—

35: Titillate Their Jaded Palates

The first step inside the city went down. The one in front stumbled past the threshold between normality and nothing, caught herself on a hand and cartwheeled as though she planned the maneuver from the onset, but she fooled nobody. Berwyn and the Witch, more cautious, toed their way inside. It may have added humor to the situation if they weren't both relieved Millie's enchantment actually worked. At the last moment, before they entered, Sayaka Miki babbled that it wouldn't, that their Soul Gems weren't protected, that they would turn into monsters the moment they touched the miasma, but that actually gave them more confidence, because her desperation made the lie obvious. Sayaka Miki now skulked behind them, unable to blend into this darkness, but her body still cast shadows on itself and her swishing cape at times constricted her into a more marginal form.

At the boundary, Dr. Cho, Millie, the other homunculi, and the homeless men waved. "I'll fix you a feast upon your return, loves! We've much to celebrate today. See you later!" She took Millie under her arm, but Millie's mouth squiggled. The row of bodies were finally were eclipsed by the edge of the city as the descent steepened.

The Witch skidded, Berwyn caught her. The buildings rose, black pillars, into the crescent moon sky, where more stars gleamed than necessary, larger too, large enough to make out distinct five-pointed designs amid their luster. The whole vista bent like a rainbow, or like her eyes had become a fish's. Some of the buildings stretched horizontal. If she stared too long they drew farther from her, and the yawning hole issued a subterranean chuckle, and the stagnant air garroted her throat. She scratched fingernails against her neck but nothing was there, nothing but skin.

She rode her broomstick. Doing so alleviated the tension and made the descent much easier. Soon, Berwyn rode with her. But Darien groped her way along crags and outcroppings in her wedding dress. She drove her sword into the ground and used it as a crutch.

At one point Sayaka Miki scampered past, as though on straight, level, horizontal terrain. She sent one glance over her shoulder, first at Darien, then at the air, and disappeared behind a building. Her pattering heels resounded far louder and longer than they ought but eventually diminished into a dull thudding that might have been the pulse of blood in the Witch's brain.

"So she's off. Aye, figures she wouldn't wait around for us," said Berwyn. "How does it feel, Fifth Centurion Darien, to have your lone wolf suicide charge stolen out from under you?"

To bridge an invisible precipice, Darien hurled her body forward, scraped her hands and feet against a blackness, caught hold of something and clung. "Quit wasting time. It's nearly midnight. I don't plan to prowl this city blind. We need to make it to the press conference while we know our target will be there."

The one slowing them down was Darien, of course. On the broomstick, the Witch more than matched her pace.

"I could inject you with a little something to balloon you like a big gasbag, then you'd float past all this jaggedness, what say you, Fifth Centurion?"

"Refrain from supercilious suggestions, Berwyn."

"Oh! Supercilious. Spectacular word, Fifth Centurion, truly a feather notched only in the most talented wordsmith's cap. Could you, ahem, for my edification of course, myself being so ignorant, could you define it?"

"Useless. Useless, unnecessary, devoid of purpose―"

"Oh yes, supercilious, that's what it means―"

"Are you mocking me, Berwyn?"

"Looks this like the face of a mocker?"

They reached a lane where humans walked. Thick, pliant lines that swayed as though the walkers were both drunk and professionally synchronized. They streamed from nowhere to nowhere, nothing distinguished their blank gazes, and even as Darien crawled on her belly above their hatted heads they did not look up to see her. Berwyn, who gesticulated toward her face during her final comment, fell upward and landed amid them headfirst. The humans stepped on her, lost their balance, and fell, and all the humans in the line behind them fell the same direction to maintain their sync.

Sudden disorientation seized the Witch and she gripped her stomach to prevent it from upending. Her legs gripped the broomstick as her hair, which had hung around shoulders like normal, lifted and dangled downward at the sky. Or the sky's reflection? She clamped her eyes shut and the space inside her eyelids was lighter than the darkness outside. A little of her own effervescence she could dwell on, cling to, linger within, until a hand twisted her hair into a knot.

"I said, quit wasting time." Darien shook her skull so the eyeballs rattled.

Berwyn rose and pulled the Witch down to earth. "This way, poppet, you'll feel better. Create the world in your head, don't bother with what your senses tell you."

That advice meant nothing and helped less and their grips drew her like a ribbon until she spread out taut along her broomstick, at which point Darien gave a massive yank and dragged them both to her. The human heads rolled past. "Both of you, shut up. Listen solely to the person here who knows what they're doing." She paused, thought, added: "That's me."

"You don't even know where the White House is," said Berwyn.

