides of the same coin, because in her long years the most crippling emotion had been apathy; love and hate both combatted it strongest. Negative and positive no longer mattered, but magnitude did. And DuPage dealt in degrees of immense magnitude.

How could she explain that? That emotion? To these youthful people who still lived to embrace pleasure and eschew pain? Her critics claimed the rigid prohibitions of the Empire crushed passions and created dull automatons; but it was the opposite, what she had always wanted was to foster people who could find passion in something greater. It was only when she hated DuPage so much that she felt the same as she had felt with all the paramours of her life that she knew the folly of such personal passions.

There had to be something more. There had to be something more substantial. That was when she began to read books; that was when she looked into the Bible and the Qur'an and other holy texts. Perhaps she turned that direction because religion was what DuPage despised most of all, or maybe it was simply the tattered remnants of her mid-1800s upbringing that caused some scrap of piety to bubble up her nasal cavity like cocaine years after its ingestion; either way, the impetus had been DuPage.

The Empire did not breathe as a full-fledged idea overnight; she had at first simply wanted to build. To put her passion into the construction of something relevant, based on what she read in those books. But it had grown, Cook and others had joined, formality and laws compounded...

And DuPage had always lurked. Useful, indestructible. Often the Empress believed DuPage would simply get fed up with the rigid world they had created and leave; but because DuPage thrived off hatred, she could abide even a lifestyle she hated. No, that lifestyle empowered her. She could crush the faces of subordinates with as much malice as manageable. Of course, after years, it became too much malice even for DuPage to manage; she grew tired; she started to sleep. Yet any especial circumstance could wake her up, and that old hatred revivified, and so even the emotions the Empress had felt for her before the Empire's founding might flare...

"So, in a sense, DuPage holds a strong significance to me still," she said, aware that she had not spoken in a long time and that her comment must seem a non sequitur to her audience. "Perhaps I have allowed her to remain, as a dark mirror to my own soul, a glimpse of the hatred I had wallowed in..."

The sound of the engine outside stopped. A car door opened somewhere. Footsteps tapped to the double doors of the chamber and someone pried them open from the other side. Light streamed in; the Handmaiden stood in the opening.

"Your Munificence, we have arrived."

"We apologize," said the Empress, "our tale was overlong and spoken with too little preparation. I'm afraid I failed to justify my own initial point—I often overestimate the time allowed me."

Unsatisfactory. She knew it, and she hated that her subordinates were too loyal to contest her on it. She knew Cicero had her own doubts, suspected Cook must too, she wanted them to press her on this issue, argue against her, she was on the precipice of changing her mind, she could simply turn to the Handmaiden and say the plans have changed, they will leave, return to Chicago, prepare a different strategy, gather more strength—but at the same time she thought of how the Incubator desired that outcome and could not in good conscience follow through on it.

She should have spoken to Hegewisch in private. She should have received moral wisdom on the matter. It was one thing for "Sayaka Miki" to say "karma has decided, your mission will fail," but even if it failed, was it wrong? The Empress was following in the footsteps of Madoka Kaname, who had braved so much to change the universe for the better. But Madoka had the advantage of a powerful destiny, and in the end, all she had to do was wish. Even the homunculi Dr. Cho created, who had the power to become Magical Girls, could not make wishes a fraction as powerful as Madoka's. The Empress had to engineer her own destiny, and to do so required more risk. Required more sacrifice.

And how much of her willingness to proceed was formed by her knowledge that, even in the event of a total catastrophe, both Centurions and the Handmaiden slain, that she herself could simply retreat, rebuild, and plan anew however many years it took?

"Anyway," she said, rising, "it is now time for action."

Her Centurions shunted to the side and allowed her passage down the long carpet of her chamber, through the doors, and out of the limousine onto the platform by the curb. The Handmaiden conjured a red carpet for her to trod upon.

They had arrived at Arlington National Cemetery, not technically in Washington, but only across the river from the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall. Unleashing the archons here would at least provide a marginal amount of time before major human habitation was threatened—her plan had always been to limit human casualties, even before Sayaka Miki's omen. And only Sayaka Miki's omen indicated humans would be in danger. Given her knowledge of the Washington Magi's strength, even two archons would be defeated swiftly.

Cook and Cicero filed out of the limousine and the Handmaiden shut the door behind them. Almost no humans were present in the cemetery, it being a wintry midmorning Monday when most had work or school.

"I find it suspicious we've yet to be attacked," said Cicero.

"Ohhhhh?" said Cook. "Do you know the Washington Magi's identity?"

"I do not," said Cicero. "Is this pertinent information?"

"In terms of combat, probably not? Ahhhhh, but she's not someone who can go wherever she pleases so easily."

