Chewing on Diamonds

by Don'tKillKenny

Six years after the Mitakihara disaster, Sayaka has become an undercover cop at Kazamino's upscale strip club. What she doesn't know is that the girl training her is not only superhuman, but may be one of the criminals she's there to take down. Continuation of Oriko Magica timeline. KyoSaya, drugs, gore, crime, yuri, dubcon, hinted abuse, PTSD, other warnings inside. Chp 1 edited.

8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Sayaka stared at the woman in front of her in a combination of awe and disbelief. She was sure she didn't look particularly intelligent, nor was she feeling it; she had genuinely had no idea.

"I apologize for not telling you sooner. You seemed to have built such a…successful cover and I did not want to do anything to jeopardize it." Geisha, or rather Chiyo, said calmly. Sayaka could notice the faint hints of a blush painting the stoic woman's cheeks. Sayaka's face went beet red.

Oh dear GOD this woman's seen me-

"As I said before, we both have to do things on the field we do not need to discuss here." She cut off Sayaka's mortified thoughts curtly. "If anything, I respect your devotion and the information you have managed to gather. In just over two months, you have gathered more significant information than I have in over three years. You should be proud of yourself." She smiled, but it didn't seem completely genuine.

"I will speak in my agent's defense to say that she's only there once every two weeks; it's not easy to get good information with that." Her superior said. He voice croaked a bit; he looked and sounded like he maybe should have retired a few years ago. He had massive crow's feet and a face that reminded her of a basset hound.

"Why aren't you there more often then? It seems like it's been our staff taking all the risks." Ryo narrowed his eyes. "Why should we work with you now?"

Sayaka was surprised at her boss's open hostility. She would have thought he would be happy to be working with federal agents; that seemed like a dream come true!

Geisha let out a restrained sigh.

"That was my fault. I had been there more often before. At first, we went in because we had heard rumours of there being underage prostitution and child labour. It wasn't long before we found out just how many activities worth monitoring there that there were."

"Corrupted politicians making bribes, drug lords talking about shipments, traffickers looking for victims, assassins being hired, even serial killers on the prowl." Her boss closed his eyes with resignation. He seemed tired.

"Serial killers?" Sayaka was stunned. She had never heard of that being a problem; from what she had heard, Tomi's was a pretty safe place to work.

She took careful note of the dirty look Chiyo sent her boss.

"In any case," She cleared her throat. "There were plenty of suspects to monitor. I suppose I had a different…approach let's say to interacting with clients so I had managed to be fairly popular amongst them. For a number of months, I was working almost five nights and week and brining in significant information every night. However-"

"The others tried to get you fired for stealing clients." Sayaka finished for her with wide eyes. She understood now. Chiyo nodded solemnly.

There was something about Chiyo's disposition; she seemed mysterious. Sayaka got the distinct impression she and her partner, boss, whatever he was, had their own agenda that they weren't sharing. However, she didn't seem like a bad or particularly unfriendly person either.

Sayaka was convinced that she was related to Homura somehow.

"Now, we have an opportunity to bring me back in more consistently and it may lessen the pressure on Detective Miki on the field."

"My detective is fine. She's been working on her own there for two months, she doesn't need you now." Ryo snapped harshly. Sayaka wanted to pull him out of the room and ask him what the hell his problem was.

"Really?" Geisha sounded impassive, but Sayaka could sense some hostility. "Who brought your detectiveto the hospital in the middle of the night after she got a concussion? Did you believe there was anyway that could have been done without blowing her cover? I respect Miki's devotion and results, but you have to understand that she's still quite new and a vulnerable agent to send in."

"Hey!" Sayaka was getting pissed now. If this was how federals always spoke to the municipals, she could understand why Ryo hated them so much.

"I apologize Detective Miki, I did not mean any disrespect to you. I do have issues with how this operation has been run, but none of them have been your fault."

"I'm good at my job!"

"You have potential, I am not arguing that."

"No, I don't just have potential. I'm good. You said so yourself. I've gotten more information in two months than you've had in three years." Sayaka glared.

Sayaka felt reassured by Ryo's proud smile sent in her direction.

"At what cost though, Miki?" Geisha looked at her coolly.

Sayaka felt like she had just been slapped in the face.

"Akemi." Geisha's superior stated simply; he had no bite in his tone. He just said her name.

It seemed to reel her in.

"I apologize. I have been working on this assignment for many years now. This is not very constructive." She looked away as if something in the corner of the room had caught her interest. "Detective Miki has done a much better job at maintaining positive relationships with the other staff than I have. As well…" She trailed off, looking to her superior.

The old man looked at Ryo and mouthed him a question: "Can anyone hear us?"

Ryo raised an eyebrow, intrigued. He shook his head. The old man nodded to Chiyo.

"We noticed that this operation you're running isn't being tracked."

Sayaka was confused. Again.

"What?"

Ryo sighed, like he knew this was coming.

"I'm guessing you know why?"

"How the hell is this not being tracked? What do they mean?"

"According to the staff hour tracking systems, you have been working a lot of parking duty at very odd hours." Chiyo sounded nonplussed, but from the way she leaned forward towards Ryo, it was evident she was intrigued. "Parking duty, and nothing else."

Sayaka blinked in confusion, looking over at Ryo questioningly.

"Based on your question, I think you know as well as I do why this operation doesn't exist in our systems."

"I've been doing all this work and no one even knows about it?" Sayaka said in a deadpan voice. You're kidding me. You've got to be FUCKING kidding me.

"If they knew it was you who found out, and not this mysterious problem in New Mitakihara, you'd be dead by now. The only reason I found out about you was because I followed you back to your apartment the first night we worked together. You were very difficult to keep up with." Chiyo commended her.

I had been followed back that night. I wasn't crazy.

"Why did you-"

"I thought you were a silly new girl who had no idea what she was getting herself into. No one says this, but there have been problems with employees disappearing from that club before. I followed you so we could monitor and put security around you. I supposed we didn't need it though." Geisha shrugged.

The knowledge that Sayaka was in fact not paranoid or crazy was only a minor source of comfort; she was still trying to process the fact that her work at the club has been strictly kept off the record.

"Wasn't anyone confused that I got promoted?" Sayaka inquired. Ryo snorted.

"Don't worry about it. The Chief and I have a good thing going on."

Sayaka pursed her lips in thought. It was so obvious that there were much deeper problems than she knew about. She had always worried that she could blow her cover at the club, which could put her family in danger. Now she wondered-

"This isn't the first operation I've keep secret, you know." Ryo whispered. "The only ones who know are those of us in this room, the other candidates, and Mei. Everyone knows to keep this silent. And the moment anything goes wrong, we have a few people who are good at making you disappear if we need it. I doubt it will ever come to that though."

Sayaka swallowed, not feeling particularly consoled, but nodded.

"I hope we can work together on the field, Detective Miki?" Akemi prompted her expectantly. Again, Sayaka nodded mutely.

"Excellent. This is great news." The elderly gentlemen struggled to speak the words and struggled to get out of the chair. The physical exertion made it sound as though he was not particularly enthused about these new developments at all. Akemi helped him up. Why the hell hasn't that man retired?

"Thank you for dropping by and keeping us in the loop." Ryo nodded curtly as he opened the door. It was definitely a signal that he wanted everybody out of his office. Sayaka peered at him curiously, silently asking if she could go home. He nodded.

The door to Ryo's office closed gently behind them, but the resounding click of the lock was hard to ignore. Ryo never locked his door when he was at the office. No one else seemed to pay any mind to it.

She realized that maybe her magic had heightened the sensitivity of her sense of hearing.

She followed Akemi and the elderly gentleman outside. Both Sayaka and Akemi had to help him down the stairs. The man didn't seem to want to take the ramp.

"Thank you for your help, ladies." He smiled exhaustedly as they helped him into a small black car. It looked much more inconspicuous and sleek than the awful white vans the Force used for undercover missions.

"You need to buy a cane sir." Akemi stated factually.

"I'm not that old yet." He croaked. Akemi merely huffed in mock exasperation and fondness. She closed the passenger door for him and went to the driver's side.

"Hey, Akemi-san." Sayaka started. She almost said 'Agent Akemi' but figured that would not be a good thing to say out in the open. Akemi looked at her, but her face did not have any kind of distinct impression that implied she was listening; she just stared.

"Yes?"

"I guess this might be a weird question…but Akemi isn't a particularly common last name, is it? Did you know anyone named Akemi Homura?"

Akemi's eyebrows rose on her face. That was the closest thing to a reaction Sayaka supposed she would get from her.

"She was my cousin. How did you know her?" Her tone betrayed some of her curiosity.

"She was a transfer student in my class in eighth grade at Mitakihara Middle School. She was a friend of mine." More of a friend of Madoka's I guess, but a friend of Madoka's is…was a friend of mine.

"I see. So you were present for the disaster?"

Sayaka winced and nodded. She should have expected that to come up.

"I will not ask you any further questions on that unless you want to speak of it. I do have one question though, if you do not mind: could you describe my cousin to me?"

"What?" Sayaka was confused by the question.

"How would you describe my cousin? What was she like? You said you were friends, correct?"

"Did you guys not know each other very well?"

This time she could notice mild annoyance on the agent's face.

"We were quite close, actually. If you must know, we were living in the same orphanage in Tokyo after our parents died. I was released from it much earlier than she was as I was older. I wanted to adopt her and bring her with me, but seeing as how I was eighteen and had no real employable skills, my request was refused. I went to university and got a job in Tokyo; the paperwork had almost gone through but shortly after she had had to move to Mitakihara for its hospital's strong reputation in child cardiac surgeries. I was even transferred to the Kazamino-Mitakihara chapter so she could stay with me. I was sent to Tokyo for six weeks at the most inopportune time to help with another assignment that we had gathered some information on. She was dead by the time I came back."

"Your parents died at the same time? That's terrible. I'm so sorry to hear that."

"They were in the same car. From what I understood, they all died quickly and painlessly. Thank you though. It was a long time ago now."

Sayaka looked at the ground sadly and awkwardly. This woman had lost all of her family. This was probably just part of the grieving process for her. I'm an insensitive bitch.

"I'm really sorry for your loss. Homura…well, she was really, really cool I'd say. When I say cool, I mean she was a really cool person and had a cool demeanor. She was absolutely beautiful. She was really smart, really good at sports; really good at everything, really. It was nearly impossible to believe she had just had a major heart surgery and missed months of school. She didn't like talking to many people though. She mostly hung out with me and two of my closest friends, but even then she preferred my friend a lot more than me and the other one."

Akemi scrutinized her. Sayaka resisted the urge to squirm under her intense stare. She wasn't sure what was going through her new ally's head.

"I see. Thank you." She said simply and opened the door to the car to get in.

"Is everything alright?" Sayaka asked cautiously. She could tell that what she said had unsettled her counterpart.

"Yes. You have just said what everyone else I have asked has said. One last question: what was the name of this friend that Homura had taken a liking to?"

"Kaname Madoka."

Akemi nodded. "Thank you."

She drove away. Sayaka wondered what was going through that woman's head, and she had a feeling that she would be wondering that many, many more times over the months to come.

Sayaka started to walk home, pondering the implications of the events of the morning. She was looking forward to going back to sleep.

Her work phone rang again.

Ryo.

God dammit.

"Yeah boss?"

"Come back to the station. Megumi's dead."

---

Kyoko stared at the girl in front of her in a combination of annoyance and disbelief.

"Performance anxiety, you say?" Kyoko repeated slowly, enunciating every word very carefully. Yuma wrung her hands behind her back, but glared back at Kyoko defiantly.

"Yeah, performance anxiety. So what? You were looking at my so intensely I couldn't focus on making the shot more concentrated is all. Maybe I'm just better at it alone, when I don't have to worry about a partner." Yuma shrugged.

Kyoko grabbed her hands from behind her back, which had clearly been in the process of fiddling with her gloves.

"Say that one more time when I can see your hands." Kyoko said calmly. Yuma's expression changed from nervous to irk very quickly.

Kyoko was very familiar with Yuma's nervous tick: wringing her hands. She had done it since early childhood. Her mother would beat her if Yuma appeared to be scared, so Yuma learned how to move all outward signs of distress into her hands, which were easy for her to hide. She would wring her hands when she was scared, hurt, sad, uncomfortable, angry…or guilty.

"Whatever! We beat the witch, that's what matters. How's your soul gem?" Yuma pried her hands away to stare at the dark crimson oval above Kyoko's breasts. It definitely needed to be purified.

Yuma's was still a fairly bright citrus. They would cleanse hers too to be safe.

"You've been keeping a lot of secrets from me recently…or have you always been keeping them and I just haven't noticed until now?"

Yuma bristled.

"I'm thirteen, I don't need to tell you every single detail of my life. Do you tell me every part of yours?" Yuma laughed spitefully after her question. "We both know the answer to that."

Kyoko sighed in annoyance bordering on frustration. She massaged her temples. Losing her temper now would do nothing to help the situation, but they had been having this same fight over and over again the past few months.

"There are some things I don't tell you because I know it would be better for you not to know. Secrets are not always hurtful. Sometimes they're there to protect the ones we love."

"Same! So we're in agreement. We can keep secrets then."

"No, I can keep secrets, because I'm the adult here." Kyoko made the mature decision to ignore Yuma's snort. "I'm the adult here, so I can keep secrets. You're the kid, the ward, whatever you want to call yourself, so if there's something that concerns you, it concerns me too, got it?"

Yuma crossed her arms and glared at Kyoko.

"You are such a hypocrite."

Kyoko sighed in very evident frustration.

"Let's find another witch and stop talking about this. If you can make the concentrated blast you were talking about work, I'll believe you."

Yuma wrung her hands again. Kyoko raised an eyebrow skeptically. Yuma huffed in annoyance.

Kyoko was debating internally whether or not to press the issue in a more diplomatic way when her phone rang.

The Kurosawa phone rang.

"Why do you have five cellphones?" Yuma questioned. "That's just excessive."

"Yeah, I agree." She clicked the 'accept call' button. "Hey."

"Meet me at my house in an hour." Kurosawa said curtly and hung up.

"So I guess we can't go hunt a witch, huh?"

Kyoko stared at her phone. She knew the man well enough to know that for a spontaneous meeting to be called at his house…there was some serious shit that was about to go down.

"Maybe we can after the meeting. It's only eleven o'clock. How about we go in that direction and split up. I talk to him about work stuff and you scout out a witch. I'll meet you after I'm done."

Yuma nodded in agreement. They transformed into regular clothes. They took the subway to the New Industrial District and didn't say anything to each other. Kyoko appeared to be looking intently at the seats across from them, but in reality she was not taking her eyes off of Yuma's reflection.

There had been a growing rift in their relationship since everything started to happen with the Church. It hurt. It really, really hurt. Yuma had been the first person since…well, the first person ever to really understand her. Yeah, they were really different in a lot of ways; Kyoko was adamant that Yuma was a much better person than she could ever be. Yet somehow, Yuma decided that she wanted to spend all of her time and overall good nature on Kyoko.

She was lucky. She was blessed.

And she was throwing it all away.

They got off at the large station in the New Industrial District and split up. Kyoko knocked on the large, factory door. The mansion was really, really ugly from the outside. The heavy door was unlocked and she entered the beautifully designed interior.

"In his office, ma'am." A housekeeper bowed to her. She nodded and walked away.

She never liked the idea of servants or butlers. It had the similar kind of degradation that slavery had, but they were paid; they were paid to serve and be lower beings than their employers.

She closed the office door behind her. Kurosawa was sitting at his desk on the other side of the room, head resting on his hands. A smooth jazz melody was playing lowly from an old style gramophone; Kurosawa was a man of refined tastes, as he described himself. The flames from the fireplace adjacent to him reflected on his bald head, somehow making the sight more ominous.

"Come, sit." He gestured to the significantly smaller chair across his desk. He was in a lavish, large leather chair. He swivelled his chair to the liquor cabinet that was near his desk to pull out two small glasses and a crystal decanter full of some kind of fine liquor Kyoko never bothered to learn the name of; all kinds of alcohol had the same effect and she just remembered her father. She hated alcohol and never drank it if she could avoid it.

"Have a drink." He started to pour some amber liquid into a small glass. She wrinkled her nose in distaste, but said nothing. He wasn't even looking at her.

"You take ice?"

"No, I don't drink." She hoped that would send a strong enough signal.

"Now's a good time to start." He pushed it towards her, a bit splashing out of the side. She accepted it and sniffed it. It smelled pungent and bitter. She didn't want to even imagine what it tasted like.

"Are you wondering why I called you here?"

