I always found it annoying when the author apologizes for delays, but here I am, doing it anyway. Summer of Steven is over, and it's college time. Man, what a rollercoaster.
Everyone was surprisingly unnoticing of the manner that Pearl and Rose ditched school in the middle of a class period. Then again, Rose didn't stick around for the facility to react. She was also starting suspect that she was having a delayed reaction herself. Inside her head, the tiny red flags she got from talking with Pearl earlier turned into a big, neon-red sign that said 'THE NEW KID IS KIDNAPPING YOU AND YOU'RE HOLDING HER HAND.' She pushed the thought back and compromised with asking Pearl a follow-up question.
"Where are we going?" Rose exhaled, gasping for air. She wasn't completely exhausted, but she was getting there. The two girls had at least gone halfway across town by now. Pearl had stopped as well, but not because she was tired. For a girl straight out of the hospital, Pearl had excellent, almost superhuman stamina.
"A labyrinth," Pearl answered, licking her finger and checking the wind's direction. "There's a few things that need to be brought to light, but some of them need showing rather than telling." Rose did not like that answer. Her benefit of the doubt was wearing thin. The two girls were headed toward the more cramped part of Beach City, where it was easier to get on a bus regularly than to own a car and rent a place where you could park it. "Speaking of which," Pearl continued, pausing slightly to scan her surroundings, "We need to get into this studio. I need to change."
"Change what?" Rose said.
"Clothes."
"Pearl, I'm not giving you my clothes. They won't fit."
Pearl groaned like she was playing Where's Waldo? with a three-year-old. She took a booby pin out of her book bag and began unlocking the studio's deadbolt with a concerning speed and skill. When they were safely in the building, Pearl whipped around looked Rose directly in the eye.
"I need you to promise me something, Rose. Actually, several things. First off, don't go anywhere without telling me first. Second, keep a nine-meter distance from the witch at all times. Thirdly, don't scream. Just for, like, the next seven minutes. Don't worry about it, I'll be fine. Finally, and this is a big one (Rose, look at me when I am speaking to you), do not, under any circumstances, no matter who gets hurt, trust an alien. They lie by omission and never feel remorse. Understand?"
Rose was too scared to ask if Pearl had been joking. "I've got too many questions for understanding any of this."
Pearl nonchalantly rolled her eyes. "Fiiiiiine, let's stick to the not-screaming part first."
Rose nodded silently. Pearl responded by smiling confidently and exploding. Light poured into the empty room, shrinking Rose's pupils until she couldn't see. After twenty blinks, Rose's eyes adjusted and blinding light was gone. Pearl's school uniform had vanished without a trace, replaced by a celebration of everything pastel-colored. Baby-blue ribbons were wrapped tightly around her limbs. The plastic lotus in her hair was transformed into a hair band rowed with teams of the real flower. Without the clip, Pearl's hair flowed loose and free, somehow growing down to her knees. Her torso was covered by a leotard the color of Rose's hair. Silk ballet slippers covered her feet, flanked by tiny white wings. Pearl's silver ring was gone, its gem tripled in size and located on her forehead and held in place by thin platinum chain around her skull. Looking at Pearl like this, Rose, in that moment, was convinced that angels existed and they walked the earth as she did.
"Rose?"
"Bwuh?"
"Please st-stop staring."
"Right. Sorry. My bad."
Rose pursed her lips, trying to focus on a boarded-up window a few steps to a left of Pearl. "So, uh, I've got a few NEW questions now. Like, what was that? How often does that happen to you? Were you serious about the witch thing? Have you really met an alien, or are you just prejudice against them? Is it just my eyes, or are you glowing?"
Pearl had already had her back to Rose, looking for something that wasn't quite visible by Rose's perspective. "It's more of a glittering, really," she muttered. All of a sudden, Pearl made a quick motion with her hands, and a hole in the air opened up. Beyond it lied a shifting pattern of geometric shapes, dark and brightly colored at the same time. Pearl extended her hand. "Ready to go?"
"I'm not sure that I am."
"That's okay," Pearl shrugged. "I suppose the whole point is that nobody's ever ready." Pearl reached and yanked Rose's arm. They hurdled into the portal, and Rose broke the no-screaming rule.
Malachite hated her life. There was a long list things she hated, but most of all, she hated her life. She hated the chains on her arms. She hated that no magical girls had shown up in her labyrinth yet. She hated how she could remember her face; the face that she sacrificed so much for.
On the second thought, her shattered mind thought, I maybe have spoken too soon on the magical girl subject.
There were two of them. Two perfectly vulnerable prisoners-to-be. One of them had no sign of a soul gem, but Malachite was certainly not above compromise. She summoned as many gallons of ice water as she estimated was necessary-
-And out of nowhere, a dozen spears were shoved up her nostril. What. The. Hell. Malachite called hacks. Real life never lagged and clipped like this. She was eldritch shadow of her former self, but even she had a rough idea on how time was supposed to work.