The Empress wondered where Cook had learned the Washington Magi's identity. And while she was right that the president's daughter had certain leashes on her that even the Incubator could only sever for so long, she did wonder why they had not been attacked by any of the Incubator's Terminatrixes as they entered the city. Did he consider the gesture futile? A waste of resources? Perhaps, after Sayaka Miki's warning, he now had confidence the Empress would fail.

Perhaps he had attacked Aurora, Joliet, and the rest of the Empire's soldiers, now coalesced in Baltimore. After all, he had indicated a desire to target Joliet especially. But while Aurora was not a phenomenal commander, she excelled in defense—and it would take some force to strike down eighty Puella Magi. Either way, she had received no urgent communique from them, so she had to assume peace.

She signaled her Handmaiden. "Depart at once. This field is like to become bloodstained soon, and thou art of far less sturdy stock than our Centurions. Given Dr. Cho's absence, it would prove difficult to replace thee."

"Yes, Your Munificence." The Handmaiden bowed, returned to the limousine, and pulled its sleek black form away down the road that bordered the cemetery, although she left the red carpet for the Empress. Upon her departure, a cold wind blew, and rustled the white blazers of the Empress and her Centurions, as well as the waves of grass that rippled between the tombstones, whipping white glimmers in electric lines from one end of the cemetery to the other. The clouds had gathered in full and precipitation or worse threatened; not a shard of sunlight shone, yet a muddled effervescence pervaded all.

The tombstones stretched up a gentle hill that occluded most hints of urbanity, and there was a simple, orderly placidity to their spacing in lines and columns. She was to defile this sanctified ground, this monument to those who had shed blood for the nation across so many wars, to disturb the restful sleep of they who died restlessly in servitude of American ideals. She had done so because she decided it would be better to trample the dead than the living. As she regarded the alabaster slabs she frowned. Was her plan truly to inflict grievous damage to the city's human population? It seemed so infeasible. She would have been willing to accept the proposition that her plan would fail. She did not think so highly of herself that she considered her chessboard odds against a living supercomputer so high. But in what sense would her plans kill millions? That claim alone unsettled her, that claim alone kept drawing her mind. Was the destruction of DuPage's soul weighed so heavy a sin that it could create something not even the Washington Magi and her strongest Centurions Cook and Cicero could kill?

Cook and Cicero transformed at the same time and turned toward a hill topped by a slight copse. Between two trees stood a figure, a female of teenaged years in a long coat with a checkerboard pattern. She placed a hand against one tree's bark as though to lean but instead simply stroked it up and down as she said:

Senator.

Ah. Washington.

Please, I'm Malia.

"That's," said Cicero, "she's—"

"Ahhhhhyup," said Cook, hideously. "Told ya she was somebody important?"

Anyway, Senator, you know you're not allowed to bring any friends here except your maid. Malia sat atop a nearby tombstone and crossed her legs.

We imagine the Incubator has appraised you of our intent.

Right.

The Empress reached into the folds of her jacket and placed her palm upon DuPage's Soul Gem. We will inform you now we have no intention to abandon our plans.

Cool. I didn't feel like talking anyway. I gotta get back to school, you know.

"Your Munificence," said Cicero, one eye on the gem, "allow us to fight her ourselves before you resort to potentially devastating measures."

"I'm game for that?" said Cook. "Uhhhhh, the whole 'let's not kill a million people' thing?"

The Empress dropped DuPage's Soul Gem before her. In the same motion, she drew from the other side of her jacket a longsword and cleaved the gem in twain with a single swipe.

Two perfect hollow hemispheres fell to the ground.

The heavy darkness that had built and built and built inside the gem over the past week swirled as a vortex.

Allowing Cicero and Cook to engage Malia alone only risked their lives—and the success of the venture. She could not have her faith shaken by ambiguous prophesies of uncertain origin. If God condemned her for this deed, well, that had been the intention from the onset.

And with it came... relief. For the two halves before her were the final corpse of Yasmin Esfahani, irrevocably deceased. All this time, the gem in her possession, she had feared somehow DuPage would return, her hate alone would animate her decaying body in a St. Louis park and she would shamble undead unto Chicago to wreak her vengeance, not solely for the singular act of betrayal inflicted upon her but for the years of boundless hate festering festering festering within her heart.

Staring at the severed halves, feeling the ease that assuaged her long-frayed veins, she suddenly wondered, after never contemplating it before, how much her betrayal of DuPage had been for punishment, how much for tactics, and how much for fear.

The vortex grew.

The Empress stepped back from it, and Cook and Cicero stepped away on the other side. Malia, by contrast, pulled out a device—a cell phone—and engaged with it, only an occasional glance levied to track the spiral as it grew, upward and downward, a funnel the one direction and a drill the other, churning a narrow pillar into the dirt and opening a vast stormcloud into the sky.