"I do. I do. It's whatever way I say it is. That's how it works."

"That's not how anything works!"

"It will be. I'll make it. I'll make it work that way. If I believe in it, I can make it happen. That's magic. What's reality? It's what the strongest will says it is."

"History written by the winners," said the Witch. A fragment of a passage remembered from a book left upside-down on a pile of socks in a room on the edge of a desert.

"Exactly, exactly." Darien pointed from Berwyn to the Witch. "If you two believe in me, I'll be even stronger than if I just believe in myself. That's how I'll beat Clownmuffle. If have you two, and she doesn't."

"She has the cat," said Berwyn.

"Skin that cat. That cat doesn't figure. She's a zero. Whatever tricks she has because of this miasma, she's still a zero, always was, always will be."

"You can't. You can't, pepper. You can't just ask us to put unshakeable faith in you, that's not how it works, that's not how the Empress did it or Cicero, you can't just say you believe in yourself so much it becomes true, you're just like them all. Sayaka Miki, Cicero, taking everything onto your shoulders, demanding trust you do not deserve!"

End this endless argument. That's how they always go, the same points repeated, progress seemingly made only for everyone to lurch back to the origin and retread the same ground, supply the same arguments, reach new conclusions, no change, all the men at their pulpits the same way, kings decapitated and the world no better so they decapitate the revolutionaries and bring back the kings, only to hate the kings again, no relief, no progress, no advancement, and yet somehow you look at this world and the world five hundred years ago and something clearly happened between all the nothing happening... Something went right. Where? When? The cycle of the argument never changed. The violence beget new violence. When in all that did humankind have the chance to develop?

"There," said the Witch. "White House." She extended her finger toward the black. She didn't know why she said it, she thought it might stymie the ceaseless back-and-forth, the voices pounding her nauseated brain, but when she said it and pointed in a random direction the darkness developed gradations and the shape of a structure emerged. A shape she knew, not the same color. As though she manifested it with mere word.

Darien seized them both by their collars and hoisted them along. "Perfect. We can't have arrived much later than Sayaka Miki."

"Sayaka Miki? You saw her?"

The sword sliced in a lateral arc and came to a stop at the throat of a short, frumpy Magical Girl with a cat-eared hood. However, it was not Joliet. She wore suspenders and puffy... pantaloons? Furballs hung from the tips of her cap. They jostled as she fidgeted in fright from the blade.

What a bizarre, disparate outfit. It made the Witch think of Clownmuffle, made her wonder whether she would love or loathe this collection of leggings and fur trim, midriff and vaguely winter wear. Considerations of aesthetics had long slipped her grasp, tenuous as her hold always had been. It seemed phantasmagoric that Clownmuffle might still exist in the same state as always, unchanged, providing the same vapid commentary.

"You must be Nagisa," said Berwyn, hand placed atop the blunt end of Darien's blade to lower it. "I hoped to speak to you."

"Really sorry!" Nagisa hopped foot to foot. "I can't stay to chat, I gotta help Sayaka. Do you know which way she went?"

"Where have you been all this time," said Darien. "We waited for Cho's hhomunculus to return almost twelve hours. You're just now distressed?"

She gripped her head by the ears of her cap. "Ah, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry! She knows all my weaknesses! She set traps. I thought I was keeping an eye on her, but then suddenly I found a treasure trove of cheese, the next time I looked you had all run inside..."

"Cheese."

"Aaaaaah, I'm so embarrassed, please forgive me! Just tell me, did she really go in there?" Nagisa pointed at the White House.

Darien had only lowered her blade the degree Berwyn forced her. "Yes."

"There? You're sure? Not the Capitol like last time?"

A pause. "Yes, there," said Darien. The Witch wasn't so sure. Sayaka had spoken about skipping straight to the source: President DuPage. The White House didn't figure. Did Darien not know? Or did she deliberately intend to buy Sayaka time? Even though they had been at odds before... Maybe Darien believed in her a little, too.

"Oh, oh, oh! Why's she gotta be so difficult? Why's she always gotta rush off and do something dangerous by herself? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Madoka told me to protect her, I wish you all well. I wish you all well!"

She leapt onto Darien's blade and used it as leverage to launch herself forward. She seemed to float, but in a way that suggested a lack of control, something left to chance or fate. A plush soft feeling brushed past the Witch's leg. She and Berwyn fell back as between them slithered something that blended perfectly into the darkness save a series of bright polka dots. It maybe had a face, too, but it had already passed them, and save a fuzzy bulb at the end of what might have been a nose they could not see. It followed Nagisa as she leapt through a White House window.

