Chapter 2: Troubles with Road Trips
It was just past midnight as Yang Xiao Long trudged through the streets with her hands in her pockets, the amber yellow of the streetlights casting dark shadows over her face as she walked past. Not a soul was awake.
She didn't know the name of the city she was in - quite frankly, she didn't really care. As far as she was concerned, it was just some small town in the middle of nowhere. The only reason she was even sticking around was because it was on the way to her destination and she needed to resupply. And with the duffel bag over her shoulders stuffed with food, water, and other essentials, all that was left was finding a grief seed to keep her safety cache topped off.
She was just over a week into her search for her mother and had traveled roughly a thousand miles. She'd say it was an impressive feat considering it was all on foot but, as a magical girl with superhuman speed and stamina, she was a bit disappointed in her progress. Because of her wish, she knew exactly where to find her mother and knew that she still had another thousand miles to go. That number gave her no comfort.
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, she debated on just running full sprint towards her destination without stopping. If she started right then, she'd probably arrive within three days. Unfortunately, she knew didn't have enough magic to sustain that much running - especially not when every city she passed through had witches or hostile magical girls she had to contend with.
Yang stopped under a streetlight and eyed the alleyway to her side. From her pockets she removed her soul gem, its golden light flashing brightly. The pulses she felt from it had gotten steadily stronger and faster as she walked. It reached its peak when she arrived where she stood, her gem practically screaming at her to take another step towards the alley.
And take a step she did, feeling a notable chill run up her spine when was greeted with a flashing circular rainbow with an emoji cat-face. It was just what she was looking for: the entrance to a witch's labyrinth.
"Someone's fighting that thing," Yang quietly noted, the entrance rippling and distorting violently before her. From within it, she heard the distant sounds of clashing metal and shrill screaming.
She stared for a moment, debating on whether it was worth joining the fray and taking the spoils for herself. It was certainly something she knew could do. The other girl would be exhausted from fighting the witch - she wouldn't be able to fight back. And even if she still had lots of magic left, Yang's powers easily allowed her shatter the other girl's soul gem. It would be so easy - even easier than killing the witch herself...
Yang shook her head and turned away. As tempting as it was, she was not about to kill another magical girl - not again. The very fact that she had considered it to be an option made disgust and shame well up inside her.
"There always has to be some kind of moral dilemma." Yang grumbled. "Why can't everything just be simple?" She began to walk away only to be stopped by a sudden realization. "She's losing..."
Wide-eyed, she turned back towards the entrance, the circular rainbow still rippling but at a far lower intensity. Usually that meant that the witch was in its final throes before death, its labyrinth collapsing around it. The fact that the entrance was still in motion and sounds of combat could still be heard meant that the witch was still alive and magical girl inside was still struggling. She might have been critically injured or run out of magic, which gave the witch the upper hand. Yang was not confident that she'd survive.
"Why aren't you running...?" Yang whispered through her grit teeth. "You're gonna die..."
The struggle continued for a few seconds longer until seconds became minutes. All motion within the entrance had ceased but the sound of clashing metal continued. Yang could tell that no actual battle was occurring. The witch was merely playing with its food.
At this point, it became clear to Yang that she was the only person who'd be able to kill the witch. Upon that realization, she didn't even hesitate. With a flash of gold, she transformed and jumped into the entrance, plunging into an incomprehensible world of neon lights in every color imaginable.
The brightness and colors made the labyrinth visually overwhelming. It took a moment for Yang's eyes to adjust. And when she did, she found herself in an amusement park that spanned endlessly in every direction. The ground was like a dance floor, flashing rhythmically into different colors; as were the walls and roofs of every building in sight. The sky above was pure black but that only seemed to make the brightness of her surroundings all the brighter. And most striking of all, there were thousands upon thousands of people with smile-emoji masks wandering aimlessly about the amusement park grounds like a horde of extremely happy zombies.
Not masks. Faces, Yang thought as all the zombies within view watched her as intently she watched them. These are all familiars...
