Waiting is something that's more intrinsic to warfare than death is. You'd think that fighting a war would involve more actual fighting, but I've spent more time sitting on my ass waiting for orders than I have actually fighting.

-Colonel Mariposa Sponder, 7th Magi Oplon Regiment, 7th Magical Division, 1st Army Group of the Yangtze

It is also because of this that we [the Cult of Hope] do not emphasize holy books, nor hymns, nor dull mantras to be memorized and chanted. All of those things are the mere trappings of artifice, and unnecessary. We pay for our entrance into Heaven with the lives we lead, not our worship.

-Kyouko Sakura, Sister of the Cult of Hope, Member of the Mitakihara Four

It turned out that, fortunately, Emma had been enough of a distraction for Mei Ling to zap Qing Duo from a distance, allowing the remaining two members of Emma's team to disassemble Alanis easily. What followed afterwards was a grueling dissection of Emma's performance, assisted with frame-by-frame analysis of what the other girls had seen. Emma had never felt so very small before in her life, and the added humiliation of being so easily defeated did not help matters.

The point, however, was for Emma to find a place in the group dynamic.

"Well, all things considered, that could have been a lot worse," said Emily as she pulled her water back into her gourd and dismissed her transformation. "What do you think, Qing?"

"I think it should work out," said Qing Duo, lifting her arms out then pulling them back in to make the sleeves of her gown billow as she sighed thoughtfully. "She fights hard and loudly, which will give us space to make our kills."

"That's one way of putting it," said Emily, snorting. "Another way would be to say-."

"Emily," said Fatima. "Is there anything else you need to take care of?"

"…Yes. I'll get going then. See you guys around."

"I need to leave as well," said Qing Duo, dropping her transformation as Emily logged out. "Goodbye."

"You did well today," said Fatima, turning to Emma as the others made their goodbyes and left. "You alright?"

Emma was studiously unamused with Emily, but took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

"Good, then a few things before you deploy," said Fatima. "First, make a will."

"Ah, right," said Emma, blinking once before nodding. "What would you suggest?"

"The military and the MSY have templates you can use," said Fatima. "Here, I prefer this one-." Emma's implants blipped the filename into the corner of her vision as Fatima continued "-because it's a pretty easy little form."

"Ah, okay," said Emma, glancing over the text before storing it away in her memory. "The second thing?"

"Make sure to call your family one more time," said Fatima. "I took a look at your personnel file. It sounds like you and Anna are pretty close, so don't fuck it up."

"Right," said Emma with a nod. "I'll, uh, see you at deployment time then?"

"See you," said Fatima. She waved as she logged out, taking the simulation along with it.

Emma was now faced with several hours to kill. She logged out, returning to her body on her bed, and contemplated her options.

By habit, she pulled the template up and began to read through it. As Fatima had said, it was a very straight-forward document. It started by asking her to give her name, state that she was of sound mind, and other things, worded in ceremonial language, that should have gone unsaid but were made explicit regardless. From there it moved to her estate and how it was going to be divided, then the executor of all of that.

Well that was going to be Anna, obviously, and Emma filled the blank in almost idly. She also wrote her name into the top and confirmed that yes, she was, in fact, sane.

Her estate though, that was a little tricky. There was the huge amount of allocs that she would probably accrue, at least comparatively, but if she decided to split it evenly between her friends that would probably work. So that meant, what, sixteen and a bit percent to each person?

But… should she include her parents in this? It was true that she didn't have the best relationship with them, but at the same time it seemed cruel to just cut them out of her will completely. If she died, she didn't want to leave behind something the idea that she actually, really, had no shits to give about the people who raised her.

Emma swallowed, shivering. Jeez, dying. That was a scary thought. It wasn't really a thing that she'd thought about before, and even now it seemed abstract and far away. The footballer in her enthusiastically disregarded death as less important than achieving whatever she could, but the ever hated logistics officer calmly retorted that death was a cold fact that had to be faced.

For that matter, she thought as she put the will away for now, how did a magical girl face death? For a normal human, this wasn't anything particularly difficult: dying meant that your body stopped working. But that wasn't necessarily true. Emma's mental state had a close link to the state of her soul gem, and it was extremely possible for Emma to die from pure angst and despair.

That, she decided, had to be one of the stupidest ways to die, ever. She understood why people would do that, of course, but she resolved to stay positive and not let her soul gem darken from despair.