"These angels of God fail to impress me," said Darien.

In an eerily perfect rendition of Nagisa's little girl voice, tainted only by a hidden deepness that lurked in the base of the throat, Berwyn said: "'Why does she always have to rush off and do something dangerous by herself?'"

"Implying something, soldier?"

"Perhaps you ought to be less critical of those you emulate so thoroughly? Is there not an elevated vocabulary word for that, o enlightened Centurion? Hippo, hippopotamus?"

"I am not alone," said Darien. "I have you and her."

"And Sayaka Miki has her little munchkin, but there's a difference between being alone and geographic proximity to humanity."

"There's a difference between me and her, too," said Darien.

"Oh?"

Darien embedded her sword into the ground. She extended a hand harshly in front of her and peeled away the long white glove that adorned it, until it bunched at her wrist. Without any further movement of her body, she turned her arm to Berwyn and held it, wrist bent back, blue veins pressed against her olive-colored skin.

"I need you to inject me. If Joliet bends perception and memory, I need something to counteract that."

Upon opening her mouth to speak, Berwyn closed it. A long while later, she opened it again. "I have no vaccine for such a specific magical effect."

"I am aware. Your limitations are well known to me. However, you can put me into a state where I won't rely on memory or perception. Turn me berserk."

"Berserk."

"Yes. Make me hate. Make me charge, blind, deaf. I can wreak destruction without my mind. I have enough faith in my body. Enough faith in my sword."

"I hope I don't actually need to explain to you why that idea is garbage."

Something registered in the Witch's mind. "The cat gives her press conferences to an audience. Reporters. If you're berserk, you'll kill them too."

"Could anything be more irrelevant?" said Darien.

That attitude. It chafed something deep, an attempted switch flip, nudging position into a weird middle ground between on and off, the spark of electricity almost surging and yet not quite able to conduct to the other end of the wire.

Her mouth hung open in the drugged position of nonstarter as Darien considered the question answered and turned back to Berwyn. "You know my strength. I cleave people to pieces even when I don't try to. My reach is long. Make my hate blind. You wanted trust? This is trust. This is me, putting my trust in you. Do you understand? I need you to be my brain. You'll observe the fight from safety, figure out what's needed, and give it to me. You the brain, I nothing but your muscles, your weapon. Do you understand, Berwyn? This is why I need you." Her sternness slackened. She seized Berwyn's wrists and held them as she stared Berwyn in the eye. "Leah. You know I'm not an idiot. Trust me, and I trust you. Together we destroy them. It's such a simple fight. It's Joliet and Clownmuffle. Sayaka Miki can handle the rest, it's a two on two fight. It's not insurmountable. Don't think about how strong Clownmuffle is. Think about how strong I am. I know you're strong. Please. Leah."

"Pepper..."

"Trust is what you wanted? Then this is it. You can inject anything into me. I won't know until after you do it. Something that knocks me out, turns me into a vegetable, whatever. You could carry me home and I wouldn't be able to stop you. I'm letting you do this because I trust you, Leah. Because I know you want the same thing as me. You're only scared because you think we'll lose, but if you believe in me, you don't have to be scared."

Berwyn tugged away her hands and pressed them to her face as she suppressed something halfway between hiss and whimper. "It's too dangerous. It's dangerous enough if you have your senses, but deprived of them―"

"There's no other way to get around Joliet's power."

"What if it doesn't even work?"

"She may be stronger, but it's the same Joliet, she's not smart, she's not clever, she crumples at the first sign of adversity, Cicero despised her for a reason. Everyone despised her for a reason. We can beat her. Don't you at least believe that?"

And murder thirty or more people in the process... Or was the Witch in the wrong to care? She understood on a logical level that no amount of collateral ought to be too much. But at the same time, that attitude, it reminded her of―her. Clownmuffle.

The switch flipped.

"I'll go first," she said. Darien and Berwyn glanced around as though they forgot they had a third person until they finally found her again. She had somehow drawn away from them, closer to the White House, a large divide bridged them. "I'll go first and make sure everyone leaves the room except Joliet. I'll be a diversion. I'm not useful for anything else, after all." Especially since her radar failed to function in this miasma. But this suddenly felt like something she had to do. Must do. Even more than confront Clownmuffle directly.

"If you alert them to our presence, you'll―"

"Nagisa already charged in. I'm just one more." She stumbled toward the White House entrance. The building stretched above her, stretched on either side of her, enfolded her like a horseshoe with a thinning gap, in which stood Darien and Berwyn.

And Darien's voice shriveled: "Berwyn, hurry, we have to go now, you have to decide, I leave it in your hands, do we fight or run..."