Surprisingly, the sea of familiars parted to make a clear path deeper into the labyrinth. She could sense that the path lead towards the witch. Was this a trap? Probably. That didn't really matter. It was an easy way to her destination so she took it.
This has got to be the biggest welcoming committee I've ever seen. Total members: A bajillion, Yang thought with a sardonic smirk as she sprinted onward, her yellow robes and hair flowing wildly behind her.
Not even a minute into the labyrinth, Yang started hearing voices - an unseen chorus that spoke an unholy language. For whatever reason, Yang understood what the voices were telling her.
"Why so serious?" the chorus said. "Stop and play! Have a little fun!"
Yang couldn't help but be unnerved by how the voices echoed in her mind. She suspected that it was the voice of the witch that created the labyrinth. Of course, she couldn't let a witch's taunts stop her. She grit her teeth and kept running.
"That frown on your face makes you look really boring," the chorus continued. "And yellow really isn't your color. Why don't we spice things up - bring some life to your blandness?"
"Get out of my head!" Yang yelled, already ducking under one of the emoji-faced familiars that pounced her from behind. Right as it landed and turned towards her, she delivered a straight punch with an armored hand to the familiar's head.
Yang didn't stop to watch the familiar drop to the ground from being decapitated. She could already sense at least a dozen more familiars' intent to kill her. She dispatched them all right as they came, golden explosions and dismembered corpses flying every which way as she continued charging.
The pathway started curving, leading her towards the entrance to a roller coaster. Yang had to admit, the idea of going on a twisted witch-labyrinth version of roller coaster sounded really fun. But at the same time, the path was no longer leading her towards the witch. She needed to make a path of her own.
With a savage cry, Yang barreled through the wall of familiars trying to herd her towards the wrong direction. Immediately, the horde went into a frenzy.
"You're no fun, blondie! The ride was right there! Turn back!" the chorus screamed as a mass of smiling faces began to pile around Yang, clawing at her and impairing her movement. There were too many of them for her to avoid. Yang could only grit her teeth as she felt sharp flashes of pain all across her body. Quickly she dulled those sensations.
"I don't have time for this!"
Yang wrestled some space for herself and then slammed her gauntlets towards the ground, creating a kinetic explosion that blasted away every familiar within ten feet of her. Yang then repeated the action in tandem with a jump, creating an explosion at her feet which sent her flying towards her destination.
"Lookie, lookie! A circus girl doing flips!" the chorus said, followed by a cacophony of laughter that drowned out every sound in Yang's ears.
"Shut up!"
This had to be the most annoying witch Yang had ever faced.
Yang landed on the roof of a carousel and took a moment to catch her breath. She could sense that the witch was close by - how close, she couldn't really say. If she used her powers, she'd be able to find its exact location. She might even find the other magical girl that was still trapped in the labyrinth - if that girl was still alive, of course.
Yang noticed familiars were starting to climb up to where she was resting so performed another explosive jump and landed on the top another building some fifty feet away.
Right as she began to debate on whether or not to use her powers, she shook her head. "No thinking, just act," Yang said to herself. With that, she closed her eyes sent out a pulse.
In the brief moment between the activation of her detection powers and actually finding what she was looking for, Yang was once again struck by how she ended up in the situation she was in.
She had wished to find her mother and ask why she left all those years ago. Somehow, that wish manifested into powers of detection. And it didn't stop at finding things that were hidden. She could literally sense the intentions of anyone around her. Assuming she wasn't hopelessly outmatched or hopelessly outnumbered, she was effectively unbeatable. It was honestly just dumb luck that the witch she found had exactly the kind of labyrinth and familiars that she was ill-equipped to face.
Yang opened her eyes and grimaced. The witch was eagerly waiting for her at the bumper car tracks within the warehouse-like building around fifty feet to the south. The other magical girls were unconscious in the top most car of the ferris wheel just under a hundred feet to the north.
Yang swore under her breath. Did there really have to be two magical girls in the opposite direction of where she needed to go? That had to be a joke, a trap, or some delaying tactic. Yang was all too aware of it... but she knew she'd fall for it anyway...
"Oh, dammit all!"
