The video ended. Lucy and Sarah watched as the screen shifted from security camera footage into a separate video.

The scientist who took her own life appeared, shifting the camera and then sitting down.

"Kuznetzov." She opened. "This is the truth that she's keeping from you, the truth that would doom this nation. Olivia's power has an effective range of one-hundred meters so I need to keep this quick: Beam this information to the FBEM, or the New Caliphate, or- or I don't know, somewhere! Magical Girls and humans alike need to know what's happened here! Stasis is unsafe and should never be used for more than a week! That's all I can give you now, I know she can see me in this lab, and I know she'll learn what I've done soon."

She grabbed her own Soul Gem, reaching her arm back while holding it.

"See you on the other side, sis."

She threw her gem across the room. Her body fell to the floor as the footage continued. With thirty minutes of still footage left, Sarah paused it.

"She was a whistleblower." Said Sarah.

Lucy stood up. "So many Magical Girls died for… for what! So this information could get to us? Whatever the FBEM is? I at least know what the New Caliphate is but I wouldn't want them having this at all!"

"Maybe they were different back then?" Sarah joined her, walking out of the lab. "They did have a pretty massive leadership change a few decades ago."

"All I know is other stronger Magical Girls know to stay the hell away from them. I could only get by on my invisibility. I'm sure that the other Magical Girl, the robed one, was a native. But that still doesn't answer how she's so old!" Lucy looked up the broken elevator shaft. She sighed, putting her hands in her pockets, and turning to Sarah. "I think I've calmed down enough, even if this pain is killing me. So what's the plan going forward?"

"I'm… gonna be honest Lucy." said Sarah, laying against a wall for a second. "A lot has been taken out of me today-" she remembered the AI saying she was under for days, and decided not to correct herself, for Lucy's sake. "You aren't the only one in pain, I'm still recovering from an emergency surgery. I need to find somewhere to sleep."

"Right, sleep." Lucy chuckled a bit. "Haven't done that in… months. Transforming to and from a Magical Girl alleviates my need for it."

"If I can interject-" both turned up to the speaker. "You will find plenty of beds in the medical level, where your Soul Gem was repaired, however I have a small request. Between that floor and this one is maintenance control. I would like to be given access to the mainframe there, but that would require manual input from a Magical Girl. It should be only two floors above you, and with it I can construct a new elevator, among other things."

"Other things like…" asked Lucy.

"The elevator is a top priority, but civilian transportation vehicles and automated defenses may also be useful."

"Paranoid of something?" asked Sarah, looking up the shaft and picking her rope back up, then handing it to Lucy.

"I… fear that someone, or something, may be observing us." said the AI. "This is speculation, my cameras that see into Utopia itself are still nonfunctional, but I can… detect things. Bits of data that shouldn't be there. Anomalies. Maybe I'm malfunctioning after so long, maybe it's real. I'd like to stay safe and be ready if I have to."

"As long as you don't fire them at us…" Said Lucy, ascending up the shaft with a chain of jumps. She dropped Sarah's rope down and pulled her up slowly to the maintenance level.

"I would gain nothing from doing so. You two are still paramount to learning what happened here and bringing that information to the outside world. What was conducted here cannot be lost to history, like so much of Magical Girl culture has."

"The very… concept of Magical Girl culture… is foreign to me…" said Lucy, pulling up Sarah with one final tug, interlocking hands with her and helping her to the platform. She nodded to Sarah and they both grabbed the two sides of the door, prying it open. The sound of metal grinding filled the air, and sparks emanated from the top and bottom. "So much of my life has just been… running… unable to find any place to stay… country to country… continent to continent… It's all the same everywhere for Magical Girls… anarchy."

"Outside of the USA, Utopia, and the New Caliphate, that was true. Much of South America and Mexico were in the hands of Magical Girl cartels, who imposed their laws wherever they saw fit. In Eastern Asia, Magical Girls were too busy combating a constantly witch-attacked nation caused by poor living conditions. In Southern and Western Africa, Magical Girls were usually killed by other Magical Girls on sight. Cordial interactions were too far and few between to risk having a talk, an endless war spurred by being surrounded by violence and oppression. In Europe, Magical Girls were drafted into skirmishes against other countries: a shadow war that decided borders, and the humans didn't even know about it."