Speaking of which, what was it with that Goddess? Sarah had mentioned it during the call from the Salvation, and Emma knew that a lot of girls had faith in her, but what was the Goddess, exactly? And how did she save girls from despair, whatever that meant?

Well, she had time to kill.

"TacComp, is the Chaplain available?" Emma asked.

"The chaplain is unavailable for full consciousness conferencing," answered the TacComp. "Would you like to make a Chat Room with a portion of her consciousness? Please be advised that you may not be able to achieve full fidelity."

Emma shrugged. "Yes, make the connection."

"Complying…"

Emma fiddled with her soul gem, as she waited. She'd looked at it several times by now, sitting idly and waiting for a sim or whatever. Whenever it was fully purified, it always had the same sort of glitter surrounding its glow. It was kind of interesting, watching the bits of light orbiting around the glowing center within the crystal.

"Connection successful," announced Emma's TacComp. "Logging you in."

Emma fused the gem back into its ring form just before her vision cut out, then returned within the confines of a brick walled chapel. In the center was an altar and accompanying podium, standing beneath a wide skylight that cast all in a wash of white light. The walls and floor were panelled over with dark wood. The same wood was used to construct the pews. High windows let in a light breeze, making strands of crystal, tied to the skylight and reaching to the ground, twinkle and clink against each in a facsimile of a melody. The sound of quiet, meditative chanting echoed in from somewhere off in the distance.

"Hello," said a small girl to Emma's right, dressed in an aggressive looking costume that was offset by the white shawl wrapped around her shoulders. "My name is Abigail. How can I help you?"

"Ah, hi," said Emma, slightly disconcerted by needing to look down at the significantly older magical girl. "I had a few questions about the cult?"

"Well, that's what I'm here for," said Abigail with a smile. "Please, have a seat."

"Thanks," said Emma, sitting down in one of the pews. Abigail perched next to her on the back of a pew, resting her feet on Emma's pew. "You're, um, not really what I expected."

"You mean the costume?" asked Abigail, gesturing at herself with a wry smile. "Everyone says that. I was a headstrong and aggressive girl back in my day, but it's been a long time since this costume has matched my personality."

"Oh. Did that happen after you became a chaplain?"

"Before, actually," said Abigail. "You see, I was in the 8th Magi Oplon Regiment."

Emma winced. The Magi Oplon were where combat specialists got reassigned. They typically took the most dangerous missions, since they were more likely to survive them. This did nothing to reduce the number of casualties or the horrors they saw. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be, at the time I enjoyed it," admitted Abigail. "I have a mild case of battlelust, so it was always fun ripping off heads and using them to bash squids in." She smiled at the memories. "But that's neither here nor there. Did you have any specific questions?"

"Well, I guess the first question would be what IS, the Goddess, exactly?" said Emma. "Other than the obvious part from the news. Like, it's all well and good to say that there's a thing here, but what exactly is that thing?"

"Well, that's a bit complicated," said Abigail, scratching her nose. "You know the other basics, I'm sure?"

"That the Goddess is supposed to watch over us all and save us from despair, right?"

"That's it exactly," said Abigail. "So, with that as the basis, there's a few theories."

"Theories?" asked Emma, raising an eyebrow.

"Do keep in mind that we're rather young for a religion," said Abigail with a smile. "It's difficult to answer questions concretely when you've only been around for a few years."

"I, well, I guess that's fair," conceded Emma. "But anyway….?"

"Right, so the first major theory is that the Goddess is an incorporeal hyper dimensional being that can jump between dimensions to pop into space and save us from despair by taking it upon herself and storing it or something. It's a little crazy, but it does work. Another is that She's a spiritual entity that lives upon a higher plane of existence, and that she gathers our souls to this plane when we die so that we may live in everlasting peace for our sacrifice. That comes from the girls with vaguely Judeo-Christian backgrounds, obviously, and makes a good deal of sense on it own. The last major theory is that the Goddess isn't a godly being at all, but rather was compelled into the service of a still higher God, and that it watches over us all for good and for ill. If you can't tell, that's blatantly an integration of the Cult of Hope into Christianity, and works for what it is, but isn't all that widely accepted."

"That all sounds so…" began Emma, searching for the correct term. "…convenient."

Abigail laughed. "I thought so too, back when I first heard of the Cult. It's pretty dumb, from a rational standpoint. I mean, the first question you ask is why would anyone care?"