Yang bounded off towards the two magical girls, blasting her landing zone clear with a few well-placed magical projectiles shot from her gauntlets. She broke into a run as soon as her boots hit the ground, already charging for another explosive jump.
"First you ignore the rides, now you head straight for them! Make up your mind, blondie!"
"I said shut it!"
Yang jumped.
After a few seconds soaring through the air, she crashed through the windows of the top-most ferris wheel car and rolled face-first into a wall. Admittedly, it wasn't her most graceful of landings. She scrambled to get back to her feet, ignoring all the blood dripping from the hundreds of cuts she must have gotten from the broken glass. She had other things she needed to worry about.
The two magical girls were indeed on the train car and they were very much alive... although... alive was stretching things a little...
Grimly, Yang pried two soul gems from the cold dead fingers of a disembodied hand - the owner of which was probably one of the magical girls. "This witch is fucked up," she muttered, struggling to suppress a sudden outpouring of rage and disgust. She pocketed the soul gems, kicked the carriage door open, and bounded back towards the witch.
Why keep them alive? Their soul gems were dark - really dark - but they weren't that close to running out of magic. Why had the witch kept the gems? Why not destroy them? All those questions swam in the back of her mind as she blasted a hole through the roof of the building housing the witch.
"Spice it up, blondie! Show me a smile!"
Yang looked up at the witch and saw a giant cat glowing neon colors, pinned gruesomely to the ground with flashing chains and barbed wire. Its face was a Cheshire-smile with large curious eyes. Its paws had been torn off, bloody bandages wrapped around the stumps of its legs. Two pairs of roller skates lay in a pile before it, well within its reach but obviously unusable.
Yang could only shake her head in confusion. Could this witch even fight back?
"Smile, blondie!" the chorus repeated while Yang stared at the witch. It stared directly back, the unnervingly wide smile seeming to grow even wider as the chorus continued to egg her on.
Yang could sense something was wrong. The witch wasn't moving. There weren't even any familiars close by to defend it. This couldn't be it, could it? How was this witch able to take out two magical girls?
Yang pulled back for a punch, expecting some sort of counter attack.
It came like lightning. A glowing pillar of energy erupted from the ground around the witch, completely vaporizing her right arm as she moved to attack. Yang couldn't have avoided it. The moment she sensed it coming, it was already too late.
Yang jumped away from the witch, clutching her cauterized stump. She glared at it. All the while, the chorus cackled around her.
"Suits you right for being mean!"
Regrowing the arm would take a lot of magic and a lot of time - both of which she did not have. Already, her soul gem's attempt at healing the damage was eating heavily into her reserves. She needed to take out the witch quickly or she'd bleed out energy until she disappeared. It was either that or...
Run.
The moment it became a thought it her mind, Yang immediately summoned a large kinetic explosion to launch herself away - back towards the entrance.
Not killing the witch would mean it would just continue getting stronger. But continuing to try would mean she'd die before she got her wish. Getting a grief seed would have been nice but she knew when she couldn't win. She'd rather live.
Yang collapsed into the bed of a hotel room she had broken into and started writhing in pain.
For a good ten minutes after exiting the labyrinth, she had been running through the streets with her sense of touch suppressed. After finding a relatively safe place, she felt it a good time to return her sensations to normal. In the instant she did so, all the pain she had shrugged off came crashing down on her. Never in her life did she ever think she'd experience this much anguish. She thought she would just feel a little tingly - maybe even a little sore. That's what it was like before, even with grievous injuries so she expected no different. But no, that was not the case at all. She nearly blacked out from how much it hurt.
It was her magic, she realized. It was still trying to heal her arm. Normally, her sense of pain would have been dulled automatically by exactly the right amount so that she couldn't feel her flesh being rewoven and her bones being rebuilt. By deliberately turning on her pain, she must have made it so that she could feel it.
After several minutes of squirming, Yang decided she couldn't take it. She'd rather suffer from sluggish movements than be crippled by pain. She detached herself from her physical body and let the utter lack of sensation calm her mind.
"I'm in over my head," Yang muttered in realization, eyes fixed to a crack in the ceiling.