Then it became too silent to hear and the Witch passed between the columns and pushed through the front doors. She expected some kind of security check, and there was one, although nobody looked or cared when she walked through and the sirens didn't even go off even though her hat had a metal buckle.

A few braindead oafs milled about the lobby area. Doors led in many directions. She knew nothing about the White House's interior, she hadn't thought this far ahead, the press room had to be somewhere close to the entrance, right? She noticed an ancient secretary behind a desk who typed on a computer one finger at a time.

"Excuse me excuse me, which way to the press room?"

Tap. Tap.

"Hey, hey, which way to the press room, which way?"

Tap.

The Witch hopped, draped her stomach on the surprisingly tall counter, and stuck her hand over the edge to wave in the lady's face. "HEY."

The lady blinked and looked up. "Welcome to the White House how may I help you?" Any brightness in her eyes resumed stupefaction.

"Press room, where's the press room, I'm a press member!"

"Press room's in the west wing just through that hall take a left then a right and you'll be right in it. Have a nice tour!"

The Witch checked over her shoulder. No sign of Darien yet. What if Berwyn said no? Injected her with sleeping medicine instead? Then the Witch would be fucked. Pretty funny, right? Ha, ha. Until the fucking occurred, however, she intended to stick to the plan.

"I lied, I'm not press," she said. She whipped out her wand. "I'm, uh, I'm a fucking terrorist. I'm taking this place over!"

Wow. She could not have said a stupider thing. It was the first thing that sprung into her mind to clear the room. The woman did not seem to know what any of the spoken words meant, only "terrorist" seemed to have impact, marginal impact at best, and the Witch was not even tall enough to lean over the counter without leaping onto it entirely.

The only fortunate thing about all this was that the Witch was actually a terrorist. She swiveled her wand overhead and shot a ribbon of purple magic at the old woman's computer. It burst into flames and the woman―

Continued to tap the keyboard.

"Oh my god," said the Witch.

But after the third tap the woman realized what had happened and blinked in surprise. The Witch stood atop the counter and sent more magic sparkling, bursting into arrays of fireworks near the ceiling, causing sprinklers to rain and a shrill alarm to ring. Several of the people in the lobby jolted to attention and while the Witch had assumed them to be tourists or lobbyists or whatever they turned out to be armed guards who reached into their suits and withdrew pistols.

"Expelliarmus," said the Witch. The guns went flying before the guards had a chance to shoot. "That's right, I'm the world's first magical terrorist. Run away before I blast you to smithereens...!"

Luckily, her magic could be more persuasive than her mouth. She slung spell after spell around the room, set an empty chair on fire, then a potted plant. The dull faces of those around her changed, became horrified. People streamed out the doors yelling. One brave guard reached for his fallen gun, but the Witch leapt from the counter and stomped his hand before he could reach it. His fingerbones snapped and a sickness spread in her stomach, she had gone too deep into the role, but she reminded herself that if these people got out with only a few broken fingers, they would be far better off than if Darien charged in swinging her sword. She kicked the guard in the shoulder, careful not to use her full physical force, but capable of dislocating it nonetheless. He got the message, no more bravery. As soon as she stepped off his hand he rolled away and stumbled after the rest, shouting for backup into his radio.

Shit. Backup. If they sent more Secret Service goons, things would get worse. She failed to consider that. She hoped the backup would be as sluggish arriving as the first guards were to her initial attack. She scooped up the fallen handgun and rushed down the hallway the old secretary had outlined.

Loud as possible she made her presence known to the stillborn zombies still shambling ignorant despite the alarm and the calamity from the next room over. She whipped her magic against the walls and left bright purple burns upon the total blackness, bounced into all sorts of objects, reeled as her nose came away bloody from a door that had blended effortlessly into the environment, grabbed a young man not yet appraised of the situation and hurled him into a side room. Her magic lit the way. If she fired it ahead of her, she could sear markings and show herself the correct direction.

She rounded a corner and reached the press room.

They had gathered, the bobbing talking heads, the men and women in sharp dress and all their devices, computers, notepads, pencils, the podium between their two rows with the same plaque from the show, fifteen cameras pointed at it or more, an American flag, and the cat scratching the air with her paws and meow-meowing to the people of the world. "Happy Easter efurryone!" she lisped. She clapped and confetti spurted from her paws. When she saw the Witch enter, her eyes gleamed. She wriggled in excitement. "It appears we have a weally weally special visitor today!"

The Witch skidded to a halt between the bobbing heads, hoisted the pistol to the sky, and fired. It made a popgun sound. Her other hand directed her wand and she lit the American flag aflame. "It's me," she said. "I'm the terrorist now."