With the door open, the lights flickered on in sequence, illuminating a dark-paneled room lined with tools and server mainframes. Wires hung from the ceiling and exposed flooring dotted the area. This place was definitely built for function over form, a rare sight in Utopia thus far.

"I guess most places reverted to that second-to-last one. Even the violence being different from nation to nation is… weird."

"What about before them?" asked Sarah, walking around while turning her head to look at the various pieces of equipment. "I assume before Utopia and the rest of these Magical Girl nations, things still weren't so good?"

"You'd be correct. The USA was still one of the most stable places to live, but it was hellish in a… different way. Magical Girls, much like humans, were forced into jobs complimenting their skill sets in employment of Magical Girl bosses."

"So they lived like humans." said Sarah.

"... The penalty for not working for these organizations was extradition from their territory, or, more likely, death."

"So… just like humans." reiterated Sarah.

"Humans aren't being gunned down for not having jobs, right?"

Sarah stayed quiet.

"I thought so." the AI continued. "I see you all have entered the room. Please access the mainframe computer and I'll direct you from there."

Lucy stepped back, looking between a now illuminated computer and Sarah. She gestured for Sarah to use the computer.

"You don't want to?" Said Sarah, crouching down to use a computer that was obviously designed for someone way shorter than her.

"Haven't used a computer in a while." Said Lucy, moving her hands to her pockets. "Never get the opportunity to. Too much running."

"Not even a phone?" Sarah inputted in the default admin credentials and got in, letting the AI do the rest.

"My only phone broke two years ago, it was shattered when I fell from a skyscraper." She leaned against a server frame, gripping her right arm. Sarah could read that Lucy was trying to compensate for pain. "Guess I've been disconnected from the outside world since. Besides, not like I'm missing out on much. Just nothing but doom, misery, and people aiming nuclear weapons and satellites at each other. Almost wish I could get the money together for a one-way ticket to the Lunar Republic, but… where would I get that money? And is Magical Girl culture different on the Moon anyway?"

"I'd like to believe the fringes of human civilization have bigger problems than competing Magical Girls…" said Sarah. "I saw the first colony ships land, the footage showing people building a new colony in such a harsh environment… I wonder if any of them were Magical Girls."

"Who knows." replied Lucy, deadpan. "Where there's humans there's Magical Girls, which bring Witches with them." she cracked a smile. "It'd kinda suck to lose our first moon base to a Witch, wouldn't it?"

"Process complete. I have full access now." The AI's voice came over a different speaker. "Retrieving nanobot repair- wait…"

Sarah looked back at the computer. "What's the matter?"

"The nanobot network was already repairing something when the system shut off, it looks like it was the comms beacon above the ice."

"Might as well let it finish, right?" Sarah replied, scanning over the data that the command line was parsing over.

"Can't hurt. It was a tertiary goal of mine anyway. We can set up a line with the FBEM and maybe some other embassies using it."

A few seconds passed.

"Comms beacon repair complete. I will formulate messages and send them out while you two rest. I will also start repairing the elevator."

"Nice to not be under pressure for once." Said Lucy. "I guess nothing can find us here, maybe it is time to finally get some sleep."

Sarah entered the elevator shaft, handing the rope to Lucy again and hanging off the ledge, looking forward. "I can't imagine not sleeping for months. It feels inhuman."

"I don't how you haven't realized it yet, lady, but I'm not exactly human."

Sarah tracked Lucy as she rebounded off a wall and onto the next level. "You look human, you sound human-" she grabbed the rope and let Lucy pull her up. "You… act human… I think… as far as I'm concerned…" she pulled herself up the ledge. "You're human. Just a bit stronger."

Lucy stopped for a moment as Sarah climbed up. She stared forward with an emotionless look in her eyes.

She didn't respond.

"Let's get some sleep, Lucy." Sarah stood up, taking a breath as she sat still for a moment, compensating for the sharp pains across her body and her growing fatigue. "Real sleep. Nothing can get us here, kilometers below Antarctic permafrost."

Lucy chuckled a bit. "You're gonna jinx it, idiot."

Lucy stood in a different room from where Sarah was sleeping, leaning against a wall and letting a breath of smoke out of her mouth.

A pile of broken fire detectors sat behind her, alongside a carton of cigarettes.

It'd been a while since Lucy smoked, it helped take the edge off, and she had no lack of cigarettes. After all, she just had to steal them off of unsuspecting Magical Girls or humans while invisible.