"Well, yeah," agreed Emma. "I mean, I'm no Mami Tomoe, right?"

Abigail nodded vigorously. "And why despair? Why not save us all the trouble and blow the squids back to wherever they come from?"

Emma snapped her fingers. "Exactly. And how do you save someone from despair anyway? Like, do you show up when they're about to die and sing lullabies in their ear or something?"

"Actually, that does work," said Abigail. "Standard procedure with some of the medical staff. The Mental Health Division has a lot of girls who have song-spell powers."

"Seriously."

"Yeah."

"That is… wow. I.. I don't know what to say."

"I thought it was pretty lame, myself," said Abigail with a shrug. "Like, wow, songs? Really? What're you going to do, serenade the squids to death?"

Emma laughed. "But, uh, if you don't mind me asking, if you had all these questions, what made you believe in the Goddess? It sounds like a lot of those haven't really been answered, even.

"A friend died," said Abigail. "We were fighting near the beginning of the war. None of us really knew what we were doing, and she took a sniper round through the gut. Was still alive, obviously. A single sniper can't take one of us out just like that. But her gem was already low, and trying to regenerate the wound took her to zero. I was trying to keep her gem pure when it went critical and started to crack."

Abigail paused, taking a deep breath. Emma noticed that the girl's eyes were shining with unshed tears.

"I don't want to-" Emma began, but Abigail cut her off.

"No, it's fine," said Abigail, wiping her eyes. "Haah. Anyway. My friend's gem was going critical and there was nothing I could do to stop it, so I just hugged her close. We were both crying, obviously, but just before she died, my friend suddenly stopped. I looked up, hoping for some sort of crazy miracle, and she was staring off over my head. There was this look of wonderment and joy on her face, and she died smiling. I couldn't get that out of my mind, so I went off to our chaplain. The rest is history."

Emma shut her mouth with a small click. "I… wow. I mean, there are a lot of things that could make you think you saw the Goddess, but that's… really impressive."

"Well, in terms of Her glory, yeah, it's pretty blatant," said Abigail. "You'd think that a Goddess that's incorporeal and stuff wouldn't be able to effect the world that concretely, but apparently it's totally a thing."

Emma swallowed. "I'm… well, I was pretty skeptical at first, but now I don't really know," she said. "Can I come around some other time, to ask you some more questions?"

"Absolutely, it's what I'm here for," said Abigail. "I'm also technically part of the MHD, so I've got some basic counseling skills if you need it as well. Feel free to ask me about anything, and if nothing else I can send you to someone who can help you out some more."

"Alright, thanks," said Emma, smiling as she stood and shook Abigail's hand. "For now, I guess, I'm out of questions. I'll see you around, I guess?"

"See you around, Emma Sinclair," said Abigail. She bowed at the waist, as Emma logged out, and intoned: "May the Goddess watch over the path that you walk."

Emma blinked as she looked up at the ceiling of her quarters. She had expected many things from the Cult of Hope, but actual, tangible evidence of their Goddess had not been one of them. There were a lot of things they taught you about the old religions, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, and the like, but the one constant was that they never really could show you exactly who or what you were worshipping, only asking you to "have faith" in the existence of the deity in question.

"This Cult might actually be on to something," Emma said to herself, manifesting her soul gem and holding it up. It was certainly a comforting thought, that the bright glow of her gem would always be saved by some being beyond this existence.

Emma took a deep breath and reformed her soul gem as a ring. Maybe it was comforting, but Emma wasn't going to put her faith into a story and some hopeful thoughts. Playing football, Emma had always relied on training and being one step ahead of her opponents, and that wasn't going to change now.

Emma called Anna as she sat up and swung her legs down off the bed to the floor, sitting upright on the edge of the bed and pulling up her incomplete will. It took a moment for Anna to pick up.

"Hi Emma! What's up? How're you doing?"

"Hey Anna," said Emma, smiling at her sister. The video call projected the head and shoulders of the participants at arm's length from their counterpart. "I'm doing alright, thanks. How about you?"

"Same as usual," said Anna with a shrug. "There's a pretty dumb team project we've been assigned, and I'm trying to convince my teammates that we need to get started on it now."

"Oh yeah? What about Ayumi?"

"She's not in the same class, she's working on something else," said Anna. "It's a bit unfortunate, really, but I suppose it's for the best. Learning how to deal with people and all that, right?"

