Mitakihara's weather for the following morning was dull, but warm, and a little drizzly. Emma wiped water off of her face as she stood on the roof of the Church and swung her halberd in lazy circles. Kyouko hadn't mentioned that she should do any studying ahead of time, but Emma flicked through a halberdier's manual from the middle ages anyway. It was probably useless to her, all things considered. The text had been written in Swiss, and was formulated for the average slightly-malnourished Swiss Mercenary soldier.

Magical girl physiology was rather substantially different.

"You know," Kyouko called out as she emerged onto the roof. "You could stand under the ledge. Avoid the rain and all that."

"It feels nice," said Emma with a small smile. "It's not that cold."

"You're crazy," Kyouko said with a roll of her eyes. She transformed in a flash of red. "Who the hell does that? Goddess."

"Heh, maybe," said Emma. She flipped her halberd around in a circle. "Thank you again, Kyouko, for teaching me."

"You're a bit early to be thanking me," said Kyouko blandly. "Who knows, I may fail at this teaching thing. But let's get started."

"Okay."

"We'll start with a few warm-up exercises," said Kyouko. She stepped out into the rain to stand next to Emma, whirling her spear into a ready position. "This is your starting position."

"Alright," said Emma, swinging her halberd into an approximation of Kyouko's stance. Kyouko broke her stance to circle Emma contemplatively, poking and nudging until Emma's stance was to Kyouko's satisfaction.

"Good enough," said Kyouko. She snapped back into her own ready position. "Now, the first step is like this…"

The next ten minutes passed quietly, with Emma following Kyouko through the form. It was fairly basic, with simple footwork and smooth, direct motions, clearly intended to be something easy to pick up and easy to move through quickly.

"There, that's good," said Kyouko approvingly as they moved through the form once again. "It's pretty easy, right?"

"Mmhm," said Emma, frowning in concentration.

"You can make it more complicated by adding some flourishes," said Kyouko, doing a variation on one of the steps by flicking her spear in a circle. "Do it right and nobody can tell it's nothing special. Totally got laid doing that once."

Emma smothered a laugh and nearly missed the next step, but recovered quickly. That sounded like Kyouko.

"Anyway keep moving through it," said Kyouko. "Try to go a little faster each time."

"Okay."

"While you do that, let's talk about your career," said Kyouko. She settled down onto a nearby bench that was protected from the drizzle. "Do you have any idea what you want to do?"

"N-no?" Emma said. Her halberd faltered briefly.

"Ah, that's not surprising," said Kyouko. "Most girls your age don't. Still, we should figure something out. I can't teach you effectively otherwise."

"Okay…"

A list from MSY Careers and Education appeared in front of Kyouko as the older girl set a pair of holographic wire-framed glasses on her nose. Emma had to move into the next step of the form hurriedly to avoid laughing outright.

"Let's see now," said Kyouko as she scanned through the list. "Well the Black Heart seem to have their eye on you, so that's very interesting. Careers seems to think you'd do well in the Soul Guard as well, and Light Infantry School thinks you'd be a good match for the Aerial Assault Corps."

Emma paused at the last suggestion. "Light Infantry School? You mean the regular military?"

"Yeah, it's a bit different from the Magical Girl Corps," said Kyouko. "More rigorous discipline and all that. Most girls don't go in until they've gotten older."

"Why not?"

"Maturity, usually," said Kyouko with a shrug. "Typically you're looking at a much more infantry-centric role, with a lot less interaction with other magical girls. The Aerial Assault Corps, AAC, is more heavily mixed, but you're still working very closely with your infantry."

Emma made a wry face. "Don't I do that already?"

"Well sure, you do," said Kyouko. "Most girls are pretty separated during an operation. AAC Ops are focused on emergency response. Preventing a total collapse of a line, or something."

"…that still sounds like what I do all the time."

"Which explains your kill/death ratio in training," said Kyouko, pulling up another screen. "Let's see… 36th Percentile, impressive!"

Emma blushed. "I-It's not that bad…"

"No, no, you're right, I shouldn't tease," said Kyouko with a small smile. "I never went to school or anything after all."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah, totally dropped out when I was twelve," said Kyouko. She leaned back against the bench with a small sigh. "Then Mami dragged me back, but my grades were still pretty shit. Man, that was so long ago."

Emma paused, scrolling through her memories of M4 Trivia and carefully scratching out anything that might be impolite before continuing. "…Didn't they, uh, make you a CEO at some point? How did you pull that one off?"