That's your big move? Making a storm? Senator, you know that's nothing, right? Like, you have to, right?

The tombstones rippled. The tornado grew, the funnel increased. The Empress, immutable though she were, was forced to dance back toward the curb as the ground churned and turned soft beneath her heels. The stone slabs started to fall, and each that fell resounded with a cataclysmic bang, a clap that pierced the gale and gusts. The branches cracked off trees and the trees cracked at the trunks and whirled into the howl, the grass and ground wrenched in curled strips like wallpaper, something beneath groaned piteously, and shielding her eyes from the dust and dirt and debris the Empress wondered what form it would take—for it was said they all took unique forms, these archons and demiurges, these unholy creators, unique to their circumstances and their terrain. What would one spawned in a cemetery become, a Lord of the Dead, a latter-day Hades, marshalling the skeletal remains of the Civil War slain against the descendants of slaves—Cook and Cicero and Malia—or against the progeny of slavers? A century and a half unforgotten, would some of the ghastly men risen be those known in her youth?

Or would this be an archon begotten of the woman whose soul enlivened it? Madame DuPage, would this be your final adieu? Cook, before the Empress ordered her memories of the affair altered, recorded diligently DuPage's final words; how she had claimed she would return, bury them all, that she "knew something none of you know"...

There. In the winds. In the sickly swirling air, emerging not from the soil but from the clouds, as they darkened and flashed electric over the city, manifesting first as two great purple eyes and then as a dark claw descending, its form building out of the lesser blackness of the skies, the blackness that crossed the cemetery and darkened them all, so that only a scant gleam of Cicero and the flash of something liquid in the last direction of Cook remained, and this was something out of Revelations, its many apocalyptic yearnings and all its varied symbols, she had of course researched the archons, absorbed all living knowledge of them, pried from the clandestine lips of the Incubator tidbits, cross-referenced against the prophet Hegewisch, and though she had traveled far for many years she never saw one herself, of course it had not been since her religious reawakening that she even cared, and by New Orleans 2005 she was too entrenched in Chicago to gallivant across the country to look, yet there was always a certain fascination, much as those ancient brimstone preachers who created of a few scant Biblical mentions a treacherous figure of Satan, or the blind scribe Milton whose magnum opus was dedicated to that antithesis of God; and all the men of yore who created so many names for demons, Beelzebub and Belial and Baal, yea—A branch swung into her—she failed not her footing—what hellspawn was such? The fiend emerging downward, an arm now, a shoulder and torso; its form was humanoid—

Rising into the air toward it was a form of angelic luminescence. Wreathed in golden feather wings, bedecked by a halo more in the vein of Renaissance art than modernity. In one hand she held a spear of pure light and in the other a brand likewise burning. All of her was either white or gold. A long tunic stretched down her front and despite the wind it did not rustle or rush but held as though the air were steady; the same for her wings as they stretched outward and rained from the feathers long shafts of rainbow, which swept over the ground like searchlights and turned the tombstones they touched to dust.

Okay, I guess it's like, a little bigger than I thought, but no big deal.

Malia raised the spear overhead. It seemed to elongate, or rather it remained the same length yet reached further than its length ought, so that it pierced the clouds above like a needle dipped into lye, and in a ring from where it touched spread light, reaching from both sides at once around the embryotic form of the archon and touching together at its back. The vast purple eyes blinked out of the sheer dark at her and its claw began to reach, its form starting to shift, losing its initial humanoid elements, bubbling, developing—What will be your final form, Madame DuPage? What will your hate finally produce?

Nothing.

For from the ring of light flashed three hundred and sixty lightning bolts at once, from all degrees around the archon, into the archon's skull. It came as a single crack, too fast for the Empress to perceive with much clarity, but the split-second onset of light burned into her retinas and so in its residual she could comprehend the individual lines of electricity purging deep into the non-light form of the archon, striking directly at its eyeballs although other lines streaked into his—its—why did she consider it male?—cranial plate.

The archon uttered no sound. No howl or cry of pain, but its outstretched claw drooped and as the afterimage faded the sky brightened with a new electric fervor and unleashed a second round of lightning.

The purple eyes became uneven. One sagged lower to the earth than the other. Fingers cracked from the claw, the Empress could see now it was still too weak, it had not been given the necessary time to develop before Malia unleashed her might against it, it had yet to adopt a complete form—

A third flash of lightning. Stretches of the archon's utter blackness peeled away to reveal thick, yellow-beige bones assembled like the mechanical plates of some aircraft, coming undone; pieces started to fall away, shift or unsettle, the black skin rotted and more of the interior structure came to light, it was mere bones, only a creature, no god or demigod, first one then the other eyeball burst. A deluge of violet jelly oozed to the soil and swept between the tombstones not yet obviated by the rainbows of Malia's wings.