A witch had rendered her at roughly half strength by instantly vaporizing her arm. She hadn't been able to kill said witch because of said vaporization injury so she'd have to eat into her grief seed cache to have enough power to heal herself. That wasn't even accounting for the two soul gems she had snatched from the literal clutches of death.
There was too much to think about and she needed a second opinion.
"Kyubey?" she broadcasted, knowing full well how silly it was asking the creature for help.
It had been nearly a three days since Kyubey had spoken with Yang. Usually it came to her while she was in transit, appearing at the side of the road or on the roof of a building and making small talk via telepathy from a distance. The only time Yang ever called out to it was when she was still in Vale. She wasn't sure if it would even hear her, much less respond.
She was surprised, however.
"Yes, Yang Xiao Long?" Kyubey's voice said to her shortly after Yang's mental transmission.
"I found two soul gems in a witch labyrinth. What do I do with them?"
There was a feeling of surprise in Kyubey's response. "Ah, the Malachite twins. They were never very powerful but they worked well together. I trust that you have cleansed their soul gems of grief?"
Yang sat up and looked at the two red and blue eggs on the table across the room. Even from a distance, she could see the darkness churning inside them.
"Uhh... Not yet," she thought. "I don't know why, but that witch didn't kill them even though they were basically dead. When I tried to escape with the gems, it didn't try very hard to trap me inside, either. Really weird."
Kyubed stepped into the hotel room from the window and jumped onto the table. "Interesting," it said, examining the soul gems.
Yang rolled her eyes. Typical that the first thing the rat would do was look at the disembodied gems as opposed to the injured contractee.
"Just so you know, there are consequences to allowing a soul gem to get this dark. We recommend you cleanse them immediately."
Yang gave Kyubey a wry smile and raised her glowing stump. Nearly her entire forearm had been regrown but she still did not have a wrist and hand. "After this, okay? This is kind of a higher priority thing, if you catch my drift."
"We do not agree but if you insist."
Yang could almost detect a hint of dry humor in that concession. It was probably nothing, though.
She adjusted her position on the bed so that she was sitting more comfortably. "Tell me about Ruby. How's she doing?"
"Ruby Rose is doing wonderfully. She is one of the most powerful contractees in your city. Ever since she took over your territory, grief seed harvesting in Vale has had a nearly six percent rise in efficiency."
Yang nodded thoughtfully at this. She didn't really understand what a 'nearly six percent rise in efficiency' meant but numbers had gone up and that was probably a good thing. Kyubey certainly seemed happy at the very least - or the closest approximation to happy that a creature like him could muster.
"How's my dad?"
"Taiyang Xiao Long is still distraught over your disappearance. Investigations are still being conducted and search parties are still being sent all across Vale and the surrounding cities and states. We do not believe these searches and investigations will bear fruit unless you decide to turn yourself in."
Yang sighed. She would have loved to turn herself in right then and there but she still had places to be and things to do. She wasn't about to stop after she had already come so far.
"We would like to reiterate that those soul gems require grief seeds immediately. Failure to administer them will prove unhelpful to your goals."
Yang groaned. "Alright, alright. No need to get all dramatic."
She got out of bed and removed a pouch from her belt containing a number of grief seeds. She plucked one and placed it near the gems. A slow and steady stream of black energy began seeping from out of the gems into the grief seed. She watched this happen for a moment before moving to returning to the bed.
"What's the problem with soul gems going dark anyway?" she asked idly.
Yang sat and watched darkness slowly drain out of the gems. She then frowned. Kyubey wasn't answering? That was strange...
"We do not recommend asking questions like that, Yang Xiao Long," the creature finally replied.
Yang rolled her eyes. "There you go being vague again. This is why so many magical girls die, you know? They never know what they're getting themselves into."
"Knowledge of this has proven dangerous for magical girls to possess. It has been known to shorten their lifespans..."
Yang crossed her arms, her right hand now fully regrown. "Kyubey," she growled.
The creature stared blankly. "You will not like what you are about to hear..."
"I'll be the judge of that."