She pulled on it again, letting the fire burn through the synthetic paper. She took it out of her mouth and took a long, exhaling breath.

"Fuck."

Even after finding a purpose, her life was still a trainwreck.

Until now, Lucy was just wading through life, taking existence one day at a time, one struggle at a time. If being a Magical Girl taught her anything, it's that everything good was temporary.

A steak she could steal from a family, some good booze she happened to be wandering near, a grief seed two Magical Girls were arguing about…

Those moments kept her from ending it all, because that's the way she'd been living life. Moment to moment, event to event…

It wasn't sustainable.

It had to end.

Until now.

Honestly, Lucy should've thanked the robed Magical Girl for teleporting them here. This soldier, this mundane, unspecial, adult, soldier, was the most important person to her right now. She lost her mentor, she lost her friends, she lost her family, she lost her country.

She hadn't lost Sarah yet.

Sarah was human, she was fragile. Maybe Sarah would meet her end soon, and there was nothing Lucy could do except continue to hide.

Like she always had.

She threw the cigarette away, immediately motioning to light another.

This old Utopian lighter was sturdy, still lit like a charm after fifty years underground.

Lucy stood there, leaning against that wall. She knew the cigarettes would only dull the pain for a bit.

She brought up her hand, her ring flashing with white energy and forming back into an egg-shaped Soul Gem. A large crack was down the middle, meeting the top and branching into another crack alongside it.

Whatever machine Sarah and the AI used to repair it was incredibly efficient.

But it wasn't enough to dull the pain.

"What's a month…" she said, reforming the egg back into a ring, slipping it on, and putting her hands in her pockets.

Her mind flashed back to Sarah holding her pistol at her, shaking while blood fell from her forehead. Crimson stains blotched her white tank top, and her cargo pants were torn apart.

On death's door, Sarah hit a one-in-a-million shot. Hitting Lucy's soul gem in just the right way to disable her, but not kill her.

And after all that…

Sarah came back

Sarah forgave Lucy for nearly killing her, for causing her so much suffering with that panic attack. She did it knowing full well another panic attack could come at any moment.

She knew Lucy was an emotional time bomb.

And she didn't care.

A tear fell down Lucy's face. She wiped it away, pulled the cigarette in one breath, and threw it away with force. It bounced along the ground, illuminating its immediate surroundings with a dull spark, before fading away.

She closed her eyes.

"What a place!" a voice from behind her said.

Lucy instinctively transformed, shining light enveloping her and shifting her casual outfit into that of a battle-ready Magical Girl. Multicolored petal projectiles circled around her arms as she took a stance towards the new voice.

But it wasn't a new voice.

It was one all too familiar.

"I tried to kill you, and you came back." said Lucy.

"I can't stay away from a Magical Girl for too long." Kyubey hopped up on a counter next to Lucy. She relaxed her stance a bit. "Besides, I don't really care if this body dies. I'll just get a new one!"

Sarah went back against the wall, closing her eyes. "I'm not really sure why I shouldn't just try to kill you again."

"I have done nothing to wrong you-"

Lucy interrupted Kyubey, laughing out loud at such an impossibly ignorant statement. She couldn't even begin to explain the pain Kyubey had caused her. She couldn't describe the pain every Magical Girl on Earth and beyond suffered at his oblivious mercy.

"You're funny, Kyubey."

"What did I do to humor you?"

"Human thing, I guess. You wouldn't understand." Said Lucy. She wasn't even holding back rage anymore, it was simply impossible for Kyubey to understand. It was like trying to teach a fish calculus. They wouldn't even know where to begin.

"I suppose I wouldn't." Said Kyubey. "But I will say this: this city, 'Utopia,' eludes me just as much as it does you two!"

"How can something elude you? By having basic emotions?" retorted Lucy. She snickered at her own joke.

"Perhaps. But my confusion arises from something much more tangible and concrete. It's that until you two arrived, I had no idea this place existed."

"And why is that weird?"

Kyubey stared at Lucy. "I've been to places no human can ever reach in one lifetime. I've visited the colonies of Mars and offered their girls a chance at a wish. I've been to the moon and told girls how fast colonization can be done if they receive one wish. I've been on generation ships leaving the solar system and made the same offer. Colonial America, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Revolutionary Catalonia, Babylonia, Ancient Egypt, Mu, Nubia, Tetzcoco, Easter Island, Atlantis, Mesopotamia, Lemuria… I've been everywhere, Lucy Chambers. I've watched as humans made their short-lived nations, and I've watched as those nations fell."