"It turns out that business is mostly posturing and talking," said Kyouko with a shrug. "Doesn't take a genius to figure that stuff out."

"…really?"

"Well, I had an apprentice at the time who I handed a lot of stuff to," said Kyouko. She paused, brow furrowing. "Come to think of it, she did seem to spend an awful lot of time doing paperwork…"

Emma rolled her eyes. That also sounded like Kyouko.

"Anyway," said Kyouko quickly. She coughed awkwardly. "Yes, so, you and kill/death ratios aside, your habits in combat mesh well with AAC's standard operating procedures. Still, it's a pretty intense combat role."

Emma swallowed and coughed as she swung her halberd around and brought it back up. "Maybe not so soon?"

"Maybe," said Kyouko, eyeing Emma's stance. "You're letting the halberd slide too far down."

Emma readjusted.

"Better."

"But uh, what about the Soul Guard?" asked Emma.

"Well there's a few options," said Kyouko. "These days it's heavily militarized, but it's still fundamentally a policing organization. Investigating and detaining other magical girls, potentially with force, is part of the job."

Emma snapped her halberd into position and froze, completing the form. A moment later she brought the halberd back to attention, then relaxed.

"I'd have thought that these days, there's not much magical girl crime?" asked Emma. She rested her halberd against the roof and leaned against it.

"Well, no, just because most of us are in a war doesn't mean that crime stops," said Kyouko with a small sigh. "Girls go AWOL and get into barfights all the time, though that's only the tip of that iceberg. The Soul Guard also works closely with the MHD to capture magical girls who may be spiraling and get them into protective custody."

"That could be alright," said Emma, looking down. She shuffled her feet awkwardly. "I uh, like I said, I'm not totally sure I want to go into combat just yet."

Kyouko gave Emma a skeptical look. "Are you sure?"

"What do you mean?"

"You seem to do well in combat," said Kyouko, shrugging. "Your scores in training are one thing, but you really have some talent for fieldwork. Going into the Soul Guard would be a bit of a waste, I think."

Now it was Emma's turn to look skeptical. "What do you mean, exactly? I don't have any particular combat talents, and I—" the bodies of her first platoon flashed through her memory "—I'm not a successful platoon leader either."

"Perhaps," said Kyouko. She crossed her legs and waved away the holographic glasses. "But you only have one real battle under your belt and you had no ability to prepare for it. You led a group of newbies well enough that they survived through their first battle as well, and managed to hold yourself together enough to effectively return fire when your position was subject to the main thrust of a cephalopod offensive. There's not much more anyone could expect out of you, Emma."

Emma looked down, flushing. It was flattering to hear that come from Kyouko, of all people.

"But all that being said," continued Kyouko, "you're not wrong either. It's simply unrealistic to say otherwise. If your goal is to move up the ranks, then it's true that the Soul Guard will be easier for you. The work isn't as dependent on your performance, and you could use more of the education background you have."

"You mean in logistics?" Emma asked with a grimace. "I mean I could, but…"

"It's up to you," Kyouko repeated with a shrug. "Just something to think about."

"It's an interesting point," said Sarah Johansen. She shuffled a deck of cards idly as she considered Emma's question. "In the end, what Kyouko-sama says is true. It comes down to what you want."

Emma sighed and paced in a circle in her room. This was not, in fact, all that satisfying of an answer.

"Yes, yes, I know," said Sarah. She glanced up at Emma with an amused expression. "It's a very difficult question, and you're only fourteen. Honestly it's sort of an unreasonable question, but, well…"

"Yeah," said Emma.

"That being said, I've worked a lot with the Aerial Assault Corps," Sarah continued. "If you wanted to join them, I wouldn't say it's all that bad of a decision. The training is very, very intense relative to what you get in the standard magical girl training cohorts, but the girls I've worked with have all been some of the most professional and dedicated magical girls I've ever met."

Emma nodded. That sounded good. "What do you actually do? There's some stuff online that you can look up, but it's kind of sparse."

"Yes, that's how it typically is with this sort of thing," said Sarah. "From what I've seen, you end up spending a lot of time hurrying up to wait. The AAC doesn't deploy unless there's a critical breach in the line or something needs to be killed very hard very quickly. When you need them, they're extremely good, but when you don't need them they tend to sort of not do much."

Emma made a face. "Sounds boring."