Kyoko shrugged and sipped the alcoholic drink in front of her, pretending to be impassive about everything. The attentive look in her eye, following by a twisted expression of disgust betrayed her act.

"As you know, I told you to be on standby regarding the Miyamotos'…predicament."

Her shoulders tensed. She nodded.

"I don't know what you plan for me to do. Convince Tsubasa to run away?"

Kurosawa sighed and shook his head.

"No. That would have been preferable, but it's too late for that. He would never leave his sister behind. Kyoko, I want you to understand why I'm about to ask you what I'm about to. See, we're, as in all of us, are in a terrible position right now." He gestured between the two of them. "They both know so much, too much about everything. More importantly, I'm worried that they may know where to find evidence too."

Kyoko didn't like where this was going at all. She nodded, because everything he was saying was true, but she didn't like this.

"If the Miyamotos did not have certain connections with the Mitakihara police force, I would not be too concerned about any of this. There would be no way either Miyamoto could give a testimony indicting any of us without getting themselves worse. But they do have a connection, and I don't know all of the details, but somehow Suki has managed to weasel her and Tsubasa's way out of any trafficking charges. Right now, they would only be able to gain from throwing the rest of us under."

"I don't think they would throw me under." Kyoko shrugged. She may be trusting the snake in the garden of Eden saying that, but she genuinely believed it. Besides, they still wanted to pursue their newest "business idea", and they needed her.

Kurosawa glared at her. She was right. They wouldn't throw her under.

But the Miyamotos were not fans of Kurosawa's recent demands, and they could throw him under. He cleared his throat.

"If they throw me under, I'll throw you under. So yes, the rest of us can go under."

Kyoko glared back, clenching her fists.

Her glass shattered, breaking the atmosphere of animosity that had descended upon the room.

"Fuck." She hissed to herself, pulling a few shards from her hand. The alcohol stung. Kurosawa passed her some napkins.

"Do you need any bandages" He almost sounded concerned.

"I'm fine." She growled out. She wanted to get out of this damn house. Kurosawa sighed.

"I truly am sorry it has come to this. I don't enjoy this any more than you do." He reminded her of a master whipping a slave, saying that the punishment was hurting him more than the slave. "There is no loyalty in this industry. We're all looking out for our own best interests. It's just a matter of what we decide our best interests are."

Kyoko's mouth twitched downwards, but she decided not to say anything.

"Kyoko, I have no doubt in my mind Tsubasa is going to submit evidence to the Mitakihara Police about Tomi and myself, at the very least, to give Suki some leverage to get out or reduce her sentence. I would not be surprised if they handed in evidence about you too. I am not sure why you have as much faith in them as you do, but I will say now that if you follow all of my instructions going forward, it would be better for us to put this behind us. I have no idea what Megumi was doing with them, and I can only hope you weren't caught up in that as well." He sounded diplomatic; not angry, bitter, or resentful; just diplomatic.

It wasn't like him and it put her on edge.

"Tsubasa is not an idiot, so he is not returning my calls. I think he would respond to yours, though." He looked at her. The flames were casting shadows across his face, and his eyes seemed to glow. The saxophone solo playing smoothly in the background did not fit his demeanor at all.

"So what if he would?" Her tone was harsh, but everyone in this room could tell her bark was much worse than her bite.

"Kyoko, I need you to assassinate him."

Her eyes widened, though she wasn't shocked in the least. In fact, she had somewhat been expecting for the day to come when Kurosawa would increase the stakes of his demands to this level. She had been dreading it though.

"I know your policies: no drug dealing, no trafficking, and no murder. I never had any intention of asking you to violate any of them, but this is extraordinary circumstances. This is why I am willing to offer you a very generous offer."

She swallowed nervously. She hated herself that one of her eyebrows quirked upwards in curiosity. She felt like a monster.

"I heard you violated my one instruction on the Hideki assignment and borrowed money from him; quite a bit, at that. He mentioned something about a deposit on a building, or something along those lines?" Kurosawa looked at her questioningly.

Kyoko closed her eyes and nodded in resignation. She should have known that would get out soon enough. He sighed.

"I am willing to help, but I have one question. Does this building have anything to do with a Miyamoto operation?"

"No." Kyoko shook her head. "It's not for any kind of operation. It's a…personal project." She wasn't sure how else to put it. Kurosawa seemed to accept that answer.

"Good. Then here is what I will offer. I will pay off the deposit and up to forty-nine percent of the costs of the project. You will pay the remaining fifty-one. That way, whatever this 'personal project' is, you are still the majority owner. This can help you get started though."

Kyoko could not keep her mouth from dropping. That actually was a generous offer. She assumed it would be more along the lines of 'I won't kill your sister if you do this'.

"I..uh…"

"I respect that this is a lot to think about. So I will give you some time, Ophelia. You have one week. If I hear nothing of Miyamoto's disappearance by next Saturday evening, I will assume you decided not to accept my offer and I will make alternative arrangements. I would prefer to have you do it because I trust you can take care of everything from start to finish. After the Black Dragon incident, I have decided that splitting up tasks in operations like this should be avoided wherever possible."

If Kyoko's memory served her correctly, that was not the lesson that should have been learned from that mission. But she figured correcting him would only lead to a futile argument.

She left the mansion wishing she had never gone in.

---

Sayaka buried her head in her hands, sitting silently for a few minutes at her desk.

According to the blurry security footage, Megumi hanged himself with his pants from a pipe that ran overhead along the roof. He got up there with his bed and kicked it away to drop.

Megumi had agreed to talk. He said as long as they kept him safe, he would talk about Kurosawa.

He killed himself the next day.

The most frustrating part of everything was that it didn't feel right. Nothing about this felt right.

But you're not allowed to use hunches as evidence.

"Are you ready to go?" Ryo asked curtly. Sayaka nodded and lifted her head up. She pulled on her black coat.

She and Ryo were going to the scene before they cut him down; just to see if they could find something, anything amiss.

They drove to the jail in silence. It used to be located in the Kazamino Police Station, but after the Mitakihara disaster and the mass inflow of residents, the Force had to expand astronomically and use every bit of space it had. An older building that used to be a restaurant that was five minutes away was renovated to be the new temporary jail before the accused were sentenced. It was too small and they were going to need another very soon.

The guards nodded solemnly at them and let them in. Megumi had been being kept in a solitary cell, as per his request. Normally the Force wouldn't allow things like that, based on how crowded the jail usually was, but this had been a special circumstance.

Whole lot of good that did.

A guard opened the thick metal door for them.

They were greeted by the smell of shit.

"Ugh." Sayaka pinched her nose.

"You'll get used to it."

They walked around the body. The room looked eerily calm. Megumi's body was completely still in the middle, like he was a macabre decoration hanging from the ceiling to be admired. His face had a bluish tinge and his swollen tongue was almost purple and protruding from his mouth. The rest of his body, including his bare chicken legs were pale as a ghost, contrasting sharply with his dark socks and orange shirt.

Based on a first look, nothing looked amiss. It looked like the man simply killed himself.

Ryo was on the other side of the room, looking around for any kind of evidence of a struggle. Sayaka stared into the dead man's bloodshot buggy eyes.

A weight fell on her shoulders.

"Ah!" She squeaked and jumped. She whipped her head to her shoulder and saw Kyubey perched there.

"I'm sorry, did I surprise you?"

"Are you alright Miki?" Ryo raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, yeah, sorry just a bug surprised me is all." She chuckled lamely and inappropriately. Ryo shook his head to himself and went back to searching. Sayaka felt embarrassed.

"I didn't mean to scare you. I do not get a chance to observe many humans who were murdered by other humans recently. I hope you do not mind my intrusion."

Sayaka made a discrete waving gesture to imply that it was alright. Then she paused.

"Wait, how do you know it was murder?"

"Based on my readings of your emotions, I had thought that you knew it too."

"Well, yeah I do but we can't prove it. How can we prove it?"

Kyubey swished his tail and looked at the body.

"Use your magic like you did with your friend. See if you can see anything odd."

Sayaka gave a slight nod, hoping no one else noticed. She couldn't very well explain that she was talking to an invisible telepathic ferret without sounding bat shit crazy.

While Kyousuke's body had looked a beautiful cyan blue, most of Megumi's body had that disgusting dead grey colour that Kyousuke's hands had had. There were little patches of colour here and there, including intricate black designs of a tattoo on the back of his neck, but it was mostly skin cells that still had bits of the shimmering sapphire and they were slowly fading out too.

Something about the sight made her feel sad.

She tried finding something, anything that would prove he was murdered.

Then she noticed his left leg. It was hard to see with the naked eye, but with her magic she saw it.

There were four long, thin scratch marks reaching straight down from high mid-thigh to his ankle. Maybe they were from finger nails? It didn't seem like his own nails would have done that.

It wasn't much, but it was at least a sign of a struggle, right? It was visible to regular humans if they looked for it.

"Hey Captain, can you come look at this?"

"What, did you find something?" He asked eagerly and hopefully. She hoped this would be enough to go off of.

"Look at his legs. If you look really closely, you can see long scratch marks. The look like scratches from finger nails, like someone else was pulling down his pants. You wouldn't have thought that he would scratch himself like that pulling them off himself, right?" She felt like she sounded like she was grasping at straws, but she hoped it would work.

Ryo was evidently pondering it.

"You have a really good eye Miki. I don't think that would be enough to say for sure that it was a murder, but it will at least give us some reason to investigate this further and put more manpower to finding out. Good work." He smiled and patted her on the back. She smiled graciously back.

"And good work Kyubey!" She congratulated her friend. His tail swished to the right. If she had to venture a guess, she might have even thought he was irritated at the lack of recognition. "Do you like sweets? I can give you some later for your help."

"Very well. Some magical girls have given me cakes before." Sayaka couldn't tell if that meant he liked them or not, but based on how his tail was moving back and forth a bit more now, she figured he did. She made a mental note to buy Kyubey some cake.

The scratch marks were the only evidence they could find, but it was enough that the Chief authorized a full investigation.

---

Kyoko buried her head in her hands, sitting silently for a few minutes at the kitchen table. Yuma had gone to school and she didn't want the girl to see her like this.

What the hell am I going to do?

The thought of murdering a human, no matter how morally questionable their profession may be, seemed wrong. At the same time though, she was sure that the Miyamotos had done their fair share of murdering; she had even seen Suki kill that older woman.

They were even planning on running a mass murder ring to sell organs in the black market for god's sakes!

Could this be seen as karma biting them in the ass? It's supposed to be a bitch and all.

'The worst sin man partakes in every day is believing they are as good as God, and have the wisdom and right to choose who can live and who dies.'

Her father said that in one of his sermons once. There had actually been three people aside from her family at that one. One of them was a businessman who didn't take too kindly to the fact that her father went on to preach about modern capitalism being a vehicle to invite sin and evil into everyday life. Kyoko remembered that a number of sermons around that time followed the same kind of theme; it was around the time her family started to go hungry.

Her cover job was essentially selling lust, so yeah, she could see that.

She ran her fingers through her hair as she thought about Kurosawa's proposition. Besides, maybe killing Miyamoto would save so many more innocent lives in the long run?

That was Suki's rationalization for the organ harvesting scheme.

That had been part of Kyoko's understanding of why she hunted witches.

Am I murdering humans when I kill witches?

The witches used to be human, so she could say she's killing them. She's also taking potential grief seeds from other magical girls, turning them into witches faster.

She pulled out her soul gem. Lately, it got murky faster.

She willed it to extend into her lance which reached over the kitchen sink. She stared at the shimmering gold and ruby colours.

No. Magical girls aren't human.

So do human laws apply to me?

She let the lance disappear and curled over in the chair. A sob threatened to wrack her body, but nothing came. She sat there silently. She wondered what it said about her morality by how quickly she rationalized everything.

Her decision had been made.

---

Sayaka called Yuma over lunch, hoping to arrange a witch hunting session for Saturday evening. Now that she realized she could use her magic for her job, she figured she should be extra sure she had extra magic left over just in case.

She wished she could go hunting tonight, but it was Friday and she would have to work at the club again. She didn't feel right making a preteen stay up until 3:00 am for her shift to let out.

"Hello?"

"Hi Yuma! It's Sayaka. I was wondering if you had any plans tomorrow night."

"Not anymore." She sounded peeved. "So yeah, let's go out. What time?"

"Four o'clock at your school sound good? We can get ramen later too, on me." Sayaka was planning on sleeping in and actually cleaning up her apartment before; she had really let it slide with everything else going on and something in there was starting to smell bad. She didn't think any neighbours could smell it, but she felt no need to take the risk.

"Alright. See you then."

By normal social definitions, hanging out with a 13 year old on Saturday night at her age should make her kind of odd or downright creepy. She reminded herself that normal social conventions didn't apply to magical girls.

Her phone rang again to distract her from her contemplations of cultural definitions of what was appropriate.

"Hello?"

"Hi Sayaka! It's Kyousuke. What are you up to? Are you working?"

"Not at the moment, no. I have a night shift starting in a few hours. Why do you ask?"

"It's really nice out today. I was thinking of going for a walk in the park. Do you want to come?" He sounded very hopeful.

"You want to go for a walk in the park? What are you, ten?" She teased lightly. She made the same joke every time he asked her this. Before though, there was always a sense of sadness that came with these walks; Sayaka got the sense that he didn't particularly enjoy how vulnerable he was and how much help he needed to struggle across a field. It was more for physiotherapy that he did it before, and Sayaka had stood by his side since the accident.

This time was different though. He didn't sound like he felt like he was asking for a favour. And it wouldn't be sad or pitiful or humiliating for either of them.

They were going to walk as two able-bodied people.

He chuckled lightly.

"I know, I know. You're the only person I could think of who I would want to walk in the park with." Sayaka felt a light blush playing on her cheeks.

She could hear the part of the sentence he was leaving out though.

I'm the only person who will walk in the park with you.

Hitomi…

It hadn't even occurred to her to ask Hitomi how she was taking everything. Sayaka's kneejerk reaction was to assume that everyone who cared about Kyousuke would be thrilled that he was better and able to do everything he could do before.

Realistically though, Hitomi and Kyousuke's relationship had always been built on an unhealthy base of mutual need and feelings of inadequacy. Now that one of them might not have that…

Sayaka decided she didn't want to think about it. Hitomi and Kyousuke had been Hitomi and Kyousuke for years; she couldn't imagine anything shaking that now. They had even talked seriously about marriage before.

This wouldn't change that, right?

Sayaka remembered what he said at the club; the horribly tantalizing thing that she still sometimes had shameful dreams about.

Nakazawa had once told her that every guy had thought about fucking every single one of his female friends at some point in their friendship. Sayaka just hoped that was actually true and normal and didn't have to mean anything.

"Fiiiine. Only because you have no other friends and I feel bad for you." She teased. Kyousuke just laughed and they agreed to meet in thirty minutes. She was very close to the park anyways so when she got there she sat down on a bench and listened to some Chopin.

She felt her eyes starting to droop. The sun was warm and a gentle breeze made it the perfect temperature. Spring flowers fragranced the air beautifully, lulling her into a state of peace and calm. She couldn't remember the last time she felt so at ease.

Her phone gave a gentle buzz. Half asleep, she opened the message. Kyousuke was here. She told him she was on a bench by the tree with all of the birdfeeders before her eyes fell closed again. Her phone buzzed and told her he was sitting right beside her.

Her eyes snapped open and surely enough; he was a few inches away from her. She yanked her earbuds out.

"Why didn't you just wake me up?" She asked incredulously, a bit embarrassed that she hadn't even noticed him sit down. She literally couldn't detect someone taking a seat next to her, and she was now a detective.

"You looked so peaceful. I feel bad for waking you up at all."

"But not bad enough that you wouldn't do it, I see."

He smirked at her; something he didn't do often.

"Now that we're both awake, are you still up for the walk?" He said as he got to his feet energetically. He held out his hand to her. She smiled and took it.

It was usually her offering her hand to him to help him up.

They didn't really talk much. They admired the greenery around them, speckled with flowers of different colours and origins. Kazamino had invested quite a bit into making this park more like an exotic botanical garden. A few years ago, Kazamino was ranked as one of the ugliest cities in Japan. The development of this park was in part meant to be a tourist attraction, and partly to make the residents of town feel better about their city. It worked phenomenally, and now there was even a petting zoo somewhere in here. Sayaka had never been.

Rather, she had never been while sober.

They heard birds singing, dogs barking, and children laughing. It was a wonderfully pleasant day all around.

Kyousuke tapped her arm.

"Hmm? What is it?" She was brought out of her reverie. Kyousuke was smirking again.

"You're it." And he ran away. Sayaka stood there, trying to process what had just happened.

After a few moments too many, it dawned on her and her own grin started to form on her face.