"Since you have taken the liberty of saving Melanie and Miltiades Malachite, their fates are now in your hands. Do with them what you wish."
Yang would admit that finding out the relationship between witches and magical girls had been a shock - but no more a shock than finding out that her soul had been ripped out of her body. Somehow it just didn't surprise her as much. And thinking back, it made sense. A grief seed was a witch's egg. A soul gem was a magical girl's egg. Knowing that, everything just sort of clicked.
"We would also like to remind you that simply allowing them to remain as dormant gems will be a disservice to the universe and a liability to yourself. We recommend you do something with them at your earliest convenience."
Her lack of surprise did not make her feel better about it, however...
Yang bit her lip in frustration as she landed on a rooftop overlooking a rotunda in the middle of the town. Immediately after confirming that she was back in tip-top shape, she had returned to patrolling with increased vigor. She had hoped to find another, hopefully easier witch to take down. She had been searching for an hour now and still no luck.
"The population of this town is small enough that witches do not commonly spawn here," Kyubey said helpfully from its place on Yang's shoulder. "The ones that do are usually very weak. The witch you fought earlier is an anomaly in that it is more powerful than most witches spawned within a rural area such as this. What's more, it seems wholly uninterested in preying on normal humans and preys on magical girls instead."
"Yeah. I noticed," Yang muttered dryly.
She checked her soul gem again for any nearby magic. Still nothing. "You know what? Screw it. I'm sending out a pulse. If there's any other witch in this city, I'm gonna find it."
"Is it truly wise for you to consume magic for a long range sweep?"
Technically, Kyubey was right to be wary of Yang using her detection powers. Said powers used increasingly more magic proportional to the size of the search area. The city was pretty small, being a rural city and all, but its total area was still bigger than the territory she once controlled back in Vale.
Of course, Yang ignored Kyubey and activated her detection powers anyway. She was tired, irritable, and didn't have enough magic to justify counteracting the negative effects of sleep deprivation - she still had a day of travel ahead of her. If she was to kill any witches that night, she needed to find one as soon as possible which entailed using her detection.
Unfortunately, it still resulted in failure. Not a single witch could be found. All she saw was the witch of neon lights she had retreated from earlier.
"Welp, that was pointless," Yang muttered, jumping to another rooftop. "I wasted an hour of moonlight patrolling an empty city." She scowled at the creature of her shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me this city had nothing? You could have saved me a lot of time."
"Our operational directives include not giving any unnecessary information to contractees unless they ask for it." Kyubey said plainly. "You and your sister should know this already. You need only ask the right question and we shall answer it truthfully."
"You didn't tell me because I didn't ask?" Yang grumbled, jumping to yet another rooftop.
"Precisely."
Yang frowned. "Fantastic," she said dryly.
"Fantastic indeed. Will that be all, Miss Xiao Long? If so, I will take my leave."
Yang's frown deepened. Was it actually trying to be funny or was its sarcasm accidental? Either way, it only soured her mood even more.
She rolled her eyes one last time and grumbled, "Yeah yeah, just leave already."
"A single 'yes' will suffice," Kyubey said. Shortly after, it hopped off Yang's shoulder and disappeared.
Dejectedly, Yang returned to the hotel room she had broken into and spent the rest of the night getting some shut-eye.
It had been two days now since Yang had rescued the two magical girls from the labyrinth of neon lights and amusement park rides. Since then, she had traversed another two hundred or so miles to a different rural town.
Fortunately, she had found and killed another witch. Unfortunately, her safety cache still wasn't as healthy as it had been a few days ago. With how many miles she still had left, she feared she might not have enough to sustain herself and the two extra gems she now carried.
Not that having extra gems mattered much. The rate of passive decay for dormant soul gems was slower than that of active ones. Yang could still keep herself bright with only one grief seed a day while keeping the other two gems bright as well.
But that was all assuming she did nothing but run all day. Any arduous battle would require at least one extra seed. She had been lucky for the past week or so in that she had been encountering multiple witches that had been quite easy to kill. Encounters like the one with the witch of neon lights had only happened twice. Had she encountered any more, surely she would have been much more desperate to find more grief seeds.