"Wait a second, Atlantis-"

"Let's just say some Magical Girls want nothing but to be forgotten." Said Kyubey, closing his eyes. "And their wishes are honored like any others." He opened his eyes. "It's my duty! But onto the point… Up until you two found yourselves here, I had no idea Utopia existed. An entire city full of Magical Girls! A source of enormous energy! And it's all below us! Imagine how much power could be released if we allowed just a few witches to form off of those Soul Gems… It may be enough to delay entropy as much as-"

Kyubey stopped.

"As much as…"

Lucy opened her eyes, looking at Kyubey stutter, something he had never done before.

"Huh."

"So the all knowing cat alien is confused about something?"

"There appears to be an irregularity in my memory. I recall a Magical Girl with power equal, and in fact, potentially greater, than every single soul gem contained below us combined. But the memory leaves me… somehow. That's never happened before. How exciting! I must study this when I have the chance."

"So that's all you came here to do." Lucy lit another cigarette. "Bounce ideas off of one of your several subjects."

"You don't see yourself as important, but that's untrue, Lucy Chambers-"

"Save it." Lucy shot an aggressive look at Kyubey. "I've heard it before. I know you probably tell every Magical Girl that they can be special. That they can be the one making real changes to society. And you know every time that it's a lie."

"I don't lie."

Lucy rolled her eyes.

"I don't!" Kyubey retorted. "I've never once lied to a Magical Girl. The truth is, all of them do have the power to change society, if they put their minds to it. Unfortunately, they always let their emotions get in the way. If they thought rationally, toppling civilization would be a cakewalk. What would humans do? Drop a nuke on them? It's not like it'd kill a particularly strong Magical Girl anyway."

"Alright, so spill it Kyubey, how am I so important?" Lucy asked in a sarcastic tone.

"You are quickly approaching a decision that will influence Magical Girl kind in its global- no, it's solar entirety. Your decision will impact potentially everyone on Earth, and beyond."

Kyubey sighed.

"But unfortunately, that's all I have. Reading the future is in inexact science, but every Magical Girl with future sight confirms the same thing, and it all leads back to you, Lucy Chambers. You will make a decision that will affect everyone."

"Hm." Lucy replied. She wasn't sure what to make of this claim. While Kyubey was a fine companion before she knew his real purpose, right now she didn't want to believe anything he said. And yet this felt… different.

Maybe it was Kyubey's tone: slight tells that he was afraid of the future.

If such a thing were even possible.

"So, what can I do?" asked Lucy.

"You mean besides fulfilling your purpose as a Magical Girl and relinking the Soul Gems below us with their hosts?"

"You knew I wasn't gonna do that before you even asked." Lucy crossed her arms.

"I guess." Said Kyubey. "Worth a shot, I can dream of the day Magical Girls realize why they were made…"

"Keep dreaming."

"In any case, all you can do is not sacrifice yourself flippantly, and also be ready when the time comes."

Lucy let out a short laugh. "Any idea when that time will be?" she asked, not expecting an answer.

"A day or two from now, actually."

"What?!" Lucy threw herself off the wall and stared at Kyubey. "That soon?!"

"I would have told you earlier, but you let your emotions get in the way and attacked me before I could say anything."

"That was yesterday!" Said Lucy.

"No. That was nearly a week ago." Kyubey sat down and curled its soft tail around itself. "When you were knocked out by that other human, she had to undergo surgery via a machine. This machine knocked her out for a week."

Lucy gritted her teeth. "Did she know?"

"Of course! The artificial intelligence living in this city told her once she woke up."

Lucy looked over at the room Sarah was sleeping in. "So she hid it from me."

"Lucy Chambers." Kyubey stood back up. "That's not the only thing she's hiding from you."

Lucy straightened her posture.

"Unfortunately, and I'm not quite sure how it works, she's also hiding things from herself."

"What?" Lucy raised an eyebrow. "Like… amnesia?"

"Yes! She may have forgotten what happened to her, but I haven't!"

Lucy shot another look at the room, and then back to Kyubey.

She sighed.

"What do you know about her?"