Thick pieces of the archon fell after. They hit the ground with seismic rumbles, draping across the landscape, it had not been so clear before how large even the inchoate form had been, and yet its disembodied arm went from one end of the Empress's sight to the other, at least until Malia turned her rainbows against the detritus to obliterate the remains entirely. Parts of a skull crashed, cratered the ground; a clavicle, ribs, components of a spinal column. Fleshless, goreless save the jelly of the eyes; eaten, eaten by the rainbows.

Eaten until not a piece remained, and nothing further came from the sky, and the winds died, although the darkness remained.

And that was the archon. That was DuPage's hate come to bear; it bore nothing. The Empress regarded the site, expectant of—of something. After the warnings, after the notoriety with which she had constructed her personal understanding of DuPage—and would there not be a second archon? She had theorized DuPage's Soul Gem held the power to spawn two, one from the sin of the Empress's betrayal and one from the physical despair that had collected inside it. No second archon? Not even a host of ghouls, smaller wraiths, anything? Only that one form, stricken dead still as an infant?

Nothing more?

So did DuPage's gem simply lack the concentrated despair or was it true that God did not frown upon DuPage's death?

She waited, watched the land as Malia descended. No second archon. No further wraiths. Only a deep hole drilled and some damage dealt, as though a hurricane had dealt it.

That imbecilic Sayaka Miki! Now the Empress knew the girl had babbled about things she knew not. What millions were now imperiled? What disaster had she brought about? Hm? Where were the corpses? And she had braced herself to kill so many in pursuit of her ultimate goal. A farce, a farce, she ought to have better believed her own words: It had been a trick of the Incubator...

She tried to locate Cicero and Cook in the darkness, but could not. Retreat, she said. Clearly we have underestimated the might of the Washington Magi, or else overestimated the might of our secret weapon. Our odds of success are too—

Ahhhhh, but Cicero's going in.

And sure enough, a glint in the cyclone revealed Cicero bounding skyward toward Malia.

—

How abominable and unseemly everything had become. How mired in hypocrisy. What a foul misuse of Centurion DuPage, what utter disrespect for her station regardless of how well she merited it. Cicero plunged into the abyss not solely because she knew she could master this Washington Magi—she could—but to purge this absurd tragicomedy of its splotches.

Her armor covered her head to toe, no scrap of bare skin exposed, and all she wore carried the Empress's Blessing. Only a fool would consider this invulnerability the same as invincibility, for those with powerful binding magic or some way to restrain her could just as easily gain the advantage as though she were not Blessed at all, but so far Washington displayed no ability of that ilk. She, like Cicero, dealt in pure power, and while from what Cicero saw that power exceeded her own in both force and breadth, it meant nothing because although her Empress wavered in her rectitude, her Blessing still held.

Thus she mounted her horse and spurred it onward. It bounced upon the remnants of a tombstone and launched upward, through the maelstrom of bark and dirt and alabaster that came crashing down at the sudden cessation of the archon's vortex, toward the angelic figure of Washington. She grasped her halberd in both hands and drew it behind her, the movement lacked subtlety, but until Washington proved she could evade or repel she had no need of such tactics.

Washington noticed her mid-ascent and swept her wings crosswise so that the rainbows that streamed from them passed through Cicero harmlessly. But in the fragment of a second before Cicero closed the rest of the gap she realized the purpose of Washington's movement, not to strike Cicero, but to cleave a huge chunk out of the ground and fling it upward. The accursed darkness prevented Cicero from seeing the rush of loamy soil and splintered caskets until it lifted her, reoriented her trajectory, and caused her to flail. The dirt splattered against the narrow slats in her helm and blinded her, she swung her flail wildly and cracked seismic waves in midair but struck nothing of consequence. She did not realize she had stopped moving upward until she struck the ground headfirst at an angle that, even despite the Blessing, snapped her neck. Although her armor absorbed all impact, nothing could account for the force of her body within the armor landing against her head in such a way.

Well, she didn't need a neck. Get up get up get up!

She scrambled, her mechanical horse scrambled, their limbs shuffled and tangled and a metal bray rang out. The wind had died, the archon had died, but the darkness remained, the blemish of the Empress's great Sin. And this same Empress now had the gall to demand her retreat, the same order replayed ad infinitum in her head, doing nothing but distorting her concentration. As her mount righted she grabbed her head with her hands and angled it to scan the skies until she saw the luminous angel, around which waves of ice and water flashed. Cook had joined.