"Well, you've done this sort of thing before," said Emma. "Remember, a couple of months ago?"

"Oh, right," said Anna, face going flat. "THAT thing. Didn't we decide never to speak of it again?"

"Well you keep bringing up my thing with the football."

"Fine, fine," said Anna, waving away the comment. "What else is up?"

"Ah, well, I'm trying to write my will and needed some advice."

"Ah." Anna blinked and glanced away, looking uncomfortable. "What can I do to help?"

"I was thinking about Mum and Dad," said Emma, realizing that she'd made things slightly awkward. "What do you, um, think I should do about it all?"

"Well include them, obviously," said Anna. "It'd be stupid to exclude Mum and Dad from your will."

"Should I just, ah, split things evenly between them?"

"That sounds about right," said Anna, swallowing. "Was… was that all?"

"One more thing," said Emma. "I named you my executor."

"O-oh, um, well," stuttered Anna, blinking. "That, um, well, I- okay then."

"Are you sure?" asked Emma worriedly. "I don't want to force you into something you don't want to do."

"Y-yes," said Anna, nodding. "I'm honored, really. I guess it's just not something I thought about."

"Yeah, I was kind of the same way," said Emma, scratching her head. "I got my ass kicked from here to London today during, ah, well I believe the term is 'team bonding time'."

"Really?" asked Anna, jumping on the new topic. "Tell me about it?"

"Sure, it went like this…."

Emma's recount of the fighting handily sidestepped the more violent parts, such as the time Emily punched a hole through her neck with a water streamer. From there, the conversation snowballed. Her platoon's reserved response to her presence and Ingrid's frustratingly stonewalled blockage of any attempts to manage the platoon found their way into an angry rant about Emma's day.

"Ah, well, I'm sure it will be fine," said Anna soothingly as Emma dropped onto her bed in a huff. "It does sound a lot like back when we first moved to Mitakihara though."

"How so?" asked Emma dryly.

"Well, you remember the time with Miyuki?"

Emma grimaced. Miyuki had been a particularly unpleasant girl back in Emma's first year of study. Miyuki had taken the lead in a small group project and done just about everything possible to push Emma to the side and minimize her involvement. "Yeah."

"Well, do you remember how we dealt with it?"

"I remember wanting to 'accidentally' kick a football into her face," said Emma. "Technically, that's not violence, right?"

Anna laughed. "Yes, I remember that as well. But I was referring more to the fact that you ended up just flatly telling her that you were sick of it and would be participating."

"Oh, that's right, I did that too," said Emma. There had actually been a bit of a screaming match, but Emma wasn't going to press Anna's rose-tinted remembrance of the event. "Wait, are you suggesting I do the same here?"

"I mean, it can't make things much worse than they are, can it?" asked Anna. "Mrs. Jones sounds like she would appreciate that sort of response."

"I guess," said Emma, scratching her nose. "I guess I'll try it later, when we deploy."

"When is that, have you been keeping track?" asked Anna.

"It's not for awhile," said Emma, double-checking on her chronometer just in case. "I've still got some time to kill."

There followed an awkward silence.

"Well, I should probably get started on my assignment sooner rather than later," said Anna, scratching her cheek. "If, um, if it's alright with you?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," said Emma, nodding. "You go on ahead, I'll finish my will then."

"Alright, good bye. See you soon."

Emma finished her will in an hour or so, and whiled the remaining time away playing a football sim by remote connection to the entertainment console. As it turned out, a few of the soldiers under her command were playing as well, and she joined them for a few rounds of casual footballing. It never got very serious, and Emma logged out fairly early and made her way to the hanger.

Emma was, naturally, the first girl to arrive at the hanger bay. Despite this, the hanger, pressurized at the moment, was filled with an astounding amount of activity. Emma found a perch atop a crane and watched the proceedings, her backpack hooked over a small protrusion as the crane swung back and forth, loading things from one deck to another.

She wasn't the only girl who thought watching from a crane was a good plan. After awhile, other girls began to show up, perching on the ends of cranes and looking out over the space. Emma even had a few join her on her crane, though none of them spoke to each other. This was a time for contemplation and meditation on the things to come, after all.

"T-minus thirty minutes," said one of them. "We should probably start getting ready."

"See you on the ground then," said another, giving the group a nod before falling off of the crane. She righted herself smoothly and headed off towards her platoon's dropship.