She seized a young woman journalist too dull to react and hurled her across the room, against the podium. The podium bounced and the cat steadied it but this absurd action galvanized the rest of the journalists and they rose shouting for the exits, goaded by the Witch who galloped after them and fired her gun as a prod. Like sheep they moved en masse, it only took one to flee for the rest to flee. The room emptied, the humans departed, the Secret Servicemen arrived.

"It's me you bitch." The Witch hurled her witch hat onto the ground and stomped it, stomped the little bend in particular. "Call off the goons and deal with me yourself, send them away right the fuck now."

Dumbfounded, but smiling, the cat had watched, confusion mixed with mirth. The Witch could not tell if she recognized her, but Clownmuffle had to. Had to. Right? Clownmuffle couldn't have totally forgotten her. Right? She had to remember the costume. The hat. The little bend. Had to. That was her identity, that had never changed, she had to, the clothes if not the human who wore them. Had to. Had to.

The cat's smile and gaze went vacant. She tilted her head so that she stared at the ground. "Yes," she said. "Alright," she said. Conversing. With the girl in her mouth? Telepathy did not work in this miasma, Sayaka and the Incubator told them that. The cat's head lifted and she flourished a paw. "Pwease assist the evacuation of the kittyzens." Her vacant stare transferred to the squad of guards; they holstered their guns and streamed out the room.

The room stood empty, except the Witch, except the cat, except the clown who lived in her mouth. Blackness impenetrable, a few cameras, a few chairs, a podium, a charred American flag. The Witch's ribcage decompressed. The air flooded in, thick and fast. She did... something. She got the people out. Alone now she wondered why, why she did something like that. To save a handful of brainwashed humans. To confront Clownmuffle on her own terms? She succeeded at the former, here was her chance at the latter.

Assuredly the cat already worked her magic on her. She could not trust what she saw. But she had no plan to attack. She extended her hand to the side and dropped the handgun. It clattered against a chair. She extended her other hand and dropped the wand. She held her arms like that, open, the folds of her cloak allowed to part to reveal the fine gold embroidery of a crimson tunic, the lion crest upon which her Soul Gem glimmered in this otherworldly darkness.

"Clownmuffle."

The cat cocked her head. "Wowie! Today's assassin is twuly dewanged, folks... But that's a cute word, Clownmuffle~ Might be a pawsitively adorable name for a Magical—uff!" She tripped and landed on her head.

"Clownmuffle. We need to talk."

For all she knew Clownmuffle had already stepped out of the mouth. Already about to whisk the Witch away to the same nowhere she sent everyone who disappeared in one her tricks. The cat might manipulate her senses in such a way... She stashed that thought.

Clownmuffle. Whether the Witch sensed her or not, she needed to have faith she could hear the words.

"Clownmuffle. Clownmuffle... I. I came because I... I want to help you." She did not know whether she lied or not. "You're, you're someone who matters to me. I want to help you—"

"Consider you're on camera, kid!" the cat hissed under her breath, while maintaining her sickly smile. She was about to speak again when her cat ears twitched and her eyes went wide. She dropped under the podium.

The Witch guessed what she sensed. She dropped too. Something whooshed overhead.

Half the room detached from the bottom half and soared upward. Half the chairs lost their backs and the other half toppled over each other as the force of wind carried them. The Witch slapped her hand on her crumpled hat to keep from losing it.

Clack, clack. Crystal heels came down upon the center of the room, a gleam for only a moment before the white dress settled around them. The long solid rectangular blade extended to the side, reoriented its direction, and swept sideways at incomprehensible speed. The bridal veil obscured half her face but her posture, stance, explosive pulsing breathing, strained nervous twitches of her hands and fingers, it told the story.

A potted plant toppled. The cat scampered for the nearest exit. Darien operated like a machine, her stroke bifurcated the cat geometrically and instantly. Too instantly, more instantly than the cat expected, because while the cat came apart in a bloody mess she did so a second delayed. An illusion.

Darien did not care. She swung. And swung. The chairs burst apart in pieces. The cameras spurted static shocks. The upper half of the room splattered against the ground in the exposed courtyard outside and burst into a million black globules. Windows, cut like by lasers, finally struck the floor and shattered.