Milady, Cicero said, because she needed to get this buzz out of her brain, Your Munificence. Have faith in your soldiers. The plan with the archon was doomed to fail—destined to fail. For you told me yourself, we must always act with rectitude. Rectitude! The righteousness ordained by God. If we fail God, how can we hope to succeed in the terrestrial sphere?

Those words sounded good, but Cicero had only half-thought them, spouting the first vocalization of her feelings she could muster, tossing in the words the Empress loved to say herself, and whatever it did it shut her up—Forgive her for thinking such a crass phrase as "shut her up" in conjunction with her Empress. No! The Empress had deigned to lower herself basely into the realm of murder and blasphemy. Shut her up was the least Cicero could do.

Fuck.

FUCK!

She couldn't think about this. She had to aid Cook. Her horse bounded across the ground, which gave way beneath its hooves at each step, until Cicero realized she wasn't on the ground at all but on a line of soil ripped up by Washington and itself falling. When had that happened? The rainbows swept over her. She shielded her helm's beaver and waited for the rainbow to pass, but they didn't—Washington was keeping it trained on her to nullify her vision. Smart, but Cicero swung her halberd and smashed her own crater into the side of the hill. The soil here was soft, wet from past rain, easy to blast away. She formed a tunnel and charged into it and freed herself from the dazzling light.

If Washington had no way to actually harm them, then she might simply attempt to outlast them. One of the major differences between ordinary Magical—Puella Magi and exceptional ones was the capacity of their Soul Gem; endurance, if you will. If Washington were so powerful as claimed, then she may be able to prevail in a war of attrition.

Aggression would thus be key. Cicero altered the trajectory of her halberd and blasted a hole straight above. Shielded by the cone of debris she launched herself upward, into the aerial realm where Washington and Cook combatted, weaving between Cook's cracking coils of ice. The rainbows ate everything, and furthermore lightning bolts rained from the sky and sent magnified waves of electricity along the more fluid streams straight to Cook's outstretched palms. Cook's uniform was disadvantageous when it came to the Blessing, because she needed to use at least some kind of bare skin, usually her hands, to summon water. So while the Handmaiden had converted her original costume (by rumor a dainty swimsuit) into something more akin to a deep sea diver's outfit, some spots remained uncovered.

Cicero lacked that weakness, and the shattering towers of ice proved only footholds for her horse to gain momentum. The ice seemed to fall at random, but Cicero realized it always fell in such a way as to refract Washington's rainbow light—Cook was placing her ice strategically for this effect. And with all the flashing lightning the target was crystal clear, that angel hovering directly above—Cicero bounding closer, closer, closer, closer, under a falling pillar, over a sweep of rainbow—THERE!

She swung. Her halberd crashed upon Washington's body, garbed only in a pure white robe—how fitting that the side that summoned a demon would stand opposite to that of an angel—and Cicero knew from the speed of her swing and the speed of Washington she would connect.

She did connect. Connected with Washington's sword. The typical eruptive force blasted past, ruffling Washington's wings, shattering all the ice that swirled around her, but her arm did not buckle, the sword absorbed the force like Blessed armor. She blocked the attack and she wasn't even watching, preoccupied as she were with Cook.

Then Washington flicked her wrist and launched Cicero skyward, knocking the halberd from her hands. Cicero groped for the handle as she hurtled away, up and up, into a swirl of electricity that mired everything in yellow and disoriented her—she was traveling back down again. Swirling, swirling, her horse falling away, until she crashed into a tree, snapped it in half, hastily curled to avoid internal injuries, and drove a trench through the dirt. Ten or twenty headstones in a line shattered against her before she finally came to a stop.

So. Washington was strong. Alright. But her Soul Gem was exposed, Cicero had seen it—a white diamond in the shape of a cherub that clasped her tunic at the shoulder.

Cook, her Soul Gem's—

Ahhhhh, an obvious fake? Come on.

What the fuck was so goddamn obvious about it? Well Cicero didn't know and as she rose her head lolling on account of her still-snapped neck a shaft of light shot from the skies and struck her in the center of her breastplate. She grabbed her head and angled it to better see what it was and it was the lance that Washington had used previously to destroy the archon. The lance hadn't been thrown, it had simply extended, stretching to an unrealistic degree from the heavens to prod Cicero with its very tip, incapable of penetrating so Cicero had to wonder the point—

It lifted and Cicero lifted with it, affixed to the tip as though it exuded adhesive. It whipped to the side and slammed Cicero against a tree, then the ground, then the other ground, then some headstones, then another tree. Whatever her body struck cratered but only after the third hit did Cicero realize the lance lashed her around with a specific intent to cause her internal injury. First she slammed awkwardly against an arm and it dislocated at the shoulder, then both leg bones shunted against themselves and snapped at two different points. She managed to weld her final limb to her side to prevent a similar fate and once Washington realized she would make no further progress the lance tip retracted and Cicero dropped to the dirt.