One by one, they all departed. Emma eventually just jumped at her dropship, pushing herself along with bursts of wind magic and aeromaneuver, before landing gently on the roof with a flicker of light as she transformed in midair. She jumped again, grabbing the gullwing doors of the dropship and swinging herself down to land in a crouch with a thud.

"Lieutenant," said one of her men, nodding as he walked past with a crate of grenades.

"Corporal," said Emma, returning the greeting with a nod. The dropship was busy, with soldiers running around putting together the final parts for their deployment. Armor was already bolted on and weapons were double, then triple checked. Ammunition was being loaded and strapped to bodies, and customizations were being applied for the coming battle.

Emma made her way slowly through the dropship towards the IFV she would be occupying with her command squad. The chatter between soldiers died as she approached, standing out in her red and white costume. A brief moment of discussion, mutual well wishes, and then Emma moved on. She wished she could do more than that.

Emma came to a stop just before the command IFV. Ingrid was standing in front of it, directing things mentally. With a sigh, Emma steeled herself. Anna was probably right, and even if she wasn't, she needed to clear the air between herself and her Warrant Officer. She had ended their last conversation with a sarcastic snipe, and that simply would not do in combat. Emma stepped forward again.

"Chief Jones," she said, nodding to the now-twice-as-massive soldier as Emma came to a stop in front of her. "I take it things are going well?"

"Yes sir," said Ingrid with a nod. "I took the liberty of procuring a hard suit for your person."

"Thank you Chief," said Emma, looking over the armor. It was a standard vacuum suit, plated over with polycarbide and such before being made, by dint of Emma's magic, to meld with her costume. Not always the most popular supplementary equipment among the girls, but Emma had made a point of wearing one every time she'd done an assault drill during training. Laser burn injuries could easily be mitigated with some training to take advantage of magical girl physiology, but that was a drain on soul gem resources that Emma preferred not to worry about. The armor might restrict her movement a bit, but its other shortcomings were readily overcome.

Emma cleared her throat, banishing the gloves that came with her costume and pulled on one of the armored gauntlets. "Chief, we got off to a bad start," she said, using her best Old Royalty voice. "It's too close to deployment for us to have any long discussions about our relationship, so I just want to say that, while I understand where you're coming from, it's very difficult to work with someone when they're very blunt about your failings."

"…I understand," said Ingrid. "I will attempt to discuss things with you more diplomatically in the future. Shall we let bygones be bygones?"

"Yes," said Emma, pulling on the other gauntlet and clenching her fists to make them fit more comfortably. She turned and offered her hand. "Let's work together and do our best."

Ingrid shook Emma's hand. "Does the armor suit you?"

"Yes, thank you," said Emma, clipping the arm guards onto herself under her costume and tightening the straps that held it in place temporarily. Each segment of armor contained several packets of nanobots and insulating polymer, allowing her to add whatever components she needed.

The two of them stayed silent as Emma continued adding armor components to herself. There was too much latent annoyance and anger for Emma to really feel like talking, and Ingrid was simply busy. After the armor plates were in place and the fibers of the suit had been spun into place, Emma spent a bit of magic to make some aesthetic changes to the surface of the armor, making it clash less with her costume. Being a magical girl had certain perks, after all.

Time spun quickly past as this happened, and Emma was soon sitting in the IFV with Ingrid and the other two members of her command squad, Sergeant Majors Beckett and Han, the latter of which Emma had seen before. As Emma had already started expecting, the two soldiers were relatively quiet, avoiding conversation with her.

"T-minus 63 seconds," said the ship AI. "All units brace for hard deceleration in three, two, one."

Emma grabbed one of the various handholds in the IFV as the transport cruiser pulled hard reverse thrust, slamming out of FTL much faster than normal. With the other hand, Emma grabbed her helmet and pushed it onto her head. Information spilled out into three dimensions at a thought, giving her status updates on the fleet, her platoon, the other platoons in her division, and the army group in general. Personal status, such as percent incapacitated and soul gem level, were planted in the permanent bottom right of her field of vision, and her weapons stores and grief cube count were on the left.

What was more important at the time, however, was the target marker system, networked to every AI available to her TacComp and filtered for relevance to her. At the moment, that meant every single enemy ship that had blinked into the system just minutes before. Emma looked up as their ship angled for entry interface, unable to stem her curiosity.

The whole of her field of vision was red with target indicators.