In two seconds or less, the Witch knew, she'd come apart too. Scrunched into a ball, hands wrapped around folded legs, she compressed herself into the minimum possible size. Her position close to Darien's feet gave her an advantage, but she held out little hope. The wind rushed past her ear. A few strands of hair drifted onto her cheek. Additional fake cats fled, came apart, burst into raining blood, but Darien didn't care, she kept swinging, endless, furious, emitting a constant but low roar from the base of her throat like something heard in a deep cave with water. Then:

Clang. The sword stopped. It vibrated with its stored and suddenly stagnant energy, a pulse that traveled down the steel into Darien's hands and caused her to vibrate too. The Witch dared raise her eyes. At first she couldn't make sense of the scene, blood and dead cats collected everywhere, and the blade seemed to hover in midair, stopped by nothing at all. But the illusion diminished by degrees, the blood drained into the floor, the dead cats decayed until even feline skulls disintegrated. Out of the lacquered black emerged two arms in white sleeves, palms clapped around either side of the blade, holding it steady despite Darien's trembling strength. The arms extended out of a mouth, a mouth that belonged to the cat, who had fallen to her knees and tilted back her head, eyes aswirl. A coughing, choking sound matched the deep rumble as a top hat emerged, head, shoulders, torso.

Clownmuffle.

The cat's back arched as Clownmuffle climbed out of her mouth, hands still clapped around Darien's blade, one leg and then the other. She stepped down the front of the cat's bent body until she reached the ground and the cat rolled over to sputter and wheeze.

Darien's seething, heaving, breathing built. She wrenched back the hilt of her blade, or tried, except Clownmuffle held it fixed. Although Darien fidgeted, the blade stood still, until it looked less like a real object and more like something painted onto the background.

"I know you," said Clownmuffle. "Bride. Too formalistic? Traditional, the word. And unfitting for someone so young, though you've grown. Perhaps that unfittingness fits. A preteen wife, as we've all been wed so young to this unexpected lifestyle. What did I mark you before? Three out of ten? I'll revise: Four out of ten. One day, however, you'll be a woman, and then it'll just be so dull. Savor this relative apex."

The shriek Darien uttered caused thin red lines to open on the Witch's hands and Clownmuffle's face. She jerked the hilt two more times, gave up, released it suddenly to attack with bare hands. Clownmuffle detached an arm from the tip of the blade and held it to block but Darien's fingers ripped straight through. Clownmuffle only yawned. She bent backward to avoid a similar strike to her eyeballs and stuck her bleeding stump behind her back. She twisted her other hand, still glued to the sword's tip, and sliced the blade laterally across where Darien's stomach should have been had Darien not already retracted groundward to sweep a crystal heel for Clownmuffle's ankles, a maneuver Clownmuffle hopped over as she withdrew her arm from behind her back to reveal a perfectly restored hand while the severed one on the ground pounced and seized Darien by the throat.

Darien didn't give a shit, she chomped her teeth around the hand's stump, tore it off, and spat it out. She rolled back and seized the wobbling hilt of her sword an instant before it struck the ground and surged forward. Clownmuffle allowed its smooth side to glide along the surface of her palm before catching it again a centimeter from her constant grin. She swung like a discus thrower and launched Darien plus sword over the wall, into the air, into the dark. A feral cry trailed her.

"Don't worry. I'll finish her soon." Clownmuffle tipped her top hat and leapt over the wall after Darien.

"Kuh, kuh, careful—her mind—something's not right with it—"

Clownmuffle was gone. The cat sobbed. The Witch had not noticed before, but somewhere in the fight she had lost her arm. She clutched the stump as blood streamed down the side of her dress. Clownmuffle, somehow, had forgotten or not seen the Witch. "Somehow." More like, as usual. Either way, it left the Witch alone with the cat. She picked up her wand, quiet, not to attract attention. The cat didn't seem to notice her either.

In combat, the Witch never considered herself stellar, even after the experience she got fighting with the Nazi and the Baroness. Utility, sure, but raw combat, meh. However, she had one spell, ripped straight from the same books, that she theorized might give her an unexpected advantage over any enemy. Well, not Clownmuffle, because Clownmuffle had demonstrated many times the ability to dodge the Witch's spells without even looking. But the cat, sobbing, distracted, not paying attention, perhaps considering herself safe while Clownmuffle took care of the assassin...

One spell. The killing curse. It should kill her if it hit her. It wouldn't even need to touch her Soul Gem, because it was the killing curse. It killed. That was what it did, all it did. No maiming necessary, no internal injuries, it simply killed. One shot. Then it ended, they saved the world...

Her hand tightened around the wand. Her jaw clamped. So easy. So easy! And here she was... wondering whether this stupid obnoxious catgirl knew what she did, whether she knew how much she had hurt the world, whether she was just scared and did what people told her. She remembered Joliet from the yacht, clutching her back as she ferried her over the lake to safety, crying exactly like now. A coward. A little girl. The same age as the Witch.