"Well, warfare often is, isn't it?" Sarah said rhetorically. "But the work they do is very important. You remember from training about tempo?"

"Yeah," said Emma. "About how, uh, how during combat you want to like, keep momentum going and stuff?"

Sarah made a face. "…close enough, I suppose. Basically, once your enemy is retreating, you want to keep them retreating while not exposing yourself to counter-attack. If you try to do that with teleporters, you can quickly overextend your forces."

"Right, because you can get the teleporters isolated, and the contracting rate is low."

"Yes, exactly," said Sarah, nodding. It was a basic lesson from training, but important. You really didn't want to get your unit's teleporter killed. "The fastest and most flexible transport outside of teleportation is air transport, which is why the unit is called the Aerial Assault Corps."

"And magical girls can join?"

"It's open to any soldier that passes the qualifying exams," said Sarah. "It's not easy. Ultimately, the unit is part of the Light Infantry and not considered 'magical girl infantry'. You're not in the unit because you're a magical girl, you're an infantryman who happens to have magical abilities."

Emma frowned and rubbed her temples. "Ugh. I need a drink."

"Don't we all?" Sarah asked wryly. "How are things on Earth?"

"They're alright," said Emma. "How about in the fleet?"

"Waiting," said Sarah with a tired sigh. "There's a lot of rumors, and mopping up operations are still ongoing, so nobody's really sure about anything."

"Have you seen any action?"

"Only a little," said Sarah. "The focus so far has been on fleet actions and orbital strikes. There's no need to land troops when you can just overwhelm their air defenses with sheer numbers."

"What's the damage like?"

Sarah frowned. "It's been pretty bad. The squid hit hard and smashed through with sheer firepower. The first few systems stood no chance at all. It's a miracle that Nuevo Extremadura held out as long as it did."

"They're posthumously awarding Admiral Picard the Star of Valor, right?"

"Yes, and the rest of the fleet is getting a bunch of awards too," said Sarah. She paused and frowned. "Most of it posthumously as well. There's precious few survivors from the battle."

Emma clenched her teeth and swallowed. She really needed that drink.

"It's what it is," she said eventually.

"Indeed," Sarah said. She shuffled her cards again, plasticized paper clamoring against plasticized paper. "It looks like my poker group has finally showed up. You good to go?"

Emma nodded. "Yeah."

"Alright, I'll see you later Emma."

"See you."

"So what are you thinking?" James Sinclair asked. Two cubes of sugar dropped into his tea cup with a plop. His spoon clinked gently against the side as he looked across at Emma from the rooftop coffeeshop they were meeting at.

"I think I want to go for it," said Emma. She considered her own tea carefully. "It… sounds like it could be good."

"Not the Soul Guard?"

"I mean, maybe?" Emma shrugged. "I uh, well, I've only had a little contact with them in the field. They're not actually that different from my current job."

James shrugged laconically and sipped his tea.

"You'd know better than me," he said. "Though maybe you should see about a job shadow, or something? See if uh, what was it, MSY Careers?"

"Yeah."

"See if MSY Careers has that sort of thing."

"Maybe," said Emma. She nibbled on a sandwich speculatively. Hmm… eggs and cucumbers might not have been the best idea.

"I think you mentioned at some point that you might want to stay out of pitched combat for a while?" said James. "Your redeployment requirements let you request a non-combatant position?"

"Yes."

"But you might go for the Aerial Assault Corps anyway?"

"Yes."

James nodded. "This doesn't surprise me."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't you remember the time you charged the line of defenders in that practice match?" James asked, smiling a little. "The defenders that were twice your weight?"

Emma flushed and shifted in her seat pridefully. "I totally won."

"Sure," said James nodding. He sighed a little. "Why couldn't you have applied that to finance? Ah well…"

Emma frowned sharply.

"I don't want to talk about it."

There was a beat.

"You're right, I'm sorry," said James. He sighed again, regret flickering across his face. "The point, in the end, is that you were always one to charge in head on, rather than try and take the more careful route."

"I guess," said Emma, sipping her tea.

James bit into a sandwich in the silence that followed. He made some sort of noise of approval as he ate, and finished the sandwich quickly.

"I should order that again," he said to himself, making a note on his implants. "That's quite good…"

"Really, Dad?" Emma asked, giving James a look of mock concern. "Are you sure you shouldn't take a few more days off from work?"

"Hey, it's not that crazy of a combination of fillings!"