Kyubey stood up. "A lot! For example, did you know Lieutenant Sarah Davis was supposed to be a Magical Girl?"

Lucy recoiled. "W-what? You're kidding, she was supposed to be- why isn't she!?"

"Lucy…?" Sarah groggily sat up, rubbing her eyes and looking into the doorway. "... Couldn't sleep…?"

Lucy met her eyes, staring for a second. She sighed again, turning back to Kyubey.

"Perhaps you'll learn more from her. I'm sure the way I'll explain it will just make you angry, as it usually does for other Magical Girls." Kyubey closed its eyes, and walked off into the shadows.

"Y-yeah." Lucy rubbed her eyes. "Just had to take a breather."

Sarah nodded slowly, before going back under the covers. "Ok… goodnight Lucy…"

Lucy kept her eyes on the door.

"Goodnight, Sarah…"

Lucy held the rope steady as Sarah climbed down to the previous floor. After Sarah was done, Lucy coiled the rope around her arm and jumped forward, rebounding off the far wall and landing on the platform below.

Sarah was used to Lucy's superhuman abilities by now, not even looking back to see if she made it. But that was the least of what Lucy was thinking about.

The words from Kyubey weighed heavily in her mind. To be honest with herself, while she was slightly annoyed that Sarah hid how long she was disconnected from her Soul Gem, no ill effects had manifested so far. She felt no noticeable grief buildup, and considering the context of their last conversation, it… would have been weird to bring up.

Nobody knew more how emotionally unstable Lucy was than Lucy herself.

But those final words… the confirmation- no. Accusation that Sarah was once a Magical Girl?

She had to know more. Even if Sarah couldn't remember, maybe Lucy could trigger some latent memories.

"Hey… Sarah?"

"Yes?"

"..." Lucy didn't really know the first thing about gleaning information from someone. After all, before meeting Sarah, she hadn't had a full conversation in nearly two years. Sure, talking at Sarah was easy, she was pretty unresponsive to everything. But talking with Sarah? That was challenging.

She did have plenty of time to think though. The AI called them down here so she could create more code to get more access, or some other computer thing Lucy couldn't understand.

"Lucy?" Shit. Sarah must have noticed how long Lucy was silent.

"Y-yeah. I just-" She took a deep breath. "What did you do? When you were… my age."

Sarah thought for a second. "Do you mean when I was seventeen-"

Lucy quickly remembered that she… wasn't as young as she used to be. Being locked in the body of a fourteen year old must have extended mentally.

Although that had startling implications she didn't want to think of.

"-Or when I was at the age of a Magical Girl?"

Good save.

"That one." Lucy snapped her fingers. "Just wondering."

"Well…" Sarah put her hand on her chin. "I was going to middle school, hanging out with friends, trying to figure out what I liked in boys, starting drama… you know, typical middle school kid things. But then it-"

Sarah stopped.

"I… I don't know…" her tone was confused. "I actually… Can't remember anything from that year… Like with other years I can recall moments, teacher's names, hard tests but…"

She stopped again. The seconds passed by slowly, and Lucy didn't know if she was supposed to break the silence.

"Hm." Sarah looked down. "I can't remember- wait. That name, Kyubey, I heard you mention it, I heard Olivia mention it, even the Magical Girl in that video. I've heard that name before!" She looked up. "I got it! I remember him!"

Lucy crossed her arms. "Well that barely counts, what about him do you remember?"

"Well… I remember him being a… him. He talked telepathically, he sounded like a little kid. He had a hard time understanding human emotions…"

Lucy sighed. "Guess that means Kyubey's right…" she uncrossed her arms. "Sarah, Kyubey claims you were almost a Magical Girl but turned his offer down. What do you think of this?"

Sarah was slightly taken aback, but quickly regained composure. "That doesn't sound like how I was… I definitely would have taken the wish, probably would've asked for something stupid like a million bucks, or a ticket to mars, or an authentic E-500 Railgun."

"So… you're saying you would have taken the wish?"

"Absolutely. I was pretty vain before I turned… edgy."

"Try to see if you can keep remembering." Said Lucy. "Maybe we can dig up more-"

A three-patterned beeping sound filled the room, emanating from the computer. An alert symbol flashed on screen.

For a few seconds, that sound surrounded them, deafening out any others. Lucy was the first to make a noise.

"Uh…"

"AI?"