How. How, how, how could her resolve falter like this, now, with so much at stake, she tried to visualize the faces, the thousands, millions, billions of people on the planet who needed help, she visualized them however as such a massive clump that the faces became nothing but dots and the dots combined into a single shaded feature. The cat's sobbing face remained a single face. How. How. How. Where did the resolve go, the resolve against Clownmuffle, was it only Clownmuffle she could truly hate, or could she even truly hate Clownmuffle, if she got the chance would she ever actually kill even her?

Could this hesitation be the cat's power? Mental manipulation. Falsified sympathy. What she had tried and failed to inflict on Darien, who had been too mad to care.

She blotted her internal voice with Hemet's. Action. Revolution. Sacrifice. Bloodshed. To form a better future, to drain the pus. To lance the boil. She could―if she shut off her brain―overrode herself―an easy motion, a two-word incantation...!

"Avada Kedavra."

The spell lashed out. It pierced the cat through the middle and scattered in dim sparks against the ground behind her.

The cat continued to sob, as if nothing happened. The Witch crawled to her and stuck out her hand. It passed through. She waved until her brain could no longer sustain the illusion and it faded away. The cat had already escaped. The room stood empty. She thought she heard Darien's subterranean grumble somewhere, but distance and sound had distorted.

She climbed onto a seat that had only lost its back and stooped over her knees. Relief. Somehow, she felt relief.

But she had accomplished nothing. Darien fought Clownmuffle. A fight Darien had no hope to win, no matter how long she prolonged it. The cat could be anywhere, they showed their hand, Nagisa would find Sayaka eventually...

She looked up. In Darien's rampage, she had destroyed the podium, the stage, most of the cameras. Most. One remained standing, turned on, a light indicated recording. It showed the remains of the stage through the small screen on its back.

Did it still broadcast? To every TV in the nation? To the streaming services? The Witch rose. She fished her hat off the ground, stuck her arm into it to straighten it, and plopped it on her head. She walked onto the stage, behind the remains of the podium.

"Hello," she said.

The camera lens, the amorphous billions of humanity, stared back, or maybe she spoke only to herself.

"I am the Witch." No other name would suffice. "My friends and I are going to topple this government." The words came unconsciously, without thinking, so that she suddenly became panic-stricken and thought about what she was saying. A brief moment; she straightened her cloak around her shoulders. Her audience had finally arrived. Her pulpit.

"We will defeat the cat, we will defeat Schrodinger, and we will defeat President DuPage. We will defeat anyone who defends them. We have already stormed the White House, as you saw. Their defenses are paralyzed. God is on our side, God has sent us angels. As you all probably know by now, magic is real. Wraiths are real. President DuPage is a wraith, the cat is a magician. They have corrupted this country. We will defeat them."

Her chance. Her moment. Her movement. Hemet's journey resuscitated for a final lap. Billions watching. Maybe only millions, okay, but billions would hear about it soon enough. People worn, tired, hungry, depressed, people atop stools right now with the nooses around their necks, human and Magical Girl alike, the Baroness, the Nazi.

A message. She could unify them. She could bring them to Washington, make them march, a rebellion, even if Darien and Sayaka Miki failed, could Clownmuffle overcome the entire tide of humanity? Could she? Could she stand, alone, against so many? Berwyn and the others said Clownmuffle alone defeated forty Magical Girls in the Empire. That was forty. How about a hundred thousand, a million? Eventually enough would appear that her tricks could no longer fool them all. The more fools who watched the harder they became to fool. "You can fool some of them some of the time..." Humans and Magical Girls, united. She only needed to unite them, a message here, a call for hope, peace, cooperation, brotherhood and sisterhood, a call for defense, for justice, for reason and rectitude too, a call for the salvation of the world, a call to join hands for a common, noble cause―a cause of love.

No.

No, that would never work, why would she expect that to work? She had never convinced even one person to join hands for a common cause. Love? Love. Love, in this world? Gatineau in her depths, Cook in her heights, twelve lovers each, each without love. No, that was overly cynical, love still existed, she remembered the Baroness, remembered Berwyn, but... But. She also remembered the Nazi.

Love would not sway the masses.