"Oh, you're going to get it." She ran after him, playing a game they hadn't played since they were eight years old.

---

Kyoko called Miyamoto over lunch, almost hoping he was smart enough to not pick up the phone.

He wasn't.

"Hello Kyoko. I was thinking of calling you. How have things been with you?" He sounded like he was talking about the weather with an old friend. She hoped he knew what kind of game they were really playing right now.

She kept up her brisk pace as she walked through the park. She didn't want to sit in one place staring at four walls. She wanted to get her mind off of things and she wound up here.

She wasn't sure what it was, but something about all of the happy people around her made her feel hollow inside.

"Things have been pretty alright, yeah. How about you? I hope it ain't too bad where you are?"

He made a pleasant 'hmm' sound in agreement.

"Yes, it's not too bad at all. To what do I owe this phone call? Would it perchance be to our good friend Kurosawa Yuta?"

Kyoko raised an eyebrow. So he did know what was going on.

She was both relieved and frustrated at the same time.

"Yeah, I guess it is…" She wasn't sure where to go from there.

"Well, it's too bad to hear you've been put in this predicament." He didn't sound upset at all. "Would it be in my best interest to avoid meeting with you?"

"Uh, I don't know. I guess it's up to you to decide that." How the hell am I supposed to respond to that? "I can meet with you tomorrow night though, if that works for you."

She knew that meeting some time during the day would be less intimidating. At the same time though, there were too many people who might be able to see during the day. So really, she supposed it was an intimidating reason why she wanted to meet at night.

She was glad Yuma didn't ask too many questions when she cancelled what had been their best witch-hunting night for years.

"Hmmm." He was silent for a few moments. "I'm afraid that the risks to me are too great. I'm a businessman though. What kind of benefits are there for me if we were to meet?"

"What kind of benefits do you want?" He better not be asking for a damn blowjob.

"What are you prepared to offer?"

What was she prepared to offer? What would he want?

She swallowed. She had an idea.

"I'll show you my secret." She murmured quietly.

"What secret? Which one?" He sounded intrigued.

"I'll show you how I hide them." She narrowed her eyes. It seemed so wrong to talk about something so dark in a park where it was so nice and innocent.

He was silent.

"Where do we meet?"

"The church in the Old Industrial District. Midnight."

"We shall see each other then." She heard a click as he hung up.

She resisted the urge to vomit.

Kyoko had only ever told Yuma this, and to this day she wished she hadn't. Talking about things was supposed to be therapeutic, but it sure as hell hadn't helped her.

The reality was: it's not like Kyoko had never killed anyone before.

She killed a magical girl once. She hadn't actually meant to kill her. Honestly, Kyoko wasn't even sure how she had done it to this day. The girl was an annoying rookie slut who looked like a pixie and was desperate to be like Mami. She also liked to show off that she apparently spoke Italian.

Kyoko had nightmares about the fight. The girl was way too eager to play hero and was even trying to convince girls she saved to form contracts. That had really pissed her off. It was going to take away grief seeds and the bitch had way the wrong idea about what being a magical girl was all about. The fewer dumbasses who got involved with Kyubey, the better.

They had only talked for a minute before Kyoko snapped and made the first attack. The girl was a better fighter than Kyoko had thought, that was for sure. Kyoko had just started to manage to wrap the chain around the girl. She just wanted to toss the newbie against the wall and put her out of commission for a few weeks.

The ball at the end of her chain had smacked the girl in the chest hard; it even smashed her necklace. When the girl immediately untransformed and toppled to the ground, Kyoko had assumed she had just knocked the wind out of the girl.

The vacant look in the girl's eyes still haunted Kyoko's mind. She couldn't stand looking at girls with pixie faces to this day. There are a few girls at the club who can't understand why Kyoko ignores them.

But she didn't die inside after she killed the girl. She didn't go insane. She felt bad and she moved on. Some deaths are accidents. Some deaths are inevitable.

If you work with Kurosawa, it's inevitable.

The sound of a young woman squealing with laughter made Kyoko look up from the ground. She had blue hair and was looking back at a young man with tawny silver hair whose grin matched hers. The boy grabbed the girl, making both of them tumble down a hill in hysterics. When they got to the bottom, there were a few seconds when the boy was on top of the girl looking down, like they were about to kiss. They both separated before they did, looking away flustered.

Kyoko had seen PDA plenty of times before at the club. Something about this was rubbing her the wrong way really badly and she had no idea why.

Kyoko got an answer as soon as the girl sat up and looked in her direction.

Sayaka.

Sayaka had clearly noticed her too, and looked like she wasn't sure if she should say anything or not. Her hand was awkwardly half in the air, like she was debating whether or not to wave. The boy must have noticed it because he looked at Kyoko and waved for her.

Sayaka cringed a bit and waved. Her boyfriend made the decision for her. Sayaka got up and walked over to Kyoko.

"Hey! Kyoko…how've you been? I feel like we haven't talked for a while." Her smile looked forced. Kyoko couldn't figure out how she hadn't been able to see through this bitch's act from the start.

"Yeah, guess we haven't." Lie.

The boy walked over.

"Hello there. I don't think we've met. I'm Kamijou Kyousuke." He bowed politely in greeting. Kyoko guessed from this guy's nicely pressed white polo shirt, which now had grass stains on it that he was from a richer family.

"Yo. Sakura Kyoko." She gave a half-hearted wave. She didn't bow at all. She didn't buy into that bullshit.

"So…are you two friends?" He asked uncomfortably. Kyoko's mouth twisted downwards on one side in displeasure. She didn't want to stick around in this conversation for long.

"Not really. What's the story with you two?" Kyoko interjected before Sayaka could answer. Sayaka looked surprised by Kyoko's response. Well what did you expect, dumbass?

"Ah…well we are friends." He smiled kindly. "Since we were kids."

"Just friends, huh? Didn't look like it." Kyoko observed as she pulled some pocky out of her pocket. Something about that hurt. She ignored it. She wasn't sure if she was trying to spite Sayaka by sticking around, or if she was just spiting herself.

"What? No, no, we're really just friends. Kyousuke hasn't been able to run or walk really for years, but now he can. We were just celebrating it, I guess." Sayaka shrugged, blushing a furious shade of dark red. "He's actually dating my friend."

Flirting with your friend's boyfriend, huh? Why am I not surprised?

"Gotcha. Well, I'm going to go." Kyoko walked forward, essentially forcing the two 'friends' to step aside to let her through. They both looked bewildered. Kyoko didn't give a damn.

At least Kyoko said to herself that she didn't give a damn.

She felt a hand on her arm after she had taken a few steps.

"Kyoko? I just wanted to ask…are you alright? You seem…well, I guess you seem angry or something." Sayaka looked down at the ground. Kyoko resisted the temptation to sneer.

"Think what you want. I'm going. We don't need to talk again." She shrugged the girl's hand off her shoulder and walked away. She could feel Sayaka watching her leave.

She had always hated her emotions. There were too many of them going at once and way too strong. For some weird reason, Sayaka in particular always pulled out such powerful ones, even though she barely knew her.

Kyoko wanted to say she was mostly angry right now. This girl was a harlot who was sleeping with Kyoko and a Kurosawa for information, and clearly had something weird going on with her friend's boyfriend.

But she didn't feel angry.

She felt lonely.

---

Things were officially weird with Kyousuke.

She was mortified by Kyoko's assumption that she and Kyousuke were more than friends, but if she had seen the spectacle on the hill, she would have thought the same thing.

At the bottom of the hill when they were looking into each other's eyes…Sayaka could feel his breath come out in quick puffs from his previous exertion on her lips. His weight on top of her body had felt warm and comfortable. Her fourteen year old self would have been thrilled.

But her current self wasn't.

Her current self felt like it was…kind of gross, actually; like she was lying underneath her brother or something.

There was also the matter that she was behaving entirely inappropriately with her vulnerable best friend's boyfriend.

And she was unnaturally concerned about what Kyoko thought about her.

Kyoko who became like an animal when she was with 'Rin' dressed as Sayaka and managed to dislocate her shoulder and break her arm when she twisted and jerked her wrist in a weird way; Sayaka had no idea how much adrenaline could do to a person.

While the finale definitely sucked…nothing else really had too much; though again, Kyoko had seemed angry.

Sayaka had texted her a few times asking to get ramen and never got a response. She wondered if maybe she had the wrong number so Kyoko assumed Sayaka never texted her and was mad about it?

What if she knows?

No, she couldn't know. Sayaka had been careful with her cover.

Sayaka had been careful with her cover most of the time.

Alright, Sayaka could have been better with her cover more than a few times.

She hoped she was just overreacting

"She seemed…yes." Kyousuke concluded uncertainly. His sentence made no sense, and yet Sayaka understood if perfectly. She nodded in agreement.

The rest of the walk was not nearly as easygoing and carefree as it had been before. The atmosphere was heavy with guilty thoughts and unanswered questions.

"I'm sorry, Sayaka." Kyousuke apologized quietly. Sayaka glanced over at him, concerned with where this was going. "I feel like I haven't been very good to you recently."

"I don't know what you mean by that, so it's alright. Don't worry about it." She hoped he would drop the topic. Kyousuke was never the best at picking up social cues. He nodded and looked at his feet as they walked.

She glanced at the time on her phone.

It was one of the first times in a long time that she was actually relieved she would have to go to the club soon.

---

Things were officially weird at work.

The rumours surrounding Sayaka's injury had managed to completely spiral out of control in just two days. Some said Kyoko was jealous of 'Rin's' relationship with the younger Kurosawa and wanted revenge. Others said Sayaka faked it to get Kyoko in trouble. Some went so far as to say that the clients had requested that they act out a snuff scene.

Kyoko put on dark makeup next to Lady. They didn't say anything to each other.

Kyoko had opted for a short black cocktail dress today. She figured wearing anything leather or vaguely dominatrix in appearance would send the wrong signals to everybody.

In the mirror, Kyoko saw the robot bitch and cop bitch walk by. The robot bitch was overdressed as usual while the cop bitch wore a simple pink lace sleeping gown, like she was going to a teenage boy's fantasy of what girls' sleepovers must be like. Kyoko rolled her eyes.

She pulled her ribbon out of her hair. She had a personal rule that she would never wear it while she was performing.

Even she felt like that would be an insult to his memory.

"Let me help you." Lady commanded softly, stepping behind Kyoko with a curling iron. Within fifteen minutes, her face was surrounded by big bouncy curls.

She looked pretty classy for being in a dress that barely covered her crotch.

"Thanks." She said without smiling. Lady had followed Kyoko's example and wore a form-fitting crimson satin dress instead of the trashier things she usually wore.

Sayaka was going to stick out like a sore thumb in room B tonight.

They arrived just on time and were greeted by a smoky haze.

"Lady! I was worried you weren't coming. You look as magnificent as the mountains from which this shit came, which I'm guessing are pretty damn magnificent." James had bloodshot eyes that weren't focusing very clearly. He took a breath from a hookah on the table in front of him again.

Kyoko noticed there was no Miyamoto; Hideki was sitting in his place.

"You're looking quite magnificent yourself, Koko." He looked her up and down, appraising her favourably. Kyoko was used to getting stared at like a piece of meat.

"No matter what job I have, I do it right." She shrugged before taking Suki's usual seat. This way she could look at both Hideki and Kurosawa without setting off some kind of passive aggressive pathetic power struggle between the two. She crossed her legs, making an effort to raise her leg a bit too high and give a peek to those watching her while doing so.

She resisted the urge to smirk when she noticed Sayaka looking away with a blush shining through on her heavily covered face. As always, she was sitting in baby Kurosawa's lap.

And as the new habits were emerging, his hands were all over her.

Whore.

The night passed without any major surprises. The only thing that made her quirk a brow was how much the robobitch was capturing Hideki's attention. They were talking about some foreign policies that would impact European and Asian trade. James had a number of surprisingly well-articulated points to add. It was boring as hell.

Kyoko made an active effort to not look in Sayaka's direction at all throughout the night.

She barely had to make any effort at all to ignore Kyubey who was sitting at the base of the pole silently. Normally the little bastard was taunting her but tonight he just studied the room.

It was disconcerting, but overall easy to ignore.

The night finished without incident. Neither she nor Sayaka said anything to each other throughout the night. Hell, Kyoko barely even talked the whole night; Kurosawa stared at her and neither said anything to each other or added to the conversation about politics. Kyoko went home. Yuma was asleep on the couch. Kyoko slept in the bed alone.

She hoped the roof was leaking or something, and that was why she felt drops of water on her face.

She would have to find a way to kick her own ass if she was crying.

---

Sayaka left her apartment with plenty of time to spare before meeting Yuma. She wasn't sure if it was because she was excited to hunt a witch or was bored of convincing herself to clean in futility. Her apartment still smelled funny.

Luckily, Yuma left early too. She looked upset.

"Hey! How are you?" Sayaka mentally cringed when she realized how overly sympathetic she had sounded; she knew how much her young mentor hated that.

"I'm fine. Let's go. Did you bring what I asked you to?"

Sayaka nodded, feeling the weight of the handgun in the holster hidden beneath her black trench coat. Yuma had texted her saying she was concerned Sayaka was using up too much magic but morphing her sword. Sayaka practiced as carefully as she could in her apartment and it never changed shape; she just seemed to make it change subconsciously when she was fighting.

"Good. If you want, you can practice with it on familiars too. I know how much you've been itching to take them on too." Yuma smiled at her. Sayaka returned it; she really did want to fight both familiars and witches. It made her profoundly uncomfortable that Yuma didn't, but she wasn't about to go picking any fights with a thirteen year old girl who needed her support and was teaching her a pile of great stuff in the process.

"Thanks! I appreciate that. I'm okay if we don't go out of our way to fight familiars though; I don't have a huge amount of bullets."

Yuma's smile relaxed to something more natural, clearly relieved that Sayaka was starting to concede more willingly on the issue.

To fill the silence, Sayaka started to chatter about Kyousuke's incredible improvement. Yuma smiled and nodded. Yuma talked a bit about her art trip coming up in just two weeks. They had made an aggressive hunting plan to help make sure Yuma would have enough grief seeds before she went.

"How long is your trip again?"

"About three weeks."

Sayaka felt bad about asking this, but she had to. She thought it seemed excessive.

"Are you sure you're going to need fifteen grief seeds? I mean, you're not going to be using any magic while you're over there, right? So wouldn't your magic consumption be pretty low? Fifteen just seems like a lot."

Yuma stopped walking and looked at her feet uncomfortably. She had her hands behind her back.

"I'm just really scared about what American magical girls might be like. I don't want to have to risk messing with their territory in any way while I'm there. Some of them might even have high magic sensitivity and be able to sense my presence when I get there; what if they're aggressive and demand I hand over all of my grief seeds? This way I'll be safe and be able to carry a few decoys around to give out and not start any fights, yeah?"

"Would magical girls actually do that? You'd think they'd be happy you were there; you can help them fight witches. You're a great healer!"

"Sayaka, take this from me. Never trust magical girls you've just met. When you trust magical girls, you're literally entrusting them with your life. Some are great, honest people like you; most of them aren't. Never trust a magical girl."

"Then why did you trust me?" Sayaka was genuinely baffled.

"Because I knew I could outsmart you in a fight if you were stupid enough to go to a middle school and ask someone a fraction of your age to teach you." She quipped with a smirk that was uncannily similar to her sister's.

"Oi!" Sayaka laughed before running at the girl. Yuma laughed and ran away. It was the second time she had played tag in two days. She remembered why this used to be her favourite game, but the stakes were way higher when Yuma could actually jump onto buildings as easily as if she were going up two stairs at a time.

Yuma halted on top of an abandoned warehouse. Sayaka had to make herself trip over her own two feet to avoid running straight into her.

"What is-" Then she felt it.

There was a witch nearby.

"You ready?" Yuma smiled down at her, holding out her hand to help her up. Sayaka grinned back, taking it.

"Ready!"

---

Kyoko left her apartment with plenty of time to spare before meeting Miyamoto. It wasn't that she wanted to leave; more that for the sake of her relationship with her sister, who she had more and more trouble referring to her as that every day.

"I can't stand this! Tell me what's going on! Your brain is in overdrive with something more than the church! I can barely sleep because your emotions are keeping me awake! TELL ME WHAT'S GOING ON!" Yuma shrieked, pulling on her hair. She was pulling so hard Kyoko was worried she'd yank it out; her scalp was getting really red.

Another nervous tick from her childhood; this one was a bad one that Kyoko hadn't seen since around the time Yuma contracted.

Kyoko grabbed Yuma's arms, squeezing her wrists painfully tight to get her to let go.