As it stood, she was doing fine. Still, she needed to find and kill more witches.
Yang was starting to get homesick. It felt so long ago since she was last in Vale and yet it had only been a month. It was probably because she was taking far longer to make her journey than she expected to. Progress had slowed considerably.
Yang was crossing a remote region and every town she passed by was little more than a few houses and shops with scattered farm houses in the surrounding areas - too small for a witch to spawn unless a nomadic magical girl happened to fall there. Very rarely did she find a city with enough people that she that had any chance of encountering witches. Every time she reached such a city, she had to spend a day or two just hunting and resting.
The two soul gems she had rescued were not helping. While she had originally found that the accumulation of grief within their gems was negligible, they also had other side effects that she did not expect nor enjoy.
She had taken to wearing the gems as rings together with her own - it was more convenient than having glowing rocks burning a hole in her pockets. Doing so had the unfortunate side effect of allowing Yang to feel the emotional states of the disembodied girls in the exact moment of their body-loss. Slowly but surely, those feelings were wearing down her emotional fortitude. Her grief seed consumption per week was steadily rising as a result.
Kyubey had been right. Keeping the gems as they were was a liability to herself. The only question was: what she was going to do with them?
Another week had passed and she had only progressed another hundred miles. In that time, her grief seed supply had run out and she was forced to remain in the same city she to hunt. Thankfully, it was much higher population city than the last few she had visited so witches were common enough that she could sustain herself.
Not common enough to continue her journey, however.
The city she was in was much larger than the territory she controlled in Vale and yet she seemed to be encountering less than half as many witches. It didn't make sense. Vale couldn't possibly have that much higher population than a rural city, could it?
Yang had been hunting for three days and had only found three witches in that time - the first and seconds being ones she had found and killed on her first hunt and the third being the one she was currently tracking down. The trail had led her to what looked to be an abandoned nightclub near a train station. She could feel the three gems she held in her hand pulsating as she drew near.
"This is gonna be terrible, I just know it," Yang muttered, breaking apart the chains barring the entrance. Immediately upon doing so, an intricate floral pattern appeared before her. "You better be worth it."
With a sigh and a shake of her head, Yang flashed gold and jumped into the labyrinth.
The witch was not worth it. Yang came to that conclusion fifteen minutes after she started fighting it and was now well into her fortieth minute. The witch wasn't even difficult to fight. It was just tedious.
The labyrinth quite literally a glass bowl of chocolate and strawberry ice cream. Not only was it freezing cold, all the terrain was slippery and there was no flat ground. The witch took the shape of a doll, roughly the shape and size of a small girl who couldn't have been older than six. It moved with grace like a ballerina, spinning around in high heels, somehow completely ignoring how slippery the terrain was. Its familiars were all icy umbrellas that had icy copies of the doll dancing around in unison.
Yang took fifteen minutes to figure out the trick to killing the witch and was not at all happy with what she realized.
The witch could occupy one of its many copies and would jump to a different one every time Yang tried to go for any lethal blow. The solution to it, she realized, was to destroy every single familiar in the labyrinth. Doing so would mean she needed to destroy familiars faster than the witch could spawn them.
Her fist met another familiar and it shattered to a million pieces. She then looked down at the gem on her belly button. It was already halfway filled with grief and she had barely used any magic.
"Stupid gems," she grumbled, punting another familiar.
Yang set her gems and grief seed atop the table of another hotel room she had broken into and then unceremoniously collapsed onto the bed. She felt the unpleasant tension inside her slowly unravel as the seed siphoned the darkness from her gem. She let out a sigh of relief.
Fighting the witch earlier had been frustrating to the point of unbridled fury. During the battle, she could sense how her emotional state was increasing her soul gem's rate of decay. Even worse were the two other soul gems which seemed to be treating her own gem like a grief seed, transferring negative energy from themselves to Yang. She was lucky she had won when she did. Had the fight lasted any longer, she would have fallen to despair.