"This is your final chance," she said. She lifted a fist and clenched it. The thin red lines cut by Darien's screech burst and blood ran down it, better than she could have choreographed. "Once we're finished, you'll never be able to do it yourselves. We're going to cut that cat to pieces." She slapped her palm on a sharp shard of the podium. She focused on the pain, refused to blot it although she could, allowed it to infect her, to cause her eyes to bulge, her mouth to twist, her fingers to curl. "We'll ram her on a stake! Stick her on a spit. Roast her, chop her, impale her, peel her skin, gouge her eyes, dismember her digit by digit. She's a magician like me, you know, you've surely heard the rumors, we don't die right away. We'll make her suffer for what she's done, for the agony she's inflicted, for everything―"

(She remembered the cat, sobbing, pathetic, just a girl, same age as the Witch, but here she had so much less hesitation, here it was so easy to speak, had the cat truly been manipulating her before, or was it simply easier this way anyway?)

"―We'll make her last. Every torment and torture you can imagine, it'll be amazing. Fantastic. Glorious! This is the chance, this is the first chance we've gotten, to crush those gluttons who lord it over us, who act so superior, who think we're idiots, who giggle when we're hurt, who tell us to suck it up, who say 'if they didn't want to die they shouldn't have hanged themselves...' This is that chance, this is where we destroy them, there shall be no golden parachutes, there shall be no book deals, no executive positions in the private sector, no offshore safe havens, no banks in Luxembourg, no! None of that. There'll be guillotines and firing squads, the execution of Maximilian a thousand times over, a purge, a bloodletting, we'll let the blood out, we'll let it flow through the streets of this damned city, we will!"

She slapped her palm against her face and left a bloody print, in any world but this she'd be mad, in any world but this she'd be in bad taste, but this world had gone to Hell, this world lived in the depths, the people she spoke to were not Mister and Missus Petit-Bourgeois with Junior and Fido playing fetch on the lawn, oh fucking no, this was a speech for all the Nazis out there angry and impotent and wanting to cave in a skull. She seized the podium and hurled it aside. She flicked her hand and a drop of blood landed on the camera lens.

"This is your last chance to stand with us, boys and girls, because once something's dead it never comes back. Do you hate her? Do you really fucking hate her? That cat, that damn cat? Imagine her right now, imagine her face and her mannerisms, her lisp and her trashy puns, imagine her tripping and wriggling her legs in the air, her tail, her ears, call that image into your head right now and ask yourselves, do I want to kill her? Do I want to see her scream? Imagine the bullets blasting open her body, the knives plunged, the bombs, imagine it right now. Right now!"

She gave them a moment to imagine. She had no podium to clutch so she bent over and clutched her knees while she panted from all her screaming. Wiped her lip with her hand and left another bloody smear, her whole face grew hot and wet and sticky. The iron taste lingered on her tongue, in her nostrils.

"Well, this is your last chance. If you hate her, if you really hate her, now's the time to do something about it you lazy assholes. Now's the time to get off the couch and make due on the promises you made to yourselves. I know who you are, I see you there, this is your chance. Your chance. Your chance. YOUR CHANCE. Washington, you know the city, the Capitol, you know the place. Human, Magical Girl, come on in. There's a nice doctor outside the city who'll help you get inside, if you ask Kyubey I'm sure he'll be all too happy to guide you to her. We're burning everything in here. Burning it to the ground. You better hurry if you want in."

Her speech had not been that long but she felt like she had prattled John Galt lengths. Her lungs ached. Her throat dried to parchment. She had no way to gauge the reaction of her audience, whether they cheered or jeered, or simply thought her a lunatic. She must look like a lunatic. Hemet would never approve of her, she had gotten too excited. Her fervor bent inside of her. She needed to bring things to an end.

"Last chance," she said. She thought: In conclusion... and had to fight not to say it. "Bonfire of the century. A time to grind and a time to crush, a time to kill and a time to peel. Do you want to kill them? Do you? Do you want to? It's up to you. It's up to you. Good, fucking, bye."

She whipped out her wand and sent a quick spell into the camera. It exploded, the sparks rained. She sagged back and slid down what remained of the wall. Slid until she sat. The decapitated chairs watched her, the ghost of the cat mewling. What did she even say? It sickened her to replay the words in her head. Nonetheless she imagined the Nazi, leaping out of her seat, hollering at the television set. She imagined a fuse of action lit. She didn't know. She didn't know. Maybe her words were too weak. Maybe too strong. She didn't know. She didn't know. Hemet couldn't tell her, the spirit went silent. Maybe she awed them all to silence. Maybe she became the clown.

Someone stood in front of her. White, phantasmic: ghost. No, Nagisa, the angel girl.

"Sayaka isn't here, is she."

The Witch shook her head. "I'm sorry. We lied."

Nagisa didn't respond. She bounced off in another direction and left the room empty again.

Illness crept into the Witch's gut. Somewhere, metal struck metal and echoed.