"You need to cut this out! I get that you're freaked out. I get that you mean well. But I need you trust me on this; I don't want you to get involved. This isn't your fight; it's mine. I need you to trust me."

"How can I trust you when everything's been going to hell?! Your magic attacks, your sketchy deals, staying out until 4 am every night?! You're practically walking around like a zombie; you're miserable! How am I supposed to trust you when you say you're okay?!" Yuma struggled to reach her hair, but Kyoko kept a firm hold on her arms.

"Since you became a magical girl, have I ever failed you?"

Yuma stopped cold. She had tears running down her face that had become as red as her abused scalp. She hiccupped quietly.

"No." She squeaked.

"Exactly. And I'm not going to start now. So quit freaking out. Believe me, it's just making things worse. If you want to make things better, just calm down and trust me."

Yuma's arms were limp in her hands, so Kyoko let them go. They flopped to Yuma's side. Her gaze was set on the kitchen floor dejectedly.

Kyoko stood there, staring at the girl for three minutes. She sighed and started to load some dishes in the dishwasher.

Yuma was sniffling behind her.

Kyoko stared at a plate she had just put in there that was stained with ketchup and soy sauce, an odd combination that only she and Yuma seemed to enjoy. She got up and walked over to Yuma, hugging her gently and combing her fingers through her hair. She shushed her gently.

"I'm sorry. I really, really am." Kyoko apologized softly.

Yuma didn't hug her back. She was holding her arms against her chest.

"I don't like this, Kyoko." She mewled pitifully. Kyoko resisted the urge to sigh.

"I know you don't."

"I don't think I even like you. I love you because I have to; you're the only family I have. But I don't like you."

Kyoko felt a lump forming in her throat.

"That's fine. You have every right to feel that way." Kyoko kept her tone level. One of them had to keep their emotions in check. Now that Kyoko thought about it, she'd only had to discipline to reel herself in when Yuma was involved.

Yuma definitely made her a better person.

What did she do for her?

"I don't think I want to look at you right now." Yuma whispered.

Absolutely nothing; that's what she did.

Kyoko had tears forming in her eyes, but she didn't make a sound. She pulled back, giving Yuma a light kiss on the forehead. She went to the cabinet where they left the movies and pulled out Yuma's favourite dramas. She left them on the couch before she picked up her coat that was draped on the back of the couch.

She walked out the door and she was going to be way too early for her meeting with Miyamoto.

And she was going to be meeting him at the church.

She was going to murder him near the church.

Kyoko ducked into an alley to let her first sob break out. She didn't have anything. She didn't have control of her magic. She didn't have control of the church. She didn't have control of anything.

And now she didn't have Yuma.

The best thing I can really do for her is leave her.

Kyoko straightened herself out, wiped away her tears and walked. She could have taken the subway, but even with walking she would be a whole hour early. The streets were dirty and depressing.

She liked that, because at least that fit her mood. The park had been terrible.

Her mind briefly wandered back to Sayaka, who had looked so happy with that boy.

Sayaka was like her; she was an idiot and made bad choices. Kyoko contracted to become a magical girl, Sayaka had done drugs. Kyoko dehumanized herself every day for the assholes she worked for, and so did Sayaka.

She glanced at her phone. Sayaka had texted her four times since they saw each other at the club.

She hadn't texted her since Kyoko beat her up in the alley though. Kyoko couldn't say she blamed her.

Kyoko was so, so tempted to text her back. It might be nice to talk to another fuck up.

She even typed out a message. 'Are you free right now'.

Her thumb hovered over the send key. Kyoko huffed in frustration and clicked cancel. She had to wipe away tears from her eyes again.

No, even Sayaka wasn't as much of a fuck up as her. Sayaka had done drugs, but she didn't make a contract with the devil.

That took a whole new level of dumbassery.

She powerwalked to the church, getting there after a number of hours of walking. She didn't even stop for food.

She actually got there two hours early. She decided to go to cemetery in the back; it might help to talk it out with the rocks that symbolized where her family's cold dead bodies had been buried.

But evidently, so did Miyamoto. He didn't have a car or any guards. He just sat on a bench by the graveyard.

He was staring at her family's graves.

He only noticed her presence when she stepped on a branch, making it snap underneath her weight. He looked up at her and smiled genuinely.

"Good evening Ophelia. I see you're early too."

"Don't call me that. It's just Kyoko."

He smiled. "Forgive me. I thought only my sister had the privilege of calling you that."

"She didn't have the privilege to call me anything. She just called me what she wanted to." Kyoko sneered, but she wasn't particularly upset by it. Tsubasa chuckled merrily.

"Yes, she would do that. How's your sister? Has she been well?"

Kyoko looked at him out of the side of her eye. She was about to kill him anyways, so she may as well be honest.

"No. She's been pretty upset with everything that's going on. The best thing I could do for her now would be to get out of her life. Maybe if I fake my death or something, she can get the life insurance money too."

"I wouldn't be so quick to say that."

"Why not?" This time she turned her head to face him.

"Suki decided on her own that the best thing for me would be to pretend we don't know each other. Now that I have some serious matters that I need her help to figure out, she's gone and I can't speak to her without disrespecting her sacrifice."

"Sacrifice?"

"She's going to go to prison for a very, very long time. I won't. And neither will the Kurosawas or James. I'm not just saying that to convince you not to kill me; it's true. She wouldn't be able to implicate the others without implicating me too."

"You don't seriously believe she'll be able to deny the connection to you, do you? You're screwed. She was caught on tape and everything."

"You said she said she was going to go peacefully when she was arrested, right? That was our code to each other. And besides, she was only caught admitting that she put that animal down. They have no sure way of proving she was involved in our operation. She could deny she had any idea what Atihiko or Megumi were talking about, and I'm sure she'll do exactly that."

Kyoko was vaguely impressed by the man's faith in his sister. She wouldn't have that faith herself.

"That woman wasn't an animal; she was sick. And Suki would have no reason to kill her aside from her failing in the operation. No one would believe she just killed a person for the hell of it. She doesn't come off as quite that psychotic."

Tsubasa chuckled bitterly. "I wouldn't be so sure about that."

Kyoko blinked and looked back at the graves. Tsubasa had never taken his eyes off of the Sakura family graves.

"Let's play a game. I will ask you three questions. You have to reply truthfully to two of them. If I can guess which question you lied to, I win. If I am wrong, you win."

"What does the winner get?"

"A free taiyaki?" He offered. Kyoko smirked, but it was only half genuine. Why not? At least one of us is going to die tonight.

"First question. What happened to that grave?" He pointed to the grave next to her family's; the one she suspected had been destroyed during Walpurgisnacht.

"I'm not completely sure. I'm think it was destroyed in the disaster six years ago. I can't really say any more than that because I don't know." She raised an eyebrow. "Seems like a waste of a question."

He smiled. "Maybe. Second question then. Are you going to murder me tonight?"

She caught the trick he caught her in. If she lied to this, she'd have to answer truthfully to the last question. She inhaled deeply.

Worse comes to worst, what could he do if she lied? She never played fair.

"No."

He smiled at her. He knew she was lying.

"Last question then. What's your name?"

"My name? It's Sakura Kyoko." She was bewildered.

But then again, Suki had asked her the same thing. Why did they not believe she was who she said she was?

It pissed her off.

"Your sister asked me the same thing right before she got arrested." He chortled at that, unsurprised. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Do you want to play another round? That's the only way I'll answer you. But you need three questions."

She sneered. "Fine. Why do you and your sister think I'm not Sakura Kyoko?"

He studied her intently, deciding what to say.

"Everyone in this industry lies about who they are. We just like to know who we're working with."

She didn't trust him. But he'd have to answer the next two honestly anyways. Unless he planned on playing dirty like she did.

Which he probably did.

"Do you think you'll be alive by the end of the night?"

He chuckled jovially.

"No. I don't. If you don't kill me, someone else will. I've had a few unfriendly faces following me, not only for Kurosawa but others too."

"You don't seem upset." She remarked. He smiled and shrugged.

"This has been a long time coming. If it wasn't my profession that would kill me, it would be this." He knocked on his head. She raised an eyebrow.

"Is that your third question?"

She thought about it. She sighed.

"Fine. That's my third question." He smiled at her.

"I was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer a few months ago. Inoperable. I could have tried to get it treated, but I would just be sick and miserable until I died anyways. It was just going to prolong the process. I've been seeing things that I don't think are there. I'm not even sure if you're here or if I'm just talking to myself." He laughed, but Kyoko didn't think it was funny.

"Then why were you working so hard on all of these plans to change your operations like the organ trafficking thing? Why wouldn't you focus on living your life to the fullest, or travelling, or devoting yourself to the betterment of mankind or something? Why keep working with all of this?"

"That's another question. And I won't let you play another round if I don't get to, and I don't particularly feel the need to play. You gave me all the answers I wanted."

She paused before getting mad.

"Suki doesn't know, does she?"

He breathed in and out slowly.

"Very astute of you."

A warm breeze pushed one of the last Sakura blossoms onto the dying man's lap. He smiled at it.

"The Sakura truly is a beautiful flower, don't you think?"

Kyoko shrugged. Most flowers were pretty. His smiled faded, but she sensed it had nothing to do with her response.

"So you lied when you said you weren't going to kill me, correct?"

She nodded.

Then she was confused. She couldn't believe that he was lying for the second or third question.

"You lied for my first question."

"Oh dear! It looks like we've both won. Shall we both buy taiyaki or just call it a draw?"

"Why did you lie about that?"

"The games are over. Now, I am a very curious man. Won't you show me your secret method? That was your promise, was it not?"

She looked at him with resignation and nodded. He was a dead man walking, after all.

She led him to where she knew the witch's barrier was.

---

Sayaka had to keep herself from gaping in amazement at the labyrinth around her.

She felt like she was walking through outer space, but instead of black it was a dark purple. She could see planets, stars, galaxies, and meteors around her. She and Yuma were walking on what looked like a road of stardust.

"This is actually beautiful." She said, mostly to herself. She wished she could take a picture.

"It really is. I'm definitely going to paint this one." Yuma responded, but she clearly still had her guard up, waiting for something to attack. Sayaka shook her head, remembering that she was in a danger zone right now.

The road split off in two directions in front of a planet that looked like a pink and blue Saturn.

"Do we split up?" Sayaka asked.

"No, never split up in a labyrinth. We'll go…" She looked like she was playing a game of eenie-meenie-miney-moe in her head "left."

It turns out they had worried for nothing. The road converged again on the other side of the planet.

"Told you left was a good idea." Yuma stated.

"What? But it just-"

"That was a joke, Sayaka." She teased lightly without stopping her constant survey of her surroundings. "There's a difference between having a bit of a sense of humour and letting your guard down. It's a fine line though. You shouldn't try it."

"You're such a brat." She teased lightly, surveying the surroundings too as they walked. See? I can do it too.

"This might sound weird, but could you not call me that?"

"Oh sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

"No, I'm not offended. It's just that you kind of remind me of someone I'd rather not think about right now when you say that." Yuma wasn't mad, but it didn't look like she wanted to keep talking either. Sayaka agreed and decided to ask her later.

They heard a distorted shriek from up ahead.

"She knows we're here." Yuma stated, taking on a fighting stance. Sayaka did the same.

"How do you know it's a 'she'?"

"They're all 'she's, now get ready!"

If the light speed they made spaceships travel in the movies were like anything, it was this. The space around them warped while they stayed still. It was like the galaxies were being launched behind them, left as nothing but blurs in the periphery of their visions.

Sayaka couldn't even feel a breeze of anything though. Everything about her and Yuma was perfectly still.

The labyrinth stopped moving and they saw what looked like a green astronaut with butterfly antennae figure skating along galaxies and planets. The skates were leaving behind the same kind of dust they were walking on.

"She's about to start attacking." Yuma warned. The witch made a kind of 'whoop' sound and comet was launched at them. Yuma jumped forwards while Sayaka jumped back. The road between them was shattered and disappeared.

"I got this!" Sayaka shouted as she pulled out her gun. As she reached for it, her sword automatically morphed into a sleeve so she didn't have to sheath it. Sayaka knew instinctually that if she need her sword, it would automatically morph back into a sword for her.

Sayaka pulled the trigger and a loud boom echoed around them. The bullet was launched from the gun but after just a few inches, it started to float away. It didn't even get close to the witch.

"Do you think you can make your shield propel it forward?" Yuma called back as she launched an energy wave to break a planet that was thrown at her.

"I can try!" Sayaka wasn't even sure if she could set up shield barriers away from her body, but she tried. She envisioned a series of mirrors and fired at the first one. Amazingly, it worked and the bullet was reflected off of each imaginary mirror, propelling faster and faster.

"Yes!" Sayaka grinned excitedly.

And then the last mirror deflected the bullet right at Yuma who shrieked and ducked to avoid it.

"Oh shit I'm so sorry!" Sayaka apologized profusely. Yuma squawked while pointing at something behind Sayaka. She raised her left arm and looked behind her just to see a sun being reflected away from her.

"Keep your guard up!" Yuma shouted. Sayaka was about to apologize again but decided to wait until after.

Sayaka tried to focus. She could see the witch. It wasn't particularly fast, but it had a lot more free space to move around than she or Yuma did.

Sayaka imagined a bunch of mirrors, each taking a different path. She fired three bullets, one into each path.

It didn't look like any of them were going to make it.

"Sayaka, make one more mirror right in front of the orange planet for me!" Yuma ordered. Sayaka nodded and obeyed.

Yuma launched an energy blast into of the mirrors in the middle path. It bounced off, hitting one if the left path, which then made it hit one in the right, back to the middle, over to the planet, and catapulted it straight into the witch whom exploded on impact.

The labyrinth vanished and they found themselves on top of the Kazamino planetarium. A grief seed with an emblem that looked like the planet Saturn was on top of the massive dome that was in so many postcards the city tried to sell to tourists.

"Hooray!" Yuma cheered, giving Sayaka a high five. Sayaka grinned and returned it. "Great job Sayaka! I wasn't sure if you could do that, but that's such a powerful skill to have."

"Thanks." Sayaka blushed and rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "I didn't know I could either."

The slid off the dome, which was amazingly dangerous but amazingly fun and picked up some fast food; it was the perfect time to have dinner after all.

Sayaka wasn't surprised when Yuma chided her for not having her head in the battle, which she deserved. She wasn't overly impressed by the whole nearly-shooting-her thing either. Overall though, the hunt had been a complete success.

"Seriously, you suck at geometry. Didn't you pay attention in middle school math?"

"What do you think?" Sayaka laughed at herself. Yuma grinned.

"Alright, but really, you need to learn it. I don't want you launching my own attacks back at us. That's a really bad idea. There are plenty of games you can play to help you practice. I'll send them to you tonight."

Sayaka didn't think having to play computer games sounded like a bad thing. Then again, she had found typing games fun when she was a kid, but once they become mandatory for school she despised them. She hoped the same thing wouldn't happen here. Besides, this wasn't for grades; this was to save lives.

Sayaka's phone rang. It was Hitomi.

"Oh shit, it's Saturday!" Sayaka cursed. Yuma looked at her with enquiring eyes.

"Hitomi, hi! I'm so sorry, I completely forgot about tonight." Sayaka had never forgotten about their Saturday night get-togethers; they'd done them for years.

"You forgot? Sayaka, are you alright? This doesn't seem like something you'd forget…" Sayaka could recognize Hitomi's are-you-using-again tone.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I actually just forgot. I've had a lot going on and I'm not sure-" She stopped and looked at Yuma. She got the feeling that Yuma didn't have many chances to make friends, and imagined it could be hard. Besides, she had to be so much more grown up than everyone around her.

She wondered if meeting some older people who knew what witches' barriers were like could be good for her.

Sayaka put her thumb on the mouthpiece to mute it.

"Hey Yuma, you want to take a break for a few hours and hang out with some friends of mine? They're pretty cool." She tried to coax her. "Well, I think they're pretty cool." She felt like she was becoming less successful in her coaxing.

"Uh, I guess." Yuma seemed a bit uncomfortable. "Don't you think they'll find it weird if you bring a thirteen year old to a party though?"

"Ha! This isn't a party, trust me. And if it makes you feel better, they've seen me do way weirder things." Sayaka winked at her. Yuma smiled a bit, but nodded. Sayaka thought she may have sensed a bit of subdued excitement there. She hoped she did.

"Hey Hitomi, do you mind if I bring my friend along?"

"Your friend? Who's this?"

"You'll meet her! Well, you will if I can bring her along."

"Yes, certainly. When do you think you'll get here?"

Sayaka mentally calculated the subway and walking times. "Maybe forty minutes?"