With that unpleasant thought, Yang sat up on the bed and looked across the room to the gems on the table. All three were barely glowing and the grief seed was already fully saturated - almost ready to turn back into a witch. Kyubey was also sitting atop the table eyeing the grief seed.
Yang didn't greet the creature. Kyubey matched Yang's silence and merely took the saturated grief seed and scurried out of the window. Yang watched wordlessly as the creature disappeared from view.
She then turned to the gems once more, grimacing.
She needed to do something about them. She couldn't just let them keep injecting grief into her system. Eventually, all three of them would turn into witches. She had no desire to lose herself to despair.
The first thing she thought of was dropping the gems. She could leave them and let some other magical girl deal with their witches. It wouldn't be the first time. Hell, her acquisition of the gems had her doing exactly that, leaving a witch for some other better equipped girl to kill.
Yang's frown deepened.
She couldn't bring herself to do that, though. She had rescued them from a witch labyrinth. She was the only reason they weren't witches already. After coming so far, was she really just going to let it happen?
No. She couldn't do it. Her conscience wouldn't allow it.
She could justify all day how she only killed witches and fellow magical girls for her survival but she had to draw the line somewhere. Letting someone turn into witch when she could prevent it was where she drew that line. She'd rather just kill them than let that happen.
Yang continued to stare grimly at the soul gems, realizing where her thoughts had brought her.
That was it, then, wasn't it? She needed to kill them. After all the trouble she took to keep them alive, she needed to pull the trigger on them. Was that some sort of sick joke? It had to be, right?
Yang closed her eyes and sighed - a gesture she felt like she had been doing a lot lately.
It wasn't a joke. The reality of her situation was all too clear to her. She had to do it. She was going to turn into a witch if she did anything else. She had to do it...
With a heavy silence, Yang left the hotel room and took the gems to a nearby rooftop where she set them a short distance in front of her. She then flashed gold into her combat attire.
"You have made up your mind?" the voice of Kyubey rang in her mind. Yang didn't even need to look to know that the creature was right behind her. "Most wonderful. We are pleased to see you are no longer wasting precious energy," Kyubey continued, padding to Yang's side.
"Yeah," Yang muttered. "I need to do this."
"We disagree that you need to do this. The more pragmatic choice would have been to let them fall to despair. Melanie and Miltiades Malachite weren't powerful contractees. They would not have been very powerful witches either. However, it is clear to us that this option will give the most favorable results for your survival, considering your mental state. We do not fault you for choosing it."
Yang rolled her eyes and smiled dryly at the incubator. "Was that your idea of a pep talk?"
Kyubey stared back ever stoically. "Good luck, Yang Xiao Long. We are confident that you will survive the fallout caused by your actions tonight."
Yang's wry smile remained as she turned back toward the two gems. She took a deep breath and raised an armored hand, holding it up with his other hand. "Right... This is it..."
Yang concentrated on one soul gem, intent on making a small kinetic explosion that would completely shatter the gem without affecting anything else. She felt energy build up inside her. When she felt like it was enough, she snapped her fingers.
There was a sharp cracking sound and the dimly glowing gem on the left erupted into a cloud of red powder. She repeated the action on the other one. Pure silence followed afterward as the red and blue dust mingled in the wind.
"It is done," Kyubey said from her side. "Your wish still awaits you, Yang Xiao Long. Do not dwell on this event for too long or you may never see it fulfilled. Again, we wish you the best of luck."
With that, Kyubey padded away, no doubt disappearing as always.
Yang smiled sadly at the anticlimax of destroying the gems. It had been so easy. Like popping bubble wrap. And to think she had walked away from killing them when she encountered that witch labyrinth nearly a month ago. Never did she expect that she'd end up doing exactly that anyway.
"What the hell am I even doing...?"
Yang shook her head and retreated back to the hotel room. Sleep did not come easy for her that night. Nor any night for the next few weeks...
Thus another chapter ends.
Once again, I thank discord user 14th Madman (13th Heretic) from the r/MadokaMagica discord for helping with the theorycrafting of Yang's moveset as well as helping me get past a scene I was stuck on.
I hope you enjoyed. Until next chapter.