Cicero had somehow failed to consider this method of wounding. She wasn't sure why, considering her neck had been broken in a similar way only a few moments prior, and now she felt like a complete imbecile, unprepared, overconfident. Washington simply picked her up. Simply picked her up, picked her up! And now it hurt, it had been so long since she received any wound whatsoever, now she had three useless limbs and a rolling head, and she had become so untrained at dampening the pain. With her remaining arm she thrashed her body and tried to do—anything. Most of her ribs had broken too, she felt like a bag of jagged shards, her skin was punctured from inside her suit of invulnerability. That Empress. That Empress and her worthless Blessing. Worthless Sin and worthless Blessing both, hypocrite and pedant.

No. No. She had to, had to crush these blasphemous thoughts. Had to crush the uncouthness within her mind. Jesus Christ himself said an adulterer in mind was as bad as an adulterer in body. So when she thought unclean words, impure things, she was soiling herself even if she bit her tongue. Let the other Centurions act clean and think filthy. She was Centurion Cicero, she would not lose in any capacity, and she would not lose now. This singular setback had destroyed her composure too much, she was going wild, she needed to. Calm. Down. Calm down. Calm down Cicero. Calm down. Think.

She had little time to think. Who knew how long Cook could hold out against Washington. Her head had lolled into position to observe their fight, Cook had fallen into defensive patterns only, summoning ice towers to shield herself and distort her true position, she dipped and slid and ran but she never even managed an attack of her own, and no victory could be achieved in such a fashion. Cicero needed to aid her, so she banished the bubbling from her mind and called her horse.

Her horse was MADE of unbreakable armor. It had no bones or soft bits inside. It was simply a series of mechanical plates animated by no mechanism but magic. Washington could never harm it.

She closed her eyes. Blotted the pain inside, applied her magic to force serenity. She caused her horse, wherever it was, to compress and disappear; she summoned it anew directly beneath her broken body. It sprung from a small cube, shifting and unfolding, lifting Cicero off the soil as she clung to its extending neck with her good arm, and then it stood fully formed and Cicero draped upon it.

Cook believed Washington's visible Soul Gem was a decoy. Who knew what reasoning Cook used to reach that conclusion, but Cicero elected to trust her. However, with Cicero's body in such shambles, she lacked much time to sleuth its true location before Washington determined a way to render her inutile.

So it had to be once more into the breach, into the dark clouds. Her horse gained speed, it ran, the broken parts of her body jangled and rolled all over. It became difficult to gain an accurate perception of her environs. But many remnants of Cook's ice towers lingered, and on a good glimpse she charted her route. The horse leapt to the first, then the second, then the third pillar, the lightning flashed around her and blinded what little accurate sight remained, but Washington was such a bright and obvious target it took little intense focus to determine her position. Up. Up. Up. She wrapped her horse's bridle around her to keep her attached and in her good hand manifested a new halberd.

Oh, wow. You don't give up, said Washington. At least vary your strategy? Running at me over and over won't work.

Sound advice. Cicero fully planned to act on it. Washington's lance lashed out, faster than Cicero could evade in her current state of semi-incapacitation, and stuck her on the forehead. It forestalled all forward momentum and pinned Cicero mid-jump between two towers just out of striking range of Washington. Washington wasn't even paying attention to her, holding her at bay with one arm while the rest of her magic encircled Cook.

Cicero had no way to hit her at this range. It was as if it had been measured to the centimeter, framed in such a way that the distance seemed tangible and Cicero might waste strength attempting to bridge it. But she knew her limits as well as the Incubator who whispered in Washington's ear; she did not strike at Washington.

She instead struck one of Cook's ice pillars. The pillar exploded like many others had, but Cicero struck with her halberd like a bat to launch a million crystal shards straight at Washington. Washington, although she had not even been watching, reacted instantaneously to the attack and dove up while hundreds of lightning bolts fired to liquefy every individual projectile. But while Washington could fire a thousand bolts at once, skeletize an army in an instant, she could not fire a million. Even with the aid of the rainbow light from her wings and the invulnerable sword in her hand, many passed through and bashed against her body. They gored her, but they were too small to do so deeply.

Cicero never intended the attack to kill or even maim. She intended it to expose a weakpoint. What spot on Washington's body did she guard? Where was her Soul Gem?