"Forty minutes? Oh dear, the noodles will be cold by then. Oh well, I will put some away in the oven for you and hopefully they stay warm. I'm not sure if I'll have enough for both you and your friend." Passive aggressive jabs, I see. She wasn't going to let Hitomi guilt her out of bringing Yuma.

"Thanks Hitomi! Don't worry, Yuma's small so she doesn't need to eat much." Yuma huffed indignantly. "See you soon!"

The ride took no time at all. Yuma showed Sayaka a few games to download. Sayaka could immediately see how they could help her use her magic more effectively.

Sayaka opened the door which was never locked for her.

"Hi everyone!" She greeted pleasantly. Everyone consisted of Kyousuke and Nakazawa who were engrossed in some sort of conversation and Hitomi, who looked very annoyed at how late she was. Kyousuke and Nakazawa merely sent distracted waves in her direction.

"So who is this friend you've brought?" Hitomi asked pleasantly. Sayaka was glad she wasn't going to be snippy to Yuma. That seemed to catch Nakazawa's attention who got up from his seated position.

"Oh, not a guy then." He murmured quietly to himself. Both Sayaka and Yuma managed to hear it though. Yuma smirked.

"No, I'm not a guy. My name is Chitose Yuma. It's a pleasure to meet all of you." Yuma bowed. After everyone's greetings were made, they sat down and talked while eating lukewarm noodles.

"I don't know why I brought noodles. Now that Kyousuke can use his hands again, it's not nearly as funny to watch him try to eat it."

"I knew that was why you kept bringing them!" Sayaka shouted. Hitomi cringed and made a gesture to lower the volume. "I knew that was why you kept bringing them!" She whispered dramatically.

"So, how is it that you two know each other?" Hitomi asked. Sayaka figured someone would ask. It was true that she had done stranger things than bringing a young teenager to one of their get-togethers, but this was still strange, even by her standards.

"My school is sending me on an art trip to America. We've all been given community partners to help us fundraise. Sayaka's my fundraising partner. We just got back from a staff party at the station and raised nearly 20,000 yen!" Yuma lied flawlessly. Sayaka was impressed that she not only crafted this on the spot, but she even managed to do it in a way that didn't make Sayaka look creepy as hell. She appreciated that.

"Now I remember where I've seen you! Hitomi, this girl is the one who made the painting of the church I gave you. She was selling them at the park." Kyousuke said. Hitomi's eyes widened.

"You painted that? I assumed it was done by someone who was at least studying at an art college. You're very talented!" Hitomi praised. Yuma smiled. It looked like she had been commended for her talent many times before.

"Thank you. I'm glad you like it. Now that you mention it, I think I remember you too. Weren't you in a wheelchair though?" Yuma tilted her head to the side as she asked it.

"I was! One night, I was just better. I can walk and use my hands perfectly now. The doctors had never seen anything like it."

"If anyone deserved a miracle, it was you." Hitomi said with admiration in her eyes. Sayaka noticed Nakazawa wrinkle his nose.

"I see." Yuma said, but she looked concerned. Sayaka had a feeling they were going to be talking more about this later.

Nakazawa, Kyousuke, and Yuma played some kind of melee fighting videogame. Hitomi and Sayaka started to put away dishes. These age and gender roles are bullshit.

"Sayaka, could we speak on the balcony for a minute?" Hitomi asked in a falsely courteous voice. Sayaka was nervous. She could tell Hitomi was upset with her and she couldn't tell what for; there were too many choices to pick from.

That's never good…

They stepped out. The sunset coloured the sky a beautiful combination of blood red and burnt orange. It didn't complement Hitomi's hair particularly well.

"Of all the nights for you to bring a middle school student with you, you had to pick tonight." Hitomi sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Sayaka eyes widened.

"Hitomi, what is-" She was cut off by Hitomi falling to the ground of the balcony, curling in on herself sobbing.

"I think we're going to break up. I really think we're going to break up this time." Hitomi was shaking.

"No, no, don't say that. What would you think that? You've been together for years!" Sayaka sat down next to her bawling friend and wrapped her in a clumsy hug.

"If I thought he didn't like coming by before, now he really never wants to come by." She sniffled. "I feel so awful saying this, but ever since he got better he's either at home playing his violin or out walking around. He keeps on trying to get me to get out of my apartment. He says that if he could get better, so could I. And he's right. And I tried, I really did. It was so pathetic. I took five steps outside of my building and I nearly collapsed from hyperventilating." Hitomi's last sentence was almost incomprehensible, but Sayaka had heard Hitomi trying to talk while crying hard a few times, so she knew how to decipher it. Hitomi could do the same for her, after all.

"What he had and what you have are completely different Hitomi. Mental wounds and physical ones aren't even close to being the same. You know how many times Kyousuke and I have clashed about that." Sayaka offered as condolences.

"Are they really? He even talks about you. He talked about you in particular because you said it was like overnight, you had no desire to do any kind of drugs. How is that any different from what happened to him? Why is everyone getting better except for me?" She buried her head in her knees. Sayaka had never heard Hitomi have such dark thoughts before, and she'd had some dark ones. But they weren't usually envious; they were more fearful or sad.

"I'm such a monster. I'm such a selfish, cowardly monster."

"We all have thoughts like that. It's okay. You're not a monster. You're human. And it's not fair at all that I got better and you didn't. If anyone deserved it…it was you." Sayaka whispered. It hadn't even occurred to Sayaka to consider if her good fortune was fair.

"I mean, look at me. I took advantage of people for years. You're basically the only reason I even passed secondary school. This great, wonderful thing happened to me and I didn't even think for a second about how it might impact the people around me who I made suffer for years. Like, it was just 'poof! I'm better!' and I was just happy about it. I never thought if that might seem like a rip off or anything for the people who worked so hard to keep me up when I was at my worse…does that make any sense? I don't know if it does." Sayaka felt worse and worse about herself as she spoke. She hadn't been conscientious at all.

"No, no Sayaka please don't think like that. I'm so sorry, this is awful. I'm not trying to make you feel bad that you got better. Maybe I am? I don't even know." Hitomi cried harder again. Sayaka squeezed her more.

"It's okay if you want to. It's not fair. It's not fair that our school, out of all the schools, got attacked by a witch. It's not fair that any of our classmates got killed. It's not fair that our homes got destroyed. It's not fair that we had such a shitty time in secondary school. None of this is fair, Hitomi! You don't need to feel like you did anything to deserve this, because you didn't! The world's not fair, and it hasn't been fair to any of us. It's okay to be mad about it."

Hitomi's sniffles subsided quickly and she nodded. She looked very confused.

"Thank you Sayaka. I appreciate that, I do. But what do you mean when you say a witch attacked our school?"

Sayaka stared at Hitomi's forest eyes that were waiting for an explanation.

Oh. Shit.

"Uhh…"

Sayaka was saved by a distraction when the balcony door was shoved open. She was relieved.

She was relieved for a second until she saw the utterly panic stricken expression on Yuma's face.

"Sayaka, we need to go now!"

"What is it? What's wrong?" Sayaka was trying to make some sense of the situation and diffuse it. There were a few too many chaotic things happening at once.

"Now!" Yuma yelled as she hopped over the balcony, sliding down a drainpipe. Hitomi gasped in horror while Kyousuke and Nakazawa gaped from inside. Yuma of course landed perfectly and started to run. "HURRY UP!"

Sayaka snapped out of her thoughts.

"I'm so sorry about this. Please never try this yourself."

Sayaka jumped off, sliding down the pipe the same way Yuma did and sprinted after her.

---

Kyoko had to keep herself from gaping in horror at the labyrinth around her. Clearly something was happening to the witch, because the flower familiars were huge.

"What…what is this place? Am I hallucinating?" Miyamoto asked in horrified disbelief. "I've never seen anything like this. I had no idea there was a garden here."

"This is called a labyrinth. A monster called a witch lives here. Once the witch is killed, anything that was dead in here disappears with her." Kyoko explained. She knew Miyamoto was a curious man and besides; he was never going to leave.

"So I am hallucinating then?" He more stated than asked.

"Think what you want." Kyoko shrugged.

Miyamoto swallowed nervously and licked his lips. He took deep breaths. "So nothing that dies in here gets out, you said?"

"Not unless someone brings it out, no."

"Alright. Alright. This is good. This is good." He muttered to himself. "This is what I want. This is where I want to die."

"Why?" Kyoko couldn't comprehend why someone would want to die in a labyrinth. It would be a nightmare come true for her, and frankly that is her most likely fate.

"This illness has been in my family for generations. It was hell for us watching our mother die before her body did. I only have Suki left, and I don't want her to have to see that too. I don't want to be remembered for being a shell; I want to be remembered for being a brilliant doctor and businessman. If I die here, no one will ever know that my mind was ever dulling at all."

Kyoko stared at the man in front of her as he admired the flowers. The blooms were closed now, but when they opened she wondered what kind of savagery would come to light.

Miyamoto stopped and turned to her.

"So…Sakura-san." He smiled kindly and pityingly to her as he said that. "How did you learn about these places?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"I made a contract with a demon chimera named Kyubey and became a magical girl. My job is to fight witches." To prove her point, she transformed into her magical girl robes.

Tsubasa stared at her with wide eyes, slowly falling backwards to take a seat.

"Kyubey was actually real? The white cat with wings from his head is real?" He asked in horror.

Kyoko was surprised.

"You know about Kyubey?" How the hell would he know?

"We thought Suki was crazy for years. Part of the reason why we adopted her was that my mother thought she was ill like her own mother had been. She had so much sympathy for her. She had the same illnesses we did; she would be a perfect substitute for the baby. Nobody would be surprised if her family died anyways.

"Suki insisted that she could help her family and make them better. She said she would find Kyubey and make a contract to make her family better. She said she would become a magical girl and fix everything.

"We had to keep her tied down and sedated for weeks after we took her in. She kept trying to run away. We assumed she had inhaled too many of the toxic fumes her birth family had her surrounded with." Tsubasa covered his mouth with his hand, trying to muffle an ashamed sob.

Kyoko listened to the dying man with mixed emotions. The way Suki had told the story, the Miyamoto family had saved her life.

The way Tsubasa told the story, they had murdered her family and kidnapped her.

"Does Suki remember any of this?"

Tsubasa shook his head. "I've sometimes tried to talk to her about it. She gets upset whenever I do."

Kyoko watched the crying man with furrowed brows. He kept crying for almost ten minutes.

He finally composed himself. He stood up and brushed off the invisible dust from his suit.

"I apologize for that. Thank you for being so compassionate in hearing my last confession. You can do that, right? You're the daughter of a preacher after all." He smiled at her. She didn't smile back.

"Sakura Kyoko, it would be an honour if you ended my life." He bowed. She looked at him. She felt so conflicted that she felt nothing.

"Fine." She materialized her spear, bringing it down over his neck.

She was used to cutting through witch's flesh. She was used to chopping up familiars.

She was always disturbingly reminded by just how sharp her lance is when she had to use it on humans.

His head rolled clean off when a peaceful expression on its face.

The vines sprung off the walls like deadly predators, pulling apart the corpse of a man who had fabricated plans to do the exact same thing to others. Kyoko was right that the flowers looked more vicious now; the fangs were now the size of her wrist and the flowers could shriek in a terrifyingly human way. Kyoko walked further into the barrier, away from the sounds of skin being ripped and torn apart behind her.

The vines along the wall were pulsing as they swallowed gulps of what was formerly Miyamoto Tsubasa. Kyoko presumed that the food was being sent directly to the creator of this barrier.

She was right, and gazed in resignation and shame at the monster she helped create.

She walked into a room that looked like a green colosseum. She stood along a thin stretch of walkable ground. There is a hemisphere below with massive vines converging in the centre, where a massive gluttonous creature lay, greedily consuming all that was brought to her.

The witch looked like a venus fly trap with an engorged body that clearly resembled a morbibly obese blob of…something. This was one of the most hideous witches Kyoko had ever seen.

The witch struggled to turn its head to her. Kyoko watched in morbid fascination as two lumps started moving around underneath the flesh of its swollen purple head. The lumps eventually emerged where there were two small slits to reveal beady little black eyes to peer at Kyoko curiously.

The entire head moved as it opened its gargantuan mouth, two long rows of viciously long fangs being bared to Kyoko.

No, that's not what it was doing.

It was smiling at her.

There was a wreath of giant fern leaves at the base of its head. One of the leaves raised itself and shook. Kyoko realized it was waved at her.

Kyoko waved back uncertainly.

One of the vines that had been connected to a bulb that sucked slithered over to her. It paused in front of her and started convulsing. Kyoko could see something slowly moving up from the base of the witch through the vine and up to her.

Fuck this thing is about to spit acid at me, isn't it?

Kyoko stepped back, holding her spear at the ready. She didn't have to though.

A chunk of a partially digested rib cage was spat out at her feet. The flower reached down and picked it up, trying to offer it to her.

"Yeah…no thanks." Kyoko tried to decline as politely as possible.

It was moments like this that she was reminded that witches had once been human girls. Kyoko imagined that this girl had not been popular, was maybe ugly, and desperate for friends and went about it in all the wrong ways.

"Yeah, I know what that's like."

Kyoko knew that if she was going to kill this witch, she was going to have to do it fast. This was yet another instance where having her fascination magic would have been profoundly useful.

Can't do anything about that now.

Kyoko smiled politely to the flower that appeared to be attempting to smile back. She then quickly darted underneath it, running down to the base of the pit and piercing the neck of the witch. Her spear was buried to the hilt before she ripped it out.

The witch screamed in a low-pitched howl of fury. All of the vines immediately retracted from their feeding frenzy. Kyoko took the opportunity to stab the witch again, this time making a long vertical cut that she hoped would slice it in two.

It didn't.

A barrage of vines with shrieking flowers came down on her. Kyoko jumped out of the way, erecting a diamond lattice barrier around her. The swarm of vines surrounded her, engulfing her in darkness.

I'm fucked.

---

Sayaka's thoughts were racing in a hundred directions at once.

On the one hand, she still had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on. They had run all the way to the Old Industrial District, essentially hitching an illegal ride on the roof of a passing sky train.

On the other hand, she had literally jumped out of a fourth story balcony in front of three of her closest friends. Fuck I hope Hitomi doesn't tell my parents about that.

Sayaka was taking the moment on the roof of the train to catch her breath and process everything.

Yuma reached over, tugging on the sleeve of Sayaka's black coat. Sayaka looked at her, silently asking what to do. Yuma jumped off the train. I guess that's what.

Sayaka tried to follow Yuma's grace but failed miserably. While Yuma landed perfectly on her feet from the speeding train ten stories above, Sayaka had to duck and roll when she landed. She wasn't hurt though.

"Come on, let's go!" Yuma ordered, running down an alley.

Sayaka could feel the witch they were pursuing now. She was stunned that Yuma could sense this all the way from Hitomi's apartment. She'd have to learn was Yuma's trick was.

They ran into the barrier. It looked like a mossy cave with large stripes of grey uncovered rock. Yuma ran down the narrow cave passage without any apparent concern to check for familiars. Sayaka was a bit more cautious.

She stepped forward, hearing a sort of splash. She looked down.

She was stepping in a puddle of blood.

The urge to vomit rose as she remembered the woman whose guts she'd lied in not that long ago. She resisted it.

The urge to vomit and scream rose again when she saw a face with a vacant expression staring at her a few feet away.

A face without a body.

A face that she recognized.

"Miyamoto?" Sayaka wasn't even sure why she asked that. He clearly couldn't answer her.

She was conflicted as she looked down the cave where Yuma had run. She looked back at the head and down the cave.

She made a split second decision that she hoped wouldn't be fatal for Yuma.

She grabbed the head and ran out of the labyrinth. The entrance had been in an alley and there was a dumpster nearby. She threw the head in there, slamming the lid shut and hoped that no one would be attracted by the noise. She ran back into the labyrinth and sprinted to the center.

She couldn't even tell what she was looking at.

It looked like there was a giant pit of vines wrapping over something in the middle. Yuma was running around a rim on the top, the same rim Sayaka was standing on. Yuma was looking for a way to breach the mass of squirming plants.

"WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?!" Yuma screamed from the other side. Sayaka could barely hear is over the sound of the groaning plants below.

Sayaka returned with a sort of culpable sheepish shrug. Yuma looked angry and had the face that Sayaka thought made it look like she could be very, very mean. Yuma sprinted along the rim and Sayaka ran over to her so they met halfway.

"Someone is trapped inside that pit. The witch is down there too. Both of them are completely covered by the vines."

"Either of us trying to jump in there would be suicide." Sayaka noted. She could tell she was being horribly pessimistic. "We need to get the vines to open up from here."