"It… it totally is though…"

"Tch, teenagers," James sighed plaintively. "Send them off to war and they just stop understanding the subtleties of life…"

Emma sniffed and hid a smile.

"At least you inherited my taste in whisky," said James. "We should have a drink sometime, talk about love and girls."

"Ew, no," said Emma flatly. "Just, no, Dad. No way."

"Look, we understand completely," said James with a teasing grin. "Your mother and I have a long history starting around your age, so if you need any tips—"

"Oh Goddess, Dad, no, please just shut up!"

James suppressed a cackle as Emma hid her head in her arms, then refilled her teacup.

"…a-although if you're offering," Emma mumbled. "I um, do have one question."

James sobered up immediately. "What can I help with?"

"I uh, I have this problem," said Emma, sitting up enough again to drink some more tea. "There's um, two people interested in me, and I'm not sure how to choose."

"Two people huh," said James. "Both boys, or…?"

"One of them's a girl."

"That sounds about right."

"Shut up!"

"Hehe," chuckled James, crossing his legs contemplatively. "But still, how do they feel about each other? Or really, first of all, do they know that the other one exists?"

"They uh, met, and did some sort of honor oath thing?" Emma said. "I mean, nothing definitive, but…"

"Hmm," James muttered. "Well in that case…"

He trailed off into silence. Emma finished an entire cup of tea waiting.

"In that case…?" Emma asked as she poured herself another cup.

"Mm, I'm not sure," said James. He fiddled with a spoon for a moment, restrained himself from tapping it against his teacup, and set it back down. "But well, have you considered just dating both of them?"

"I— well— s-sort of?" Emma stammered. "Not really?"

"Sure, why not?" asked James speculatively. "I was in one such relationship before I met your mother. It was interesting in its own right, though not ultimately to my taste."

"I— you—"

"Look, it's not like it's necessarily a good idea," said James, picking his tea up again. "Obviously I don't actually know anything about this relationship, so maybe it's completely stupid, but, well, it is also an option."

Emma drank her tea aggressively and set her cup down with a clack. For a moment she busied herself pouring another cup, adding sugar and milk, then stirring vigorously. She set her spoon down with another clack and picked up her cup.

"I'll think about it," Emma said, blushing furiously. "That's— that's all. I'll think about it."

Emma took an indignant sip of tea.

Lunch—proper lunch, as opposed to questionably edible tea snacks—was delayed until after team exercises with Shoshana and Vivianne.

"Ahhh, good beer is really a rare thing these days," Shoshana sighed, sipping at a glass of something dark and malty.

"You can make that in your synthesizer," Emma pointed out, the ice in her glass of whisky rattling as she swirled it around.

"No, you cannot," said Shoshana, fixing Emma with a look over the top of her glass. "Trust me on this."

"But—"

"Emma."

"…Fine."

"How's your whisky?"

"It's fine," said Emma, shrugging. "Nothing special. Irish, apparently."

"I've got to teach you about fine alcohol," said Shoshana, shaking her head sadly. "Beer is so much better than anything distilled."

"False," Vivianne said, voice muffled by being face down in her arms. "Vodka is the best."

Emma and Shoshana took a moment to stare at her.

"Anyway, how's your leave been going?" Shoshana asked. "Keeping busy?"

"It's been alright," said Emma, nodding. She sipped her whisky. "Classes are boring."

"Yeah, they usually are," said Shoshana. "How about your relationship issues? Make any progress on that front?"

"Er," said Emma.

"Don't worry, I'll keep it a secret if you want!" said Shoshana, grinning in her closest approximation to a reassuring smile. "Vivianne, tell Emma about how trustworthy I am!"

"She's completely untrustworthy," said Vivianne, lifting her head just enough to stare Emma down. "Run awaaaaaay…"

Shoshana smacked her.

"A-anyway," said Emma, drinking more whisky. "There's not much to say. One of them is visiting."

"Oooo, which one?" Shoshana asked as their food arrived. "Come on girl, details!"

"Why're you so interested anyway?"

"Why wouldn't I be interested?"

"Ugh."

"Shoshana's just a perv and a gossip," Vivianne said. She pushed herself up and contemplated the steak in front of her. "She's just teasing. Tell us more about this training you mentioned with Kyouko-san."

Emma latched onto the topic gratefully. "So Kyouko says that she wants me to think about my career goals, so that she can teach me some stuff that's more useful for what I want to do. I've been thinking about going into the Airborne Assault Corps or the Soul Guard, but I don't really know enough about either."