Cook had been correct, it wasn't the cherub clasp on the robe. A shard stuck into it and sent cracks along its surface and Washington made no effort to defend it, almost as though she considered it no more vital than any other part of her costume. But then again, Washington made no especial attempt to defend anything on her person. She took a single evasive move, upward, but that did not pull her out of the wide spray of the attack. And while she had tried to destroy the shards with her magic, she hadn't focused particularly on those aimed toward her person. It was almost as if, instead of defending her body, she used her body to—

Ahhhhh. I see now? Cicero, you've actually managed to help me. Cook perched on a pillar in the distance. Malia, right? This has been a cool fight, don't you think? But you've been kinda doomed from the start?

What are you talking about? You guys are totally out of your league—

It began to rain.

Cicero couldn't feel it, and in the darkness with her lazy head she couldn't see it, but she heard it patter against her armor. Washington released her and she dropped. Her body twisted in midair until she could see the bright angelic form flash deeper into the sky, into the clouds, now using her rainbows to obliterate them, opening up a perfect circle above where drifted, on the backdrop of a slightly less dark bank of clouds:

A Soul Gem. A monstrous one. Larger than even DuPage's crystal ball, which had already been freakish compared to the gems most women wore. It was the shape of a diamond, although its color was gold, and it hovered with no apparent method of propulsion. Washington devoted everything to defending it from the downpour. Her rainbows, her lightning. Whether she defended the Soul Gem or not was inconsequential, because the rest of the raindrops plummeted onto Washington herself. And immediately began to melt through her flesh, through the downy feathers on the backs of her wings, cutting into her like knives.

Cicero hit the ground on her back. Her horse landed nearby. Washington's wings disintegrated under the extreme heat and acidity of Cook's rain, then she began to fall too. And once her wings became only skeletal fragments from which a few loose feathers and clumps of flesh clung, the rainbows sputtered and died and the rain that fell on the giant suspended Soul Gem turned to ice and encased it. Washington landed athwart Cicero, a half-lumpish mound, while the ice around the Soul Gem transformed into a chute and carried it further away.

The formless body of Washington tried to rise but soon enough distance spanned between her and her gem and she shivered, dead.

Cook hopped from her pillars and landed beside them. The rain ceased. "Not even hard? I expected a lot worse. Like, a lot?"

Cicero opened her mouth to speak but all that happened was her tongue flopped out like an unraveling carpet. How did you do that, Cook? I thought you could only create water from your body.

"Ohhhhh, that's a gross way of phrasing it. But I guess it's kinda true? Still, all I have to do is create water earlier and let it hang around wherever it is until I need to use it? Like, creating a bunch of tiny water droplets everywhere I go until there's enough floating in the air to saturate the clouds? That's weather for you, I guess you don't know much about weather."

So she hadn't been dodging around aimlessly simply to defend herself from attack. She had followed a deliberate route to set up a single massive attack.

You can do that?

"Guess so? Honestly first time I tried it. But, ahhhhh, gotta pull out surprises in times like these?"

She said it like it was nothing.

"I kinda figured her Soul Gem was not on her person." Cook nudged the eroded corpse with her foot. "But she musta kept moving it? I guess? Whenever I got close. So your attack was a big help, when I saw the way she dodged to defend it I was like 'ohhhhh'..."

As she spoke she twiddled a finger from which a watery ribbon extended and wrapped around the spots where Cicero no longer held together. The water froze into solid braces and set her limbs back into place. The pain remained, but after the initial shock she had handled it better and so after a few wobbly moments she rose to her feet.

The clouds above remained dark.

The Empress appeared. The cemetery had been ripped to shreds, so she tiptoed her way among the few portions the combat failed to ravage.

She panted, her hands tightened into compact shapes. "You have disobeyed my—our—direct order. Thou hast committed what one might consider treason, and do not respond to us with the excuse that your insubordination proved effective."

As Cicero held out her arms to steady herself, shame crept within. She realized that she indeed disobeyed orders, but that fact returned to her in such a disembodied way she could not reconstruct the events that led to such an action. No—it returned to her. The Empress's hypocrisy. Her weakness. Yes. Cicero remembered, and she refused to stare back at the Empress with shame, not that her face was visible behind her armor. It was the same stare she had turned toward DuPage, back when she was DuPage's lieutenant and DuPage derided her for every misstep.

No—no—she had lost her head, endangered everything on her own pride. The Empress's authority must remain even if she abandoned her own values and principles. Otherwise command dissolved and the purpose of society ended. Society was sacrifice, and those with control must be obeyed regardless of their correctness or—rectitude. That was what it meant to live in a society. Because the necessary inhibitions on the individual allowed the collective livelihood of all individuals to increase. The Empress taught her these words, showed her books and philosophies even while DuPage derided her, ground her face into the dirt, sneered at any attempt she made to exert herself. But then, in those old days, the Empress had been the balm to assuage the hurt of DuPage. It was the Empress now who betrayed everything she preached to summon a demon—a demon she did not even need, not in the slightest—it was that Empress who confounded her, and she had no more mentors to right her path.