Yuma looked down, pulling on her hair hard. Sayaka thought she might tear her hair out.

"I can't tell where exactly she is in there…" Yuma was starting to shiver. Sayaka could recognize what was happening. She was about to start crying.

"Don't worry! We'll help whoever's in there." She reassured her. She sounded so confident even she believed it. She knew she would.

She just had to figure out how.

---

Kyoko's thoughts were racing in a hundred directions at once.

I'm about to die. I'm actually about to die.

I didn't say goodbye to Yuma.

I didn't save the church.

Yuma's last memories of me are going to be saying that she didn't like me.

I never actually hung out with Sayaka.

I should have visited Mami's grave more.

I wish I-

Her ever growing list of regrets was cut short by a loud explosion from above. The vines stopped in their question to constrict her, opening slightly so she could see light. She couldn't see what was happening, but she could tell that she had a potential ally up there who showed up in the nick of time.

A magical girl who somehow knew she was down there and came at the exact time she needed help most.

"Yuma, get out of here! Go! Run!" Kyoko shouted, hoping the younger one could hear her. "Go!"

This witch was way too strong. There was no way Yuma could take her on her own.

Kyoko took a deep breath and prepared to do something stupid.

She released her barrier spell and whipped her spear through the vines, cutting through a number of them and effectively distracting the witch.

She heard the flowers shriek in anger as some of their kind were severed. She summoned a base of diamonds to jump off of.

As she was about to leap, six blue walls surrounded her so she was encased in a cube.

What the-

"Don't step off your diamonds! Kyoko, don't step off your diamonds!" Kyoko could hear Yuma shriek.

Kyoko was about to ask her what the hell was going when she noticed a blue blur speed directly past her, slamming through layers of vines and straight through the vines below.

The witch howled briefly before it spluttered and the labyrinth disappeared. It was replaced by a human shriek of agony instead. Kyoko was horrified.

"YUMA! YUMA!" She ran forward toward the girl in pain.

Kyoko was stunned when the alley appeared. Yuma was standing next to another magical girl, the blue blur that was writhing on the ground. She was badly burned and barely even looked human.

So the witch did have acid attacks.

Yuma kneeled by the girl, brought her staff in front of her and closed her eyes in concentration. A green circle went around all three of them. Kyoko felt a cool sensation rush over a few scratches she'd had, but it was nothing bad.

The girl took significantly more time for her skin to be regrown. Significantly meant an extra fifteen seconds.

Kyoko jumped up and hugged Yuma tightly. "You're a dummy. You're such a dummy! Don't scare me like that again!" She scolded.

"Me? You're the one who went in there alone!" Yuma retorted but was smiling and hugged her back. She'd been crying. "I was so scared you were going to die and the last thing I said to you was that I didn't like you. I actually do, I promise."

Kyoko laughed lightly. "I know. I know." She smiled

The girl in blue armour and a white cape was groaning on the ground, struggling to get up. Kyoko reached down.

"So you've got a new friend, huh?" She asked Yuma. She wasn't overly thrilled by there being a new girl, but she had to admit, she had just saved her life.

"Yeah." She said nervously, like she was afraid Kyoko would be upset. "Uh, well this is-"

The knight in the shining armour rolled over and sat up.

"Kyoko?"

"SAYAKA?!"

You have got to be FUCKING kidding me.

---

Sayaka had never felt a physical pain quite like this before.

Realistically, this had been a bad idea. There must have been some other alternative. But no, she just had to be the daring hero.

They had successfully found out where the woman was trapped below. Sayaka had even put mirrors around her to keep her safe.

Yuma was screaming something but Sayaka wasn't listening. Yuma mentioned she was nervous about throwing her blast down there because it tended to explode when combined with Sayaka's deflections. An explosion right next to some of her mirrors could lead to lethal attacks being thrown around and killing themselves in the process.

So naturally, Sayaka decided to propel herself in the mirrors. Not her bullets, because that would just be too straightforward of course (she thought in hindsight sarcastically).

Her sword sliced through the vines easily when she was spending down.

As it turns out, the witch's belly was basically a giant pit of acid.

That she launched herself straight into.

Her skin was blistering and pieces of her muscles were melting. Some of the metal of her armour were being smoldered into her skin.

Needless to say, the pain was excruciating.

Then she started to feel relief, bit by bit. After her eyes had grown back, she could see that she was enveloped by a comforting green glow. Her lungs were retaining oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide as they were supposed to her. Her heart was connected to all of the arteries and veins in her body, sending blood where it should go.

She could think.

She was safe.

When the green glow dissipated, she was still out of it. She rolled over with blurry vision. Yuma was hugging somebody red.

Little help guys.

They couldn't hear her. She sat up as she blinked, bring her eyes back into focus.

She looked up and saw Kyoko in a red dress holding a crimson and golden spear.

"Kyoko?" Her thoughts were still sluggish.

"SAYAKA?!"

Sayaka continued blinking. Everything seemed to make sense but nothing did. Her head felt heavy and she dropped it forward between her legs.

"Hang on." Yuma ordered softly and the green glow came back.

This time, she felt much more awake.

"Sorry, you had some nasty brain damage I didn't fix. You're set now." Yuma offered kindly and helped Sayaka to her feet. "Congratulations; you've officially had your first major injury as a magical girl!" She joked.

"Yeehaw." She replied sarcastically.

Kyoko was staring blankly at her. Sayaka wasn't sure what to say. In some ways, yeah, she hadn't expected Kyoko to be a magical girl. But in other ways, it made complete and total sense. That was why Yuma's last name was sometimes Chitose and sometimes Sakura. That was why they didn't look alike at all.

It still didn't answer why Yuma had lied about her family situation at all though.

Still, it might be better if they were a bit more separated. The less contact Sayaka had with Kyoko outside of Tomi's, the lower her chances of getting caught were.

"Yuma, how long have you been working with her?"

"A few weeks now. I've been mentoring her."

"Mentoring her?"

"I'm a bit of a newbie." Sayaka tried to stay merry, but Kyoko clearly wasn't. It was hard to stay perky. "I contracted pretty recently. I guess I joined the game a bit late!"

"The game, huh?" Kyoko seemed pissed off.

"Kyo, please stop." Yuma begged quietly.

"You think this is a game? Tell me, what else is a game to you?" What?

"Uh, I'm not sure what you mean. It was just an expression I didn't actually mean-"

"Why are you with Yuma? Why did you team up with her?"

"Kyubey said it was a good idea. And it was! We're a pretty great team. Our powers complement each other really well." Sayaka looked to Yuma for some back up. Yuma was wincing and shaking her head and mouthing 'no, stop!'

"Kyubey, you trusted something that rat had to say?!" Kyoko screamed at the youngest in their dysfunctional trio. "Did you know? Did you know that's where she'd gotten the idea to ask you?"

"Uh, no, I didn't. I thought she just…knew." Yuma finished lamely. She was fidgeting.

"I'm sick of you lying to me! No wonder you've been lying so much! You're hanging out with this bitch!" Kyoko pointed at her.

"What-" Sayaka started but she wasn't even sure what she wanted to ask.

Kyoko started to laugh.

"Let me guess, let me guess. I can't believe I didn't notice this before. Your boyfriend; wait, no, your friend's boyfriend; he was miraculously healed recently, right? Ahahaha! You wasted your wish on him? Tell me, does he know about your other trysts?"

"Other trysts? I don't know what you mean." Sayaka was feeling nervous. A few of Kyoko's ominous comments implied she might know something. Oh fuck she knows.

"Yeah you fucking do! Or are you just that stupid. How Precious."

Fuck, she knows.

"How-"

"Not a lot of people would be dumb enough to take off their disguise right in front of their enemy's base. I'm surprised that made you cry. Opening your legs for information kind of seemed like your thing. Probably the only thing you're good at, huh junkie?"

Sayaka wanted to refute something, anything she'd said. But she couldn't.

"Yeah. I was pretty stupid." She admitted. She may as well be the bigger person.

"So, does your boy toy know about this?"

"He's not my boy toy."

"You're not answering my question, so I'm guessing no. I wonder how he would react if I told him? Oh, or even better. I wonder how baby Kurosawa would react if I told him about you and him? Not only is his dear Precious sleeping around, but she's an undercover cop! It's priceless!"

Sayaka's heart felt like it stopped.

"Don't bring either of them into this."

"Oh, but why not? I wonder who would hold up better? A Kurosawa or a guy who's been crippled for the last few years?" Kyoko's face twisted into a malicious smirk. "Maybe they'll cripple him all over again before they go after you and your family."

"KEEP THEM OUT OF THIS! THIS IS BETWEEN YOU AND ME!"

Sayaka stepped forward, her sword morphing at her side. She hadn't consciously thought to do it.

But it was a sign of aggression, and it was all Kyoko needed for all hell to break loose.

Kyoko dodged the sword, thrusting her spear at Sayaka. Sayaka thought she dodged it expertly until it broke into chain segments, wrapping around her and slamming her into the wall of the dirty alley they were in. The spear was brought down on her but Sayaka blocked it with her sword which practically absorbed it, giving Sayaka a good anchor to throw Kyoko across the alley over Yuma's head.

Kyoko flipped and landed on her feet perfectly, pulling her spear with her. It made her sword jerk forward, making Sayaka land flat on her face. Her sword let the spear go. Sayaka scrambled to get up, just in time to avoid another jab, and this time she near to clear the area before the spear broke apart.

Instead, she got a swift kick in the head from Kyoko.

"Fuck!" She was knocked down. She grasped her head and looked up in time to see Kyoko jump onto a landing two storeys above them.

"Game over!" She shouted as she catapulted herself downwards, spear poised to stab Sayaka through her heart.

Sayaka felt like the world was going in slow motion. She closed her eyes tight as she moved her shield in front of her.

"KYOKO, NO!"

---

Kyoko had never felt a physical pain quite like this before.

She'd had her legs and arms pulled off. She'd had small stab wounds, big slash wounds, even gunshot wounds.

But she'd never had a massive stab wound that nearly disconnected her from the chest down.

Kyoko had been stupid. She had been keeping an eye out for the sword that liked to change shapes. She assumed it was like her spear, but Kyoko had had the advantage of many more years' experience.

But in all her experience, she never once paused to wonder what the lame shield she had was for.

And it reflected things for fuck's sakes.

"KYOKO!" Yuma cried. The spear had actually pierced Kyoko's chest backwards. Only the front tip hadn't entered her body. Kyoko's magic told her that her lower torso was in pain, but her body didn't. The thing had clearly broken her damn spine.

The lance hand punctured her heart; she had no blood flow to her body. Her magic was sustaining her, but body was a wreck. Her instincts were telling her to get the thing as far away from her soul gem as possible; her spear's entry wound was a mere three inches below it.

"Oh my god. Oh my god." Sayaka said uselessly, staring at the bloody mess that was Kyoko. Yeah, I get it. You got me, bitch.

"I have to pull it out. I'm sorry Kyo, I'm really sorry." Yuma held Kyoko down as she tried to gently pull the spear the rest of the way through; the thickest part has already passed through, after all.

When it came out, Kyoko flopped onto the ground in a bloody heap. She had completely sliced up her heart, both lungs, and her spinal cord.

Yuma's familiar green light surrounded her and she felt the ability to breathe and circulate blood throughout her body return to her, both of which were abilities she had taken for granted for years. Her body was closed up and she was fine.

Kyoko got up, brushing herself off. She made a move like she was about to walk away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sayaka visibly relax.

Big mistake, rookie.

Kyoko leapt back, spear blazing and ready to aim to sever her left arm. If the shield's gone, she's got no hope.

Yuma knocked her spear out of place, making Kyoko nearly lose her footing.

"STOP! BOTH OF YOU!" Yuma screamed, stepping between them. "This isn't going anywhere good. Don't do this, please."

"Whose side are you on?!" Kyoko yelled. She had known and basically raised Yuma for six years. What had this girl done? They'd known each other for a few weeks.

"Right now? Neither. This is ridiculous. I can tell that she hurt your feelings but this isn't the right way to deal with it." Yuma glared back at her guardian.

"Hurt my feelings? You think that's what this is about? If this cunt has her way, we lose our only source of income. She wants to arrest my best clients. Do you not want to go to school? Do you not want to have a stable place to live? Do you want to live on the streets in hotels, stealing food to live? Remember when I taught you how to live like that? Do you want to go back to that?" Kyoko was yelling at Yuma. Sayaka just gaped at them with her sword and shield ready. Looks like she got the message that she should keep her guard up.

"Maybe a career change wouldn't be the worst thing for you." Yuma shrugged, looking away and pretending she didn't care.

"A career change would mean that I have no career. You know I have nothing else that can support both being a magical girl and making enough money for us."

"There's plenty of options. I'm managing it." Sayaka offered, but it was not appreciated to say the least.

"Did you finish high school?" Kyoko snarled.

"Yeah, but not well." She retorted.

"I got up to grade eight before shit happened and I had to drop out. So yeah, this is my only option. Why don't you shut your fucking mouth when you don't know what you're talking about?" She snapped. Sayaka recoiled. Yuma sighed.

"Whatever. Can we just go? This isn't how I want to spend my Saturday night." Yuma said with resignation.

"So how do you want to spend it? With me or with the rat?"

Yuma looked like she was getting frustrated. "Right now, with neither of you. This is getting out of hand."

"Damn right it is. What were you thinking bringing in a third magical girl without telling me? She's a cop, for one. Secondly, there's not enough room for three of us. Who are you kidding? We work well because there's only two. It's worked well for years, and even then we've had low points. We can't handle three." Kyoko said lowly to her.

"Don't worry about it, Kyoko. I'll back off." Sayaka offered, transforming out of her clothes and into a black trench coat, jeans, and black boots that Kyoko didn't want to acknowledge looked good on her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You guys can hunt witches your way, I'll hunt mine. We won't have to cross paths aside from the club. In return, you keep my job and friends and family a secret. Alright?"

"That's great and all, but we'd still have you hunting our witches. We're still losing our grief seeds."

"Don't worry about it. I'll only hunt the familiars then. I know Yuma likes to hunt witches more too, but I hate the thought of leaving familiars on the go. You focus on getting your grief seeds, I focus on keeping people safe. We leave my job and my family out of this and Tomi's. Seems like a win-win to me." Sayaka shrugged.

Kyoko was trying to keep herself from laughing. She looked at Yuma, who looked like she felt terrible about something. So she doesn't know about the soul gems and grief seeds yet…

"Alright. You're right, that sounds like a great deal to me." Kyoko transformed into her own outfit; a leather jacket and red tank top with black jeans; they were good colours to make blood less noticeable. Kyoko raised her hands in a placating manner. "I'm happy with this."

"Sayaka, you can't do that." Yuma interjected. If looks could kill, Kyoko would have just murdered Yuma. "You don't run out of magic when your soul gem goes black, you become a witch. Witches are former magical girls whose soul gems got corrupted, or went completely black. Only hunting familiars will make you get corrupted too because you won't get grief seeds to clear your soul gem."

Sayaka looked like a fish out of water with the way she was gaping at them. Yeah, I had about the same reaction too.

"Why the fuck did you tell her that?" Kyoko sneered.

"She's my friend. She's the only friend I've ever had besides you." Yuma looked down. "I wish you two could get along a bit better."

"Trust me, you can make way better friends than her."

Sayaka shook her head quickly, as it shaking herself out of a trance.

"Alright, so my idea to take the familiars won't work out after all. Thank you, Yuma, for telling me that now." Sayaka did not sound impressed. She also did not sound like she had fully grasped the gravity of the situation yet. "So Kyoko; what are you going to do? Are you going to go running to Tomi and the Kurosawas about me after all?"

Kyoko narrowed her eyes and made a sudden move forward. Her intent had been to pick the girl up by the collar of her coat and threaten her.

Sayaka had already reacted by transforming back into her magical girl garb, pulling her sword against Kyoko's throat. Kyoko responded in kind.

"I'll think about it." Kyoko said through clenched teeth, ignoring the sword by her jugular lest she go cross-eyed staring at it. Sayaka had done exactly that looking at the spear at her neck and she looked ridiculous.

"What good could possibly come to you from doing that? I mean really. Why would you want to bring my family and friends into this? What would you gain?"

Kyoko knew better than to explain her side business to a cop.

There was a sinking feeling in her gut. Sayaka might be onto her. And she could do a lot of damage.

She'd done a fuck ton of damage to the Miyamotos and knew where the Kurosawa base was.

And Kurosawa would throw her under the bus in no time flat if it meant getting a reduced sentence. He'd even told her so.