Vivianne nodded. "Sounds about right for you. Have you heard of the Knights of the Goddess?"

Emma shook her head as Shoshana gave Vivianne a look.

"Really?" Shoshana asked skeptically. "They're kind of weird."

"No they're not," said Vivianne, frowning at Shoshana. "They're perfectly reasonable people."

"But they have that whole thing about service and what not."

"Sure, and? You've heard Kyouko-san's sermons."

"But—"

"Look, Emma can make up her own mind about it," said Vivianne, raising a hand to halt the argument. She turned back to Emma. "The Knights of the Goddess are a sort of convent-slash-order-sect of the Cult that focus on serving and protecting both other magical girls and humanity in general."

"It's really kind of weird," Shoshana interjected. "They've got a whole thing going with ranks and titles and stuff."

Vivianne shot Shoshana a quelling look, but kept speaking. "I'm not gonna lie, I find it a little weird too, but they're pretty open and not pushy. They've got a lot of girls who are in the more advanced combat positions, so they can help you with figuring out if doing that sort of thing is a good idea."

Emma nodded, drinking her whisky speculatively. "Okay…"

"Up to you, of course," said Vivianne, who suddenly looked very tired, "but they could be helpful."

Emma nodded again. "I'll look into it. Thanks."

Vivianne made a noise and ate more steak.

Ayane had used the morning and afternoon to take advantage of Mitakihara's uniquely magical-girl-oriented shopping scene. She and Emma had met up early in the afternoon in Ayane's hotel room to go over the spoils.

"That is incredibly tacky," Emma commented dryly as Ayane turned in a circle in front of her.

"What, because of what's written on the front?" Ayane asked, looking down contemplatively.

"It says 'flyers like to be on top'," said Emma. She folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"And? It's true!"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine."

"Anyway, what have you been doing all day?" Ayane asked, turning around and selecting another shirt.

"Meetings," Emma said as Ayane changed. The new shirt said: "May Kyubey Have Mercy on Your Soul".

"That seems kind of grim, don't you think?" Emma asked.

"Eh, it's not that bad," said Ayane, looking in the mirror critically. "Well…"

"Give it to Ryouta maybe," said Emma. "The shirt can resize and stuff."

Ayane gave Emma a look. "Really?"

"What?"

"I mean, he's— you're—"

"Well I mean it's not like you guys are actually fighting are you?" Emma asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah but we're also competitors in l-love, and stuff," said Ayane, flushing very slightly but frowning nonetheless. "It's a little weird don't you think?"

"Sort of?" Emma said. She looked down at her feet contemplative. "I mean, I don't want you two to fight. It'd be good if you could be friends."

Ayane made a displeased noise and took the shirt off. "That seems a lot to ask, don't you think? One of us is going to end up being left in the cold, at the end of the day."

Emma sighed.

"Well, my dad mentioned that we might be able to avoid that," said Emma, "if we did a three-way, or something."

Ayane stopped short and gave Emma a surprised look. "…Really?"

"I mean, I was just mentioning," said Emma, squirming nervously. "I know it doesn't really work. You're not into boys at all, right?"

"No."

"I just, like, couldn't you two at least be friends?" Emma asked. "I don't want to lose you or him over this."

Ayane frowned thoughtfully down at the t-shirt in her hands and folded it up carefully.

"I think," she said slowly, "that I would need to know Ryouta better to make any predictions about that."

"Really?" Emma asked, looking hopeful.

"Maybe," said Ayane, nodding. "I… yeah. I don't know. I've never thought about it seriously before. You're the first person to mention it to me as an option."

"I— it's not weird, is it?"

"No, that's not it," said Ayane. She set the shirt aside. "I just never thought about it before. Is it really that important to you?"

"Yes," said Emma firmly. "It's a little crazy, and when my dad mentioned it I thought it was…"

"Lewd?"

"Yes, incredibly, but, well, if you think about it…"

"Yeah," said Ayane, nodding thoughtfully. "I mean, I guess, it comes down to trust, sort of?"

"Maybe? I haven't the foggiest, to be honest, but I'd like to try."

"I'm okay with that," said Ayane, looking up at Emma. "But—!" she added, holding up a finger "—But I reserve the right to not like him and want you all for myself. Okay?"

Emma swallowed, then nodded.

"Okay."