Malachite hated her life, but she found it within herself to hate how she died even more.
"Did you process that?" Pearl said stoically, the labyrinth giving way to the destruction of the witch. Rose gaped. This was too much. It was only for a minute, but everything that she learned in physics class had become null and void. "I'll take that as a 'no.'" Pearl sighed. "I suppose we could start with a few frequently asked questions, then. Sit, please."
Rose hesitated. "But it's a dance studio. There's nowhere to-"
"The floor will suffice, Rose," Pearl interrupted, easing down to a cross-legged position. Rose mimicked, and with a deep breath, Pearl began. "First off, that thing I killed? That was a witch. If I didn't kill it, it would've killed a lot of people until someone else like me would've killed it instead. Secondly, where we were was a labyrinth. It's a place witches make to hide from humans and magical girls."
"Wait, magical girls?" Rose said, snapping back from her state of shock. "You mean, you're a magical girl? Like Cardcaptor Sakura?"
Pearl looked worried on how excited Rose was with this information. "Yes," she said, after a pause. "That's not a good thing."
Rose looked confused for a second, then 'ahh'd' in understanding. "Right, you're probably not supposed to tell anyone, then told me. You're in trouble now; got it."
Pearl looked like she was telling her little sister than Santa Claus wasn't real. "Oh, Rose. That's… not the bad thing."
For what it felt like the 27th time that day, Rose was a page behind. "Wait, so were you supposed to tell me? Is this some sort of recruitment? Whatever it takes to help, I'm willing-"
"NO." Pearl barked. "NO. NO. NO. DO NOT FINISH THAT SENTENCE. YOU ARE NOT BECOMING A MAGICAL GIRL. YOU WILL NEVER BE A MAGICAL GIRL. NOBODY IS BECOMING A MAGICAL GIRL. DO YOU LOVE YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY? THEN DON'T BECOME A MAGICAL GIRL. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, ROSE?" For that moment, Pearl was scarier than any six-armed monstrosity that appeared that day. It was a given too, since she just stabbed one to death. Startled, Rose muttered out an affirmative, then gave the whole 'understanding what the crap was going on' thing another shot. After all, it never hurt to try, right?
"So… why don't you anybody to become a magical girl? I mean, if you're okay with giving me a reason."
Pearl's expression softened, regretting how much she spooked Rose. She unfurled her fingers, revealing a black, metal pin.
"See this, Rose? This is a grief seed. It was once a person. Then, it became a magical girl. Then, it became a grief seed. Then, it became the witch that I fought. Now, it's a grief seed again."
"…Can it become a person again?"
"Can you bring the dead back to life?"
"Umm…"
"Then no."
"Oh," Rose said. "Ohhhhhh." She felt like she was catching up, and she didn't like where this conversation was headed. But on principle, she always wanted to give every situation a glimmer of hope, so she wanted to ask a few more questions that a pessimist would probably know the answers to.
"Are you going to become a grief seed?"
"Yeah."
"Is there a way to, y'know, stop you from becoming a grief seed?"
"Yeah, it's by getting other grief seeds," Pearl said, demonstrating this fact by putting the grief seed to the gem on her forehead, allowing her gem to shine brighter than before.
"So, that's what you want me to do? Get you more grief seeds?" Rose deducted.
"No, it's too dangerous."
"Okaaay, then what do you want me to do?" Rose said, almost groaning as she spoke. Today was emotionally exhausting, and on top of that, she felt like she had taken one step forward and two steps back in terms of understanding the world. "Didn't you say something about everyone we know dying?" Pearl was starting to show that had a great discomfort with Rose being upset. She was learning that a dead expression didn't help this kind of conversation, so she experimented with reacting with a polite laugh.
"I did say that, didn't I?" she said, attempting to be soothing.
"So? What's going to happen?" Rose pressed, getting huffy. "Is there, like, a whole boatload of witches spawning up somewhere?"
Pearl contemplated with question. "More or less," she answered with a wave of her hand.
"Yes! Now we're getting somewhere," Rose said confidently. "All we have to do is stop witches from appearing. Wait, no, that's gotta be stopping people from turning into magical girls, right. So, how do we stop them?"
"Rose, that's not quite-"
"C'mon, there's gotta be a reason that magical girls exist!"
"We believe there's a rather good one," a voice foreign to the conversation added. The voice didn't have that slight vibration that sound waves did, so Rose wondered for a second if she imagined it. Pearl, on the other hand, flinched like she just heard a gun going off behind her ear. She bolted up to her feet and spontaneously generated more spears than she could possibly carry. She voice rang out around the empty room, raising from a scream to a screech to a squawk.
"INCUBATO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-R!"