No, Sayaka was way too dangerous. And Sayaka wasn't a human anymore; she was a magical girl like them. She was a goner anyways. She posed too many threats. She was fair game.

I'm sorry Yuma.

"Maybe it would be nice to see…" She paused and focused her magic. It was hard, but she could do it.

Sayaka opened her mouth to gasp but couldn't as a spear was shoved through her chest from behind, puncturing her lungs and heart, the point of it emerging right where her cleavage was ridiculously prominent.

Kyoko's double wasn't smiling. Neither was Kyoko.

"You getting stabbed in the back instead." The spear was pulled back. Sayaka fell forward, her neck being cut on Kyoko's spear in front of her. It missed her jugular though.

"Sayaka!"

"Yuma, we're leaving now."

Yuma had already mostly healed Sayaka though. Kyoko reached forward and tried to pull Yuma back. She was stunned when Yuma actually launched her backwards from an energy wave.

Yuma had never attacked Kyoko before.

By the time Kyoko got back up, Sayaka was sitting up, rubbing her chest that was now completely mended.

Sayaka glared at Kyoko before leaping at her, screaming furiously with her sword ready to strike. Kyoko readied her spear to defend herself.

Yuma hit Sayaka with an energy wave too.

"STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!" She screamed, tears falling down her face. "You can go ahead and keep fighting all you want, but I'm just going to keep on healing both of you until I turn into a witch, so stop this. Please…"

Yuma sat down and started to whimper. She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her head in her arms.

"This is all my fault." She mewled.

Both adults transformed out of their clothes.

"How about we say we both got the other impaled and call it a truce?" Kyoko offered, extending her hand to shake Sayaka's.

Sayaka looked at it uncertainly. "What about my family?"

"I won't say a word for now." Kyoko promised, but it pained her to do so. She meant it though. Sayaka closed her eyes, nodding and shaking Kyoko's.

Yuma's sad blue eyes looked up at them. Kyoko and Sayaka both reached their hands down to help her up. She accepted both.

Sayaka looked like she was having an intense internal debate. She sighed, as if she were relenting.

"Kyoko has some pretty good reasons for not liking me, Yuma. It's not her fault. I…I've done some pretty bad things to her. And I lied to you too. I knew you two knew each other and never said anything. I hope you're not too mad at her. She has every right to hate me. So Yuma, and Kyoko…I'm really sorry. To both of you. I'd really like to keep fighting with you in the future though Yuma, if you're both okay with it."

Kyoko sighed. A lot had happened tonight. A lot. And she didn't want to let Sayaka to be the bigger person.

"Let's just go to bed. Yuma's right, nothing good is coming from this. We'll talk about it in the morning." She walked away. She heard Yuma rushing to catch up with her. She noticed Yuma for waving back uncertainly to Sayaka, but didn't chide her for it. She was grateful Yuma decided to follow her. She wanted to get them both out of there now.

Kyoko should have stayed behind, or at least monitored her nemesis for a bit longer. If she had, she might have noticed the girl pull something out of the dumpster that should have disappeared in the labyrinth.

---

Sayaka had never known how to deal with long hair. She was reminded of this mercilessly as she struggled to trudge through the windy weather in her long blonde wig.

She wanted to adjust her hair, but the thought of letting go of the box in her hand petrified her. She couldn't think of anything that would be worse if she dropped the package and its contents somehow came rolling out.

Well, maybe becoming a witch would be worse.

She had a purpose in this endeavor that led her through the seediest parts of the Old Industrial District. But her footsteps were hollow; she felt like she was wandering.

What's the point? I'm going to become one of the monsters I wanted to fight against so badly.

The world was so funny sometimes. Just a few short weeks ago, she thought her life couldn't get any worse and she hated herself. She felt like that was nothing compared to now.

What kind of witch will I be? Will I be hungry for human flesh all the time like the giant plant? Will I just wander around my labyrinth aimlessly like the astronaut? Maybe I'll drive people insane like the cuckoo clock?

She thought of the rabbit that ran away from her and the farmers for hours. Now that Sayaka thought about it, the farmers weren't only shooting at her; they were shooting at the witch too.

That's what I'll be. I'll be a witch that's terrified of her familiars.

Sayaka blinked quickly a number of times to try to force the tears back in.

This isn't the time to think about that. I need to keep my head in this.

She thought morbidly that she had just made a pretty good pun in her head. She may be dying soon, but that didn't mean she was going to die today. She still had the chance to make a positive difference in the world.

And right now, that started with getting the head of Miyamoto Tsubasa to Ryo, one way or another.

Sayaka had to use all of her knowledge of forensics to plan this perfectly.

She had her disguise on. She was wearing the blonde wig, contoured her face, and wore grey contact lenses. She looked a lot more like a potential cousin of Rin than Sayaka.

She was wearing gloves she bought yesterday and had a number of bills she received for paying for a bag of chips with a 10,000 yen note. She never touched them herself; only through the gloves.

Now, she was on her way to scout out an addict or homeless person who would take the package and mail it to the station, with the promise that they could keep the change. She wrote the address of the station with a stencil and left a fake return address from New Mitakihara.

She really, really hoped this would be good enough to keep her out of trouble. She didn't think she would be able to explain the whole magical girl phenomenon at the station without being sent to an insane asylum, or at least put on disability for a few months.

Or, more likely, everyone would assume she was using again and was hallucinating.

Another strong gust hit, pushing the synthetic blonde fibers into her mouth and glossed lips, making it stick. Sayaka tried to blow them out in a very unladlylike manner, but it did nothing.

"Do you need some help?" A gravelly voice asked her from behind. Sayaka turned around and saw a rather disheveled man with bloodshot eyes and poorly kept grey hair looking at her.

I found my guy.

"Yes, thank you!" Sayaka passed the box to him. She rearranged her hair.

"Big package to send to the police. What's in it?" He asked curiously, shaking the box. Sayaka had to restrain herself from squawking.

"Nothing important. But I'll make you a deal. Here." She passed him 9,700 yen in notes. "If you drop that box off at the post office and have it delivered with express shipping, I'll let you keep the change."

"But that shipping would only be about 1,000 yen, wouldn't it?" He asked slowly. Sayaka suspected he had a nasty hangover. "Oh! I get it. Yeah, you have a deal. What's your name?"

"Hitomi." Sayaka smiled. It's not that she was trying to frame her friend; no one would think for a second that it would be that Hitomi. Hitomi was simply one of the most common names Sayaka could think of.

"Hitomi. You have a day." He smiled, walking away with the box.

The way Sayaka saw it, she had a win-win situation.

Either he would mail the box and it would arrive at the station; or we would open it, find out what was inside it and the cops would be called anyways.

She hurried to get as far away as possible before the latter could happen.

The wind blew her hair in her face again.

"Blagh!" She exclaimed as she brushed the wig out of her face again.

She'd tried having long hair when she was five. It didn't work well.

"Sayaka, hold still! We need to comb your hair or else you'll look like a mess at your party. Is that what you want?" Her mother was frustrated. But the comb hurt. Sayaka didn't think her hair looked that bad. It couldn't look bad.

Because it was long now.

A few months ago, her Mommy let her have Madoka and Kyousuke, her two best friends in the whole wide world over for a playdate. They had been having a great time.

Until Kyousuke asked her when she had a girl's name.

"Because Sayaka's a girl, silly!" Madoka laughed in good nature.

"No he's not. He has short hair and wears boy's clothes! He's a boy!" Kyousuke sounded like he was pointing out the obvious.

Sayaka had been mortified and resolved to grow her hair longer and wear pretty girl's clothes. Her Mommy had been excited to buy her pretty dresses, but her Daddy wasn't; he liked the clothes she had. She missed the pants sometimes because she felt like she could run around in them better; Mommy hated it when she came home with grass and mud stains on her dress. But she was happy that her hair was already almost down to her chest; it was even longer than Madoka's now!

"My hair's fine, Mommy! Stop!" She tried to squirm out of her grasp, but her Mommy was a lot bigger than her. By bigger, Sayaka meant taller and stronger. She was still pretty skinny; in her pictures for class, Mommy was always a stick figure; not a round one like her teacher was.

"No it's not! Do you want me to bring your father in here? Maybe he can comb your hair instead?"

Sayaka stopped struggling immediately. She knew that it hurt when Mommy combed her hair, but it was even worse when he did. He nearly pulled it out every time.

"That's okay." She sat politely, trying to keep from crying as her Mommy pulled the tangles apart.

"Alright, good job! You look so pretty Sayaka. Now, how about we put your pretty pink dress on? Your friends should be coming over any minute."

"Do you think everyone will be able to tell that I'm a girl?" Sayaka asked hopefully.

"Of course they will! They'll even be able to tell you're the prettiest girl in the whole world. It's your birthday! Today's your day, so let's get your dress on." Her Mommy smiled. Sayaka grinned, running to put it on.

Her birthday party was so much fun. They had bobbing for apples, a movie, a bouncy castle; they even had a clown! Sayaka didn't even recognize most of the kids at the party. Her Daddy said that some of them were kids of his friends who he worked with. Sayaka didn't care; Madoka and Kyousuke were there, and they were the only two she needed to have to play with.

"You sure know how to put on a party!" Madoka's cool Mommy complimented Sayaka's Mommy. Sayaka's Mommy smiled.

"I do my best! She's been so excited about this for months. It's the least we could do."

"How much did this cost?" Madoka's nice but not-as-cool Daddy asked. Sayaka's Mommy waved her hand to ignore the question. Mommy did that a lot when Daddy asked how much her clothes cost. Sayaka tried doing that too sometimes when her Mommy asked her if she'd brushed her teeth and hadn't, but she got in trouble when she did.

"Alright everyone! Who wants cake?" Her Daddy asked, bringing out a big blue cake. Sayaka couldn't keep the big grin off her face; it was her favourite! Confetti cake!

Everyone sang the song while Sayaka gloated in the attention. The cake was so pretty; it even had a princess on it!

"Happy birthday Fuzz?" Madoka's Daddy asked.

"Kenji!" Sayaka's Mommy scolded.

"They can't read, what difference does it make?"

"Alright Sayaka, do you have a wish?" Madoka's Mommy asked. Sayaka nodded eagerly; she did! She wanted to have the longest hair in the world!

"Okay, now remember. You need to blow out all the candles sweet pea." Her Mommy said. Sayaka nodded. Everybody knew that.

She took a deep breath and leaned forward to blow them all out.

Sayaka did a bad job, because she didn't blow them all out.

There was one that was too close to her and she missed it.

It didn't miss her hair though.

"Sayaka, your hair!" Madoka screamed, noticing it first. Sayaka was about to scream, noticing that her face was starting to feel really hot when her Daddy threw some soda on her.

Half of her hair was gone and her pretty pink dress was covered in brown Coca-Cola.

Sayaka's lower lip started to quiver. She didn't want to cry with everyone looking at her. That would be so embarrassing.

"Oh honey, are you alright?" Her Mommy sat down next to her and gave her a hug. That pushed her over the edge. She started to bawl. Then Madoka started to bawl. Then some kids Sayaka didn't know started to cry too.

Parents were cooing at their kids everywhere to try to calm them down. The clown was desperately making balloon animals to cheer everyone up.

"That was so cool Sayaka! Your hair was on fire!" Kyousuke smiled excitedly. He was trying to make her feel better, but it just made her cry more.

Sayaka's parents pulled her inside away from everyone else.

"It's okay Fuzz, your safe. Madoka saw it fast. You're okay." Her Daddy said nicely, patting her hair. Sayaka was squeezed in between them.

"No I'm not! My hair's short again! Everyone's going to think I'm a boy again!" She cried harder.

"Is that what you're worried about? You silly thing! Having short hair doesn't mean anything!" Madoka's cool Mommy had followed them inside. Sayaka looked at her with big, teary eyes.

"It doesn't?"

"No. Do I look like a boy?"

Sayaka shook her head fervently. Madoka's Mommy was cool and pretty. No one would ever think she was a boy!

"Well, I have short hair too. Look, your hair that got burned is still a bit longer than mine. Looking like a girl has nothing to do with your hair, or even what you wear. It's all about how you act. If you want, I can take you to get your hair cut. It might look a lot like mine. Is that okay, or will that be too embarrassing?"

"That would be cool, because you're cool! Thanks Madoka's Mom!" Sayaka grinned. She was excited to have hair like someone as cool as her. Maybe that would make her cool too?

"Yes, that's very nice of you Junko, thank you." Sayaka's Mom said overly politely.

"It's really nice!" Sayaka agreed.

Sayaka still felt like a kid most of the time. She wasn't sure what feeling like an adult was like; she just figured it was one of those things you just knew when it started. She still felt the same as before.

But thinking back on that...yeah, everything's changed. From Madoka and her Mom being gone to going through the addiction to becoming a cop to becoming a magical girl…it's all changed.

She wasn't a kid anymore.

But she wasn't an adult either. She was something weird in between in some sort of purgatory.

She felt her energy levels drop. She pulled out her soul gem and noticed that it was getting murkier.

I guess I'd better find a witch before Kyoko does.

Would that take a grief seed away from Yuma though?

Sayaka's moral dilemma was cut short by her wig blowing into her mouth again. She spat out the yellow hairs and tried to tuck them behind her ears.

She was glad when she got home, taking the long way as she always did when she was in disguise. She tried harder to be more difficult to follow; if Akemi could follow her, someone less friendly could too.

She pulled the wig off and let it fall gracelessly onto the bed. She washed her face in time to be ready for parents when they picked her up.

If they could tell that anything was wrong with Sayaka, they didn't say it.

She slept fitfully that night, dreaming of witches and criminals and Kyoko choking on her own organs. She was going to go in and continue investigating the Megumi murder tomorrow.

At least that was what she thought she would be doing.

"Good morning Detective Miki." Chiyo greeted, though it was not enthusiastic to say the least. Her elderly partner was with her too. They were all sitting around Ryo's desk drinking coffee solemnly. Sayaka doubted that the reason their spirits were low was that it was Monday morning.

"Good morning. What's going on?"

"I would like to share some footage of our interview with who we thought was Miyamoto Suki." Ryo responded tersely, glaring intently at one of his achievement awards on the wall. Sayaka squinted.

"What do you-"

"Just sit down and watch." He commanded impatiently. She obeyed.

The footage started. Two detectives she did not recognize were in an interrogation room with Miyamoto and her lawyer. The lawyer wore a perfectly pressed black suit and had his salt and pepper hair slicked back. Sayaka didn't like the looks of him at all.

"The current date is May 18th, 2032 and the time is 10:22 AM. We are at the Kazamino Police Station with the suspect, Miyamoto Suki and her attorney. Miyamoto Suki was arrested for the murder of Sueda Reiko. We will begin."

They ran through the standard introduction, ensuring that Miyamoto fully understood her rights. She nodded.

Then the real questions started.

"What is your name?"

"Sueda Marilyn."

There was a silence in the room. Sayaka's expression matched the faces of the detectives on the computer monitor.

Sueda? Like the victim?

Sayaka felt a knot forming in her stomach.

"Pardon me, what was that?"

"You asked me my name. It's Sueda Marilyn." Suki had her hands clasped in front of her on the table. Her posture was rigid. She looked the detectives straight in the eyes, unblinking. One of the detectives on the tape managed to compose himself rather quickly.

"Does the name Miyamoto Suki mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Do you know Miyamoto Tsubasa?"

"Yes."

"Could you describe your relationship with him?"

"He's my physician." Miyamoto never missed a beat. She answered each question directly and offered no extra details. Sayaka sat in her chair with an expression of indignation and disbelief. Her three colleagues were as stoic as Miyamoto.

"Detective, I fail to see what this has to do with the matter for which my client was arrested." The lawyer argued. He had a smooth, deep voice that Sayaka may have found sexy if she wasn't so repulsed by who he was defending.

"Alright, fine." The other detective, a portly balding man with bits of ginger hair snarled. "Did you murder Sueda Reiko?" He slid a mugshot of what must have been the victim. Sayaka never would have recognized her; she had only seen her with half her head.

"Yes."

"Why would you murder her?"

"Can't you tell from the name? That druggie cunt was my mother. See the resemblance?" Miyamoto picked up the mugshot, holding it next to her face.

Sayaka had to squint to see before she brought her hands to her mouth in shock.

She did see the resemblance. They both had the same fox face.

The woman just looked fifty years older than her.

The detectives on the footage stumbled over their words again. It continued on like that, as Miyamoto described a terrible and neglectful childhood, including but not limited to a younger sibling that died in infancy and was thrown in a dumpster. She went on to say that she sought the woman out to murder her in an act of revenge, and she regretted nothing. She denied knowing Megumi or Atihiko particularly well, even though she was caught on the recording speaking with them. She claimed Megumi was her mother's dealer and she had seen Atihiko around whenever she went to bring her mother home.