(She had to be her own mentor now. That was what it meant to be a leader. Leaders find their own strength. Nobody is left to teach them. But weren't, then, leaders antithetical to the very society they led? If a society required its constituent parts to bend or even break for the good of the leviathan, then how could a leader be both member of society and wielder of it?)

She didn't know. The things she had learned eluded her. She felt less a leader now and more a scorned child, and all she could do was hang her head—except the ice necklace Cook forged for her prevented even that. She only stood, solid, opened her mouth for a word, unsure even as her lips parted whether than word would be abject apology or baleful condemnation—

"Ahhhhh, Your Munificence, we were following your orders?" Cook detransformed and flitted into the foreground, hands laced behind her back. "For in a retreat whose safety is prioritized? 'Twould be yours, Your Munificence, but given the Washington Magi's great strength, mere flight would have likely proved insufficient? She would have pursued, and even if she could not kill you, if you were captured it would surely strike ahhhhh massive blow against our Empire? Correct? Cicero and I merely provided a distraction to ensure your safe egress. That our distraction happened to prove potent was mere coincidence."

What a bull—what a transparent fib. As if anyone would believe it.

And yet the Empress's consternation turned to a smile and in that moment Cicero understood she had never wanted to condemn their actions but merely needed a pretext to abandon her own rigid rules and regulations because the outcome had in fact turned advantageous for her. The disgust welled anew and for a brief moment Cicero held down literal nausea inspired by the pure rage that burned behind her eyeballs and down her long throat.

"Cook, thou hast always been a thoughtful subject. Thou as well, Cicero. We are gladdened by this explanation; thou speak well. Very well. As this understanding passeth between us, we shall let the matter lie dormant. As for the Washington Magi, is she deceased?" She indicated the still-bubbling corpse.

"Ohhhhh, her. For now she is. But her gem's safe. I just moved it far enough away."

"Excellent. It would prove a poor impression if we unveiled ourselves to the United States government alongside the death of its chief statesman's daughter. Keep her in this state for now; we shall restore her body and return her alive once our plans have passed the point of the Incubator's meddling."

She wasn't simply smiling now. She beamed. She jittered, she fidgeted, the elements of the wise and lofty ruler fell away, she might as well have begun to dance there in the tattered remains of a national monument.

"Verily, Your Munificence," said Cook.

"Yes," said Cicero at the same time, allowing Cook's response to supersede hers.

"With the Washington Magi defeated, little else stands in our way. Cook, contact Aurora. Have her transport the rest of our soldiers to our position. This city is ours; we shall enter the Capitol shortly. Ah, Handmaiden."

The figure in question had returned. She stood at the edge of the cemetery. "I am at your service, Your Munificence."

"Restore the cemetery to its state prior to our combat. It would be inconvenient if it were suspected the cemetery has suffered a terrorist attack."

The Handmaiden bowed her head. "Yes, Your Munificence." She swept along the dredged holes of the cemetery and swiftly returned its appearance to unblemished swaths of grass and exact patterns of identical headstones.

"Upon the completion of thy task, Handmaiden, it would be ideal if you, for a time, assumed the appearance of the Washington Magi and attended her obligations in her stead, at least until we may restore her."

"Yes, Your Munificence." As effortlessly, she tapped herself and became the identical twin of the Puella Magi they had defeated. "Although I must admit, I shall not be able to mimic her voice or mannerisms."

"That is no matter; your deception need only be temporary, and we believe in the name of maintaining order the Incubator shall assist your disguise. Is that so, Incubator?"

The creature in question appeared—or had always been—upon the sole surviving branch of a tree otherwise blasted into curled tendrils by lightning. In the darkness, only his pink eyes stood forth from his silhouette.

Certainly. After all, your destruction is now assured.

"Oh? Confident, art thou?"

I am ninety nine point nine nine nine seven percent certain. Although I must admit I was initially confused when Sayaka Miki claimed your endeavors would fail, I now understand exactly what she meant.

"Cease thy lying tongue, knave. Cook, Cicero, attend us."

She snapped her fingers, turned, and trod toward the road upon a carpet of the Handmaiden's devising. Cook created a stream of water that carried Washington's body with her as she followed. Cicero, after standing still a long time, followed too.

Somehow unobliterated during the battle, Cicero espied the broken halves of DuPage's Soul Gem. So that was it for DuPage. That was how her story ended, huh?

Pathetic. Her gaze drifted and she noticed again the Incubator, albino eyes watching. Ninety nine point nine nine nine seven percent certain. Ha, haha. Hahahaha.