"This is… so soon?" said the AI. "We appear to have a message. An emergency communication. Someone must have spotted that our comms beacon was repaired."

Sarah rushed over. "Who is it, FBEM?"

"... not exactly."

Lucy joined Sarah, looking past her side at the monitor. "What the hell is a Chimera Station?"

A few command windows opened up. "Accessing comms array… establishing link… link acquired! Let's see what they have to say."

On the screen, a slightly disheveled little girl appeared on screen. Her outfit didn't really suggest Magical Girl, but it was just a safe assumption at this point. Behind her was a heavily disorganized lab-like environment, with beakers and vials and papers littering the ground and counters.

The girl took a deep, staggered breath.

"You… Utopia…?" she had a slight Russian accent, and her raspy voice suggested that she hadn't talked in a while.

"This is Utopia." the AI chimed in. "We've received your communication."

"What… What the hell happened…? Radio silence for forty fucking years, and now I'm being answered by the goddamn museum AI…?"

"Who are you?" asked Sarah.

"Who am I? Who the hell are you! The number of humans in Utopia are in the double digits, and I sure as hell never saw you befo- wait, forty year-" she visibly thought for a moment. "That'd make you way older…" she laughed a bit. "Sorry, I kinda forgot that people could age…"

"Unknown Magical Girl be advised. Utopia fell forty years ago. Did nobody contact you after?"

"I know Utopia fucking fell, why else would everyone stop talking to me for forty years! I asked who the hell you all were!" She shouted. Her voice was coming back slowly but surely.

"I am the museum AI-"

"Shut up. I already know who you are. Eliya asked Olivia for a smart AI, denied her, and then made one a fucking tour guide."

The AI didn't respond.

"... I'm Sarah. I'm a… an adult soldier from the USA. I'm not a Magical Girl."

"I'm Lucy, a Magical Girl… also from the USA…"

"Wait, how old are you?" She said, looking at Lucy.

"Seventeen." she stuttered out. "I'm seventeen."

The girl perked up after she heard Lucy's confirmation. "How the hell did you escape the Order?! Did they finally fall?"

Lucy visibly recoiled. Just hearing those words sent shockwaves of horrible memories coursing through her head. Sarah turned and watched her, she placed her hand on something on her hip reflexively.

Her pistol.

Lucy shifted into her Magical Girl form involuntarily, a reaction to extreme stress.

Sarah moved her hand away from her hip. "Lucy please, calm down."

"I- I… I can… I can calm…"

She took a deep breath, rapidly moving to take her ring off, and handing it to Sarah forcefully.

"Take it!"

Sarah scrambled to pick up the ring.

Lucy hyperventilated, struggling out words as she gasped for air. "K-keep it- on you- don't let- don't let me attack you-"

"What the hell's wrong with her?" the girl on the screen asked.

"It's alright-" Lucy's breaths grew more and more controlled, and Sarah watched her gem as it pulsed with luminous energy.

A strange moving pattern of black dots started circling inside the gem.

"I can… I can calm down…" She took a deep breath.

Sarah put her hand on Lucy's shoulder. "We can make it through this."

"You're right…" Lucy cleared her throat. "We can." She looked up, walking towards the monitor. "What the hell do you know about the Order?"

"Probably less than you, you escaped them after all. How the hell did you manage that?"

Lucy didn't respond.

"Maybe we should change the sub-"

Lucy interrupted Sarah.

"Tell me what you know."

The girl sighed. "I know they 'replaced' the FBEM. I know they go around murdering Magical Girls, and I know they've killed refugees from Utopia. That's all I've got."

"And they've been doing this for…" asked Lucy.

"Pretty much as soon as Utopia fell." responded the girl. "Might as well have been the same week. One minute the FBEM is doing what they've always done and then… black ops Magical Girls are murdering other Magical Girls by the thousand. I'm just glad I wasn't there to see it…"

She sighed.

"Can't say the same about the girls I knew back in Utopia."

Lucy gritted her teeth.

"Why?" asked Lucy.

"Why what?" responded the girl.

"Why are they doing this! Why are they making us suffer more than Kyubey is! Do they think Kyubey isn't doing enough?! Are they the reason Utopia fell?! Why do WE deserve this!?"

The girl waited a second before responding.

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, almost certainly not, and… well, we made the wish."

Lucy looked down. She didn't have anything else to say.

This girl just didn't have the answers.