Chiyo paused it. Ryo combed his hands through his hair in frustration.

"I spoke with prosecution. It doesn't look good. She even took a lie detector and DNA test and everything she said about her identity and her relationship with the victim were true. We weren't able to ask her any questions about her ties with Kurosawa or Miyamoto because her lawyer was breathing down our necks. We're completely and totally fucked." Ryo snarled and slammed his fist against his desk, nearly knocking over Chiyo's styrofoam cup of coffee. Chiyo calmly picked it up before it toppled over.

"I wish I could say I didn't think it would be too good to be true to catch one of them and bring down the rest. I cannot say that I predicted this would be how it would go. I say we should be grateful that we have one and continue to pursue the others. Detective Miki has already found the Kurosawa base, which should make finding evidence that much easier." Chiyo rationalized.

Ryo's desk phone rang. Sayaka could see that caller ID identified it as coming from reception.

"Fuck, hang on." He picked up the phone. "Can this wait? I'm in a meeting." There was some mumbling on the end of the line. Sayaka recognized the word 'package'.

Her stomach twisted in anxiety. Her heart started to beat faster. Her hands felt clammy.

He sent it. He actually sent it.

She wondered if anyone could tell she was about to panic.

"It must be the results of the autopsy on Megumi. Please open it and send me a briefing. I'll review them later."

Oh right. Of course.

She let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. She had been overreacting. Of course the package wouldn't get here that fast!

She heard a shriek outside followed by some commotion.

His phone rang again.

Sayaka could hear the voice distinctly this time. It was Ayumi.

"Captain, you're going to want to come see this package right away."

---

Kyoko had known how to deal with long hair for a very long time. She was grateful for that on windy days like these. The breeze was a pleasant temperature, but it wouldn't hurt if it was at least a tad gentler.

She hadn't always been able to deal with long hair though.

She brought her hand up to feel the ribbon that kept her hair manageable. She wished she hadn't thought about it today.

It was going to make going to the church that much more emotional.

The weather was miserable outside. The torrential downpour combined with vicious winds made it virtually impossible to stay outside for more than a few moments at a time. It was practically like a monsoon out there.

So naturally, Kyoko had to go out in it; just for a bit of fun.

See, she had a very specific task in mind that the storm would be able to help her with.

Kyoko had come back in as quietly as possible. It was a bit hard when her hair was essentially a rat's nest covering her face, but she did her best.

She pushed the door to her shared bedroom with Momo open, loving how it creaked spookily.

She heard rustling from her bed. Kyoko scurried across the floor on her stomach quickly, hiding underneath Momo's side of the bed.

"Kyoko? Is that you?"

Kyoko didn't answer. She stayed put.

Momo turned the lamp on.

"Kyoko, where are you? This isn't funny!"

'Oh no, Momo, this is going to be hilarious' Kyoko thought sadistically in response.

"Kyoko, come on, where are you?" Momo asked, stepping off the bed.

Now was Kyoko's chance.

Kyoko sprung out from underneath, clutching Momo's ankle. She did her best impression of a zombie, which was made all the better by the wet, wild hair obscuring her face.

Momo screamed, falling backwards on her butt.

Kyoko burst out laughing.

Kyoko 3, Momo 2.

"Kyo!" Momo cried. "That wasn't funny!"

"You're right, it was hysterical!"

At least it was until her parents came rushing it.

"What on earth is going on in here?" Her father's deep voice boomed. Momo got up and ran over to him, arms outstretched to signal that she wanted to be picked up and comforted. He jumped a bit himself when he saw Kyoko. "Kyoko?"

"Kyoko, what did you do to your hair?" Her mother asked in horror from behind her father who had obliged Momo's request.

"I just went outside for a bit to mess it up. That's all." Kyoko shrugged as she got up.

"Was this another one of your pranks? Girls, this has gone on long enough. Momo is very scared and Kyoko, now you might get a cold. You've both punished yourselves enough. Stop this immediately." Her father ordered. For a rational person, his tone meant that there would be no arguing with him.

But Momo was Momo.

"No, that's not fair! That means Kyoko wins! She got three pranks but I only got two."

"Which must be really embarrassing for you because you started this." Kyoko grinned. Momo had started it by pulling Kyoko's chair out from under her, making her topple over backwards. Kyoko then hid all of Momo's toys and sent her on a wild goose chase across the property. Completely unintentionally, when Momo went to find her toys, she had found that a mouse had made itself at home amongst some of her tattered stuffed bears which they decided to count as an extra point for Kyoko. Momo got Kyoko back by putting a spider on her face when she slept, making her almost piss herself when she woke up.

So now Kyoko did this.

"You'll get the last laugh, Momo. I promise you that. Come on Kyoko. Let's untangle your hair." Her mother said sternly.

Kyoko's grin dropped immediately. She hated having her hair combed just after showers when her hair hadn't been that messy before.

This was going to hurt.

Momo adopted her grin.

"Ow ow ow ow owwwww! Mom, that hurts!" Kyoko complained as the comb got stuck again. She didn't want her Dad or Momo to see the tears that were prickling in the corner of her eyes.

They did though; Momo wasn't grinning anymore. Her father looked displeased with her.

Kyoko three, Momo three.

"You should have thought of this before you went out in the storm to deliberately get your hair messy, now hold still." Her mother chided as she tightly held Kyoko's hair by the roots to yank on the comb. It broke through the knots.

"OW!"

"You're almost done. Just a few more."

It took a total of forty minutes to untangle her hair. Her mother started to dry her hair off with a towel.

"Kyoko, we should cut your hair. It's just too much to handle."

"But I like my hair." Kyoko said dejectedly. She really did. She had seen some posters when she was a kid of pretty princesses; they all had long hair. She wanted to look like them.

"I know you do, but your hair isn't healthy. It gets too tangled too quickly and I don't think you know how to take care of it. Maybe you can grow it out again in a few years after you've lost interest in playing outside in storms."

"Those girls on the shampoo posters all have long hair that looks really nice. I'll just look after mine like they do."

Her mother sighed.

"No, you can't. They use special hair products that cost a lot of money, Kyoko. It would be much easier to just cut it. Just having it around mine or Momo's lengthy would be easier; it's still pretty long." Her mother attempted to compromise. She pulled a pair of scissors out of their bare bathroom cabinet.

"I promise I'll stop playing outside then! I'll even stay inside all the time! Please let me keep my hair!" Kyoko pleaded and tried to hide her hair behind her head.

"It's not that big of a deal, Kyoko. It will grow back anyways. This will be better for it." Her mother urged.

"I like my hair! It's the only nice thing I have! Please let me keep my hair!" She was starting to whimper pathetically. She was worried she might cry. She was freaked out. She didn't want to lose her hair! She'd been working hard on growing it out for years!

"How about we all go to bed and talk about this in the morning when we're less tired." Her father interjected. Kyoko smiled at him gratefully.

Her mother looked at him disapprovingly, but put the scissors back.

They didn't talk about it in the morning. In fact, they didn't talk about it for the next two weeks.

Then Kyoko's birthday came.

'Happy birthday dear Kyoko! Happy birthday to you!" Her parents sang. Momo shouted it.

Kyoko smiled uncomfortably. She hated having all of the attention on her, even if it was just her family.

"Make a wish." Her mother smiled, pushing the small, flat yellow cake towards her. There was no icing and only one small candle, but it was still a cake and Kyoko hadn't thought they would be able to have on this year. She was happy for it.

Kyoko blew out the candle, wishing to be able to keep her hair. Her family clapped lightly.

"You're getting so old. May you have a wonderful year ahead of you." Her mother smiled and gave her a hug. Kyoko blushed when her mother kissed her forehead. She wasn't a little kid anymore! She was twelve now!

But when she saw her father smiling at them, she knew she should just let her Mom do this. She hugged her back.

Her Mom let her go.

"So, Kyoko. You're the birthday girl. What would you like to do?"

Kyoko thought about what game they should play. They had a deck of cards. Momo was starting to understand crazy eights, which Kyoko liked a lot more than go fish.

Kyoko knew better than to ask for presents.

"Would you like to open your present?" Her father asked kindly. Kyoko's jaw dropped.

"I have a present?"

"You do indeed." He beamed. Her mother looked confused.

"Yay! Kyoko, open your present!" Momo cheered, bouncing up and down excitedly. Kyoko nodded enthusiastically. She wondered what they could have gotten her.

Her father handed her a small, flat package wrapped in a light brown paper. It certainly wasn't festive by any means, but it was still wrapped.

Kyoko tore it open and saw a long, thin piece of black cloth.

"What's this?" She was curious. She couldn't tell. Neither could Momo, if her unintelligent expression was anything to go by.

"It's a ribbon. Here." Her father got up and went behind her. He pulled her hair up and back. "Pass me the ribbon please?"

Kyoko did as she was told. She felt her hair getting pulled tightly together. Momo gaped in awe.

"You're so pretty Kyoko!" She admired.

"There! All done!" Her father said proudly. Kyoko wanted to see what she looked like. She darted from the room to the bathroom, looking in the mirror.

She stared at herself. She almost didn't even recognize her reflection.

Without all of her hair in her face, she looked a lot older. Her face was slimmer and her eyes popped more.

There was a delicate bow on top of her head. She turned to the side to look at her long red hair cascading down her back instead of sticking out sloppily like it usually did.

She was a lot prettier than she thought she was.

She smiled and ran back to the kitchen.

"I love it Dad! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She ran into arms to hug him and kiss him on the cheek. He smiled and hugged her back tightly. Kyoko didn't see the way her mother looked like her heart had just melted.

"It was nothing. This should help make your hair easier to control. Happy birthday Kyoko."

Her birthday wish had come true!

They played crazy eights as best as they could; Momo had gotten confused again because she couldn't understand why eights were special and sevens weren't ('Seven's a nice number too!').

Kyoko kept reaching up to feel the ribbon. It was soft and she loved it.

There was something familiar about the fabric, and she couldn't figure out what.

When everyone decided to go to bed at 9:00 pm, she hugged her parents one last time before they walked to their room. Kyoko watched them as they left.

Her eyes strayed to the bottom of her father's robes, which were now much shorter and tattered at the bottom.

Kyoko reached her hand up to her ribbon again.

She knew where it came from.

She felt guilty.

She resolved that next time she could make a wish; she would make one for him instead of just her.

Kyoko reached up to feel her ribbon again. It had done its job well for years. So often, she remembered the worst times at the end of their lives. She appreciated that; it made it that much easier to let them go. It was these happy or bittersweet memories that were the worst.

She sometimes wondered if her father would be upset that a witch like her would still wear it.

Kyoko laid some wildflowers down by the graves of her family, as she frequently did when she passed by. She looked at the lone destroyed grave. She wondered why Tsubasa was so curious about it.

I guess when it's only one grave that's destroyed; it's natural to wonder why it was. That, and Tsubasa had been an odd guy, in her opinion.

She didn't agree with anything he did, but she hoped he was alright, wherever he was.

Kyoko went inside the church. She had gone there for a very specific reason, after all.

Yuma was pissed at her.

Of course, Yuma had many reasons to be pissed at her right now. But attacking her first friend aside from Kyoko in the way that she had had definitely taken the cake.

Sayaka had pulled the first move to Kyoko's mind. But the fact of the matter was that before that fucking shield trick happened, Kyoko had been royally kicking her ass. And then Kyoko used her own magic trick on her to get her back…literally.

In front of Yuma.

Kyoko hoped that giving Yuma her tablet back would be a peace offering. She needed to explain exactly why they couldn't be involved with Sayaka. Exactly why Sayaka couldn't be in the picture at all. She would give Yuma what she wanted; she would tell her everything. She hoped then Yuma could understand why she had tried to do what she tried.

Yes, she knew that she should stick to her guns on disciplining her, as any good parental figure should; but Kyoko was great at some things and shitty at others; and Kyoko was a shitty mother.

At least I'm still better than Yuma's actual mother was.

Kyoko couldn't hold a candle next to her own mother though. She wasn't even going to try.

I miss you, Mom.

I miss you, Momo.

I miss you, Dad.

Kyoko opened the door to the basement. Her nostrils were assaulted with the odour of rot and mildew.

Ugh, I need to clear this place out at some point.

Kyoko walked over to the shelf that she had put the tablet on top of. She went on tip toes to reach it.

Nothing.

Kyoko's stomach dropped. Oh fuck if I got her tablet stolen, she's going to kill me.

Kyoko jumped to look.

Aha! There it is!

Kyoko remembered how her past self had pushed it too far back, and decided it would be a task for her future self to figure out.

Goddammit.

Kyoko looked around, trying to find something she could stand on. There was absolutely nothing that could work well as a stool.

She supposed the shelf itself could work as a ladder though.

She started to climb it as carefully as she could. The wooden platform had already protested and sunk a bit when she just stepped foot on it. Kyoko had gotten her feet onto the fourth shelf and was able to reach the beloved tablet easily.

Got it!

Then the platform complete caved beneath her, sinking the front of the shelving unit forward and off-balancing it so Kyoko was about to be crushed against another unit adjacent to it. All of the Easter and Lent decorations fell to the ground.

"Shit!"

Kyoko kicked her right foot out to keep the units from crashing together.

The added weight against the other unit made its platform cave beneath it too.

Thankfully, the units didn't fall very far. While the platforms looked like they were about six inches high, Kyoko would guess that the shelving units had only dropped about two.

That wasn't very much consolation though.

Kyoko was stuck.

Fuck it all! Think, think, think!

Kyoko winced. There was only one think she could do.

She materialized her spear, making that hold the two units apart. She jumped down, landing on her feet gracefully.

Her glimmering spear looked comically out of place against all of the rotting wood and dusty stored items. Kyoko shot an irritated look at the wooden platform that had caved.

Something looked wrong though. There was something black and shining underneath the wooden platforms. The floor was grey stone though, except for bits of carpet that had gone green underneath the platforms.

Now that Kyoko thought about it, she didn't even remember there ever having been carpets or wooden platforms in this room at all when she was younger.

What's under there?

She was careful when she maneuvered the shelving unit off of the platform. That unit wasn't particularly heavy for her now that all of the things it was holding were on the floor, but it was big and awkward.

She set it down and was about to start ripping up the wooden planks. When she pulled, it just opened. At the back, she saw that there were hinges. These weren't support platforms; they were storage bins.

There were four rows of full garbage bags underneath it.

"Fuck, is this what smelled so bad?" Kyoko muttered to herself. Why the hell did her father put garbage underneath a bunch of wooden platform storage containers?

She reached down to pick up one of the bags, but it was a lot heavier than she though it would be. It was like there were rocks in there. What the fuck?

She ripped open a bag. There were ten large Ziploc bags full of small white rocks. They looked familiar to her.

"What the?"

She opened a bag and took some of the stones out. She studied them. Where have I seen these?

She looked at them very closely, bringing them in front of her face. They just looked like rocks.

No, they looked like little white diamonds.

Her eyes opened in realization.

She remembered James proclaiming: "I came here looking for treasure!"

She remembered the woman Suki killed shrieking: "I need the treasure!"

"Rumour has it he had made a lot extra in anticipation to sell it; there's hundreds of extra kilos of it hidden somewhere in the city."

"I heard it was somewhere in the old industrial district."

Kyoko gawked at the stones in her hand; at the crystal methamphetamine, the White Diamonds in her hand.

She looked around the basement. There were garbage bags upon garbage bags of it.

She had hundreds of kilos of one of the highest quality drugs ever made in Kazamino hidden in the basement of the church. There must have been billions of yen worth of them in the room. She stared in wonder at the white pebbles in her hand.

"I found the treasure."

---

AN: At long last, we have another chapter! I'm so sorry for the wait everyone; I was really busy with my classes and work before. But here's another one out!

If you think about it, the average chapter on this site is like 10 pages and mine are 60, and I get one chapter out faster than they do six so on average I get chapters out as quickly as everyone else! (Okay, that's bad logic, I admit it).

For anyone who's confused about the White Diamonds, please go back to chapter 4. I know that that's a pretty far ways back in terms of word count, but they were mostly talking about it then. The part with the woman attacking Kyoko for the 'treasure' was in chapter 3.

Thank you very much everyone for sticking with this! I also want to thank those of you who review or send me messages to encourage me to keep writing; it really is what gets my butt in gear.

As always, thanks to the wonderful MagicalGay for being beta! They help me iron out plot holes and bad storytelling, so if you like this fic (which I really hope you do), thank them!

Until next time (which will hopefully be in less than three months this time),

-Don'tKillKenny