"So what about you, adult?" the girl turned to Sarah. "How did you find yourself in Utopia? You said you were a soldier?"

"Was doing a routine offensive, some… proxy engagement with the New Caliphate, I don't know. A Magical Girl showed up to defend the soldiers I was attacking, and She-" Sarah pointed to Lucy. "Showed up to save me. The other Magical Girl teleported us both to Antarctica, we found an entrance to Utopia, and now we're… here."

The girl crossed her arms. "So neither of you are from Utopia, and neither of you know anything about it."

"We've been finding bits and pieces. We just got an elevator back online and now we can head to city control. We're gonna give the tour AI control over the city and see if she can figure out anything."

"Not… what I would do, but it's not like I can help from here."

"What would you do?" asked Sarah.

"To be honest, I'm not from Utopia. I'm not even from the USA. Utopia didn't have Magical Girls with the training I have and they outsourced to several countries. Russia just happened to be one of them. I guess I'd try to figure out what destroyed it, and see if I can find and save girls who were disconnected from their Soul Gems amidst the chaos."

Lucy looked up. "Wait, do you… do you know?"

"Know what?"

"Soul Gem stasis." Lucy moved closer. "Do you know about Soul Gem stasis?!"

"Uh… some new-age thing Utopia was doing. Because I was a hired foreigner I kept to using Grief Seeds, but some of the other girls are in stasis." She scratched the back of her head. "But forty years is a long time… I've had to get new Grief Seeds from the main colonies every now and then."

She moved to the side, showing the area behind her. A few Soul Gems were sitting on a table next to her.

"Oh no…" said Lucy.

"How long have those gems been in stasis?" Asked Sarah. She was, evidently, way better at keeping her composure than Lucy.

"About forty-five years? We wanted to see if stasis worked on bodies other than Earth, so that's one of the experiments we had going. We've also got FBEM and some other independent Magical Girls behind us, some from the Lunar Republic main colonies-"

"Hang on, wait, slow down." Sarah put her hands in front of her. "One thing at a time. Do you know the long term effects of Soul Gem stasis?"

"No. That research was never finalized before Utopia fell. Did you find any research on it?"

"Alright-"

"Valentina." the girl corrected. "My name is Valentina."

Sarah stopped for a second, continuing shortly after. "Valentina, listen very carefully. Everything I'm about to say was kept under lock and key by Olivia herself up to the day Utopia fell."

"Why are you being so formal? Oh right, soldier…" said Valentina. "I'm listening. Hit me with whatever you got."

"The longer a Magical Girl is alive, the stronger a Witch she will become. And after being in stasis for a while, these Magical Girls will rapidly build up Grief upon relinking with their soul gem, causing them to succumb in about 2 minutes without Grief Seeds, which only delay the process."

Valentina didn't respond. She looked back at the Soul Gems for a few seconds, and then back at the camera. "So… what kind of damage are we expecting here? If they were to be relinked."

Sarah also didn't respond for a second, probably thinking of the best way to tell her. "What city are you in? Country?"

"... City?" Valentina looked dumbfounded. She stood up, stretching her arms and moving the camera towards the left.

Outside the window was a sea of blackness covering a grayish black, smooth, surface.

The Earth hung in the air above the flat horizon.

"This is Chimera Station. Closest colony is Vaughan about fifty kilometers away, then Aldrin two hundred kilometers from that."

"Can Witches even survive in a vacuum?" Sarah muttered under her breath.

Valentina moved the camera back. "Magical Girls can, just… uncomfortably. I don't see why a Witch would have troubles. I've seen Magical Girls with vacuum training before, scares the shit out of adults, even ones used to them. But back to the point: damage calculations, what will it look like?"

"We've been told these witches can destroy states…" said Lucy.

"Potentially both of those colonies would be destroyed." added Sarah. "If the Witch found them."

Valentina laid back in her chair, covering her forehead with her left hand. "You're giving me a hard choice here… I don't wanna kill them. I've spent forty years up here doing the opposite. I'm not about to go back on that."

"That's… understandable, but at least you know the risks now." said Sarah.

"What's been happening up there?" asked Lucy. "Are things as chaotic on the Moon as they are down here on Earth."

Valentina let out a loud laugh, her voice now fully returned. She calmed down over the next few seconds, and with a deep breath, she continued talking.

"Fucking Christ. Where to start?"