When the Peaky Angels returned to their hideout with Tama, they were not expecting to see Swim Swim and Ruler there.

"Ruler..." Tama muttered.

"What's up?"

"Fancy meeting you here..."

"I summoned you brainless fools, so of course I would be here."

"Yeah, right..."

"Of course..."

"Darn it, I missed her message!"
"Because of the video!"

To elaborate on that, we'll need to go back a bit.

Begin Flashback

Swim Swim had just left the forest, either to head back home or back to the hideout after their last job. This left Minael, Yunael, and Tama alone in the clearing.

"So... You guys gonna call it a night, too?" Tama asked, and the Peaky Angels only gave her a smile, reaching for the bag of food Top Speed had delivered (which Ruler didn't allow them to eat.)

"Right then, let's talk popularity!"

"Because right now, that's what we, the Peaky Angels, are seriously lacking!"

"...Okay...?"

"Don't you get it!? We wanna be first place in the online rankings!"

"Look here! Last week's popularity poll!"

"...It says Snow White was in the lead last time."

"And what's with that? What makes her so freakin' awesome!?"

"She has like, a million sightings! How's that even possible!? There's two of us, so we should be in the top spot! We're Magical Girls too, y'know!"
"Preach it, sister!"

"So I thought that we'd just create our own thread on that dumb site and upvote ourselves! But it turns out our IDs are the same, so they deleted our post! Why the heck are they the same when our devices are completely different!?"

"It's not fair! We're separate people y'know!"

"When we complained to Fav about it, he was all like 'huh? Really, pon?'"

"And that's where we're at now!"

"So, Tama, do you have any ideas?"

"Let's see... You could do your best to help other people?"

"We're already doing that, dummy!"

"We spent the whole night burying their stupid, illegally dumped garbage!"

"Okay. So maybe... You could make a promo video...?"

"...Huh?"

"That's stupid. Forget I said anything. Why would Magical Girls even need to make a PV?"

"Yeah, great idea!"

"..." The implication slowly sank in for Tama. "Huh!?"

End Flashback

While it doesn't really matter, Tama's promo video idea was a complete sucess, just barely within the rules. However, that's not important. What is important for the story is what Ruler called her team for.

"All will be explained once you enter the Chat." Ruler explained.

And enter the Chatroom they did.

"And then they cease to function as living human beings, pon!" Fav revealed.

"But what do you mean by that, Fav?" Winterprison asked.

"There's nothing else to it! It means what you think it means, pon!"

"So if we drop out then we'll just die? That's not right..." Sister Nana said.

"Nana..." Winterprison responded. "I'm sorry. I know, it's... Terrible news, but it wasn't sure how exactly to tell everyone."

Magicaloid/Eggman wasn't entirely sure about that, but wisely chose to keep quiet.

"Well, I'm not buying this BS." Top Speed stated. "Healthy people don't just go around dying for no reason at all."

"Uhh, guys? You might wanna take a look at this. I think it's about Nemurin." Sonic requested from near the back of the group. Being one of seven people present who knew about this beforehand, he already knew who the news article he pulled up was talking about. "On April 23rd, late at night in Nabuka City, Nemu Sanjou-a household assistant-was found laying motionless on her bed by her mother. She was then transferred to a hospital where her death was confirmed. The cause of death was said to be a heart attack..."

"Judging by the name, and the time of death..." Ripple muttered.

"Are they the same person!?" Top Speed demanded.

"Indeed." Fav said, cementing Sonic's beliefs.

"No way..."

"Seriously?"

"She's dead?"
"Dead...?"

"All, well actually, most of you are Magical Girls who have had your abilities enhanced to the extreme thanks to the power of magic, pon! If you lose your right to that, then you lose your function as a living human being! Which means... You'll die, pon."

And that's when Eggman knew something was up. Fav was definitely planning something behind his back. He knew that Magical Girls weren't caused any sort of harm, much less death, from losing their magic. It was why the World of Magic was able to just wipe the memories of dropouts and let them live their normal lives again. Whatever Fav was planning, Eggman was determined to figure it out, one way or another.

"That's insane!" Sonic shouted.

"You're not making sense!" Snow White said.

"You can't!" Winterprison threatened.

"I would rather stop being a Magical Girl than die!"
"Yeah, we quit!"

"You'll still die if you quit. It's the same either way, pon!"

"But you never told us anything about this!" Sister Nana protested.

"That's how it is, pon."

And with that, the meeting concluded, leaving everyone to exit the Chatroom, save two.

"That's how it is, huh?" Sonic muttered, staring at the pillow that Nemurin gave him, the last trace of her.

"I have a feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye." Magicaloid stated, taking the risk of directly speaking with Sonic.

"You and me both. Did you see the look Cranberry had in her eyes? Gave me the creeps..."

"I probably would've felt some chills as well, if my character were capable of feeling such things. And there's something else about her that bugs me..."

"What is it?"

"She was the first to find out the truth, correct? If that was the case, why didn't she tell everyone immediately? The only other person I can see doing that is Calamity Mary, but she and Cranberry are nothing alike."

"You're right, that is weird..."

"I would keep an eye out for her if I were you."

"No kidding. There's tons of fishy stuff going on."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Well, for one, for some reason, Fav included a specific section for the Chaos Emeralds in my Magical Phone. But realistically, there shouldn't be any way he knows about them unless someone told him. Judging by the shapes of these phones, I'm almost tempted to say it was Eg... An enemy of mine. But he isn't the type to kill those he doesn't need anymore..."

'He knows me too well.' Eggman thought to himself. When he'd instructed Fav to give Sonic a Magical Phone with a count of the Chaos Emeralds, he wanted Sonic to waste his time trying to find them somewhere in the city. Eggman himself actually had one, but whether or not the other six were even close to Nabuka City was up to chance.

"Is everything alright, Doctor?" Orbot asked.

"The situation is getting worse by the minute. Everyone's found out about Nemu's death, and now Sonic is suspecting I'm here, and it seems Cranberry may be up to something."

"Oh dear, that does sound bad. I assume you have a plan?"

"Unfortunately not. I'll just have to try and get the situation under control somehow."

"If that doesn't work?"

"We'll figure that part out."

And then a system update beyond Eggman's control happened.

System Update Notice

It is now possible to exchange Candies with other Magical Girls!
The exchange only requires the receiver's device to be on, the other party doesn't need to activate their phone in order to give Candies.

haha i actually feel like writing! Anyway yeah I accidentally found a new writing technique for dialog that I'm going to use for the rest of the fic. While writing the Chatroom sequence, I wrote a line for one of the Peaky Angels (i can never remember which one's which, kind of like Tsukuyo and Tsukasa in Magia Record, but worse because Minael and Yunael's designs are literally almost identical) and instead of doing a double-line break like I do normally, I accidentally had shift held down (from putting a quotation mark) and did a single-line break and didn't catch it until I'd written the other Angel's response. I thought it looked good and decided to keep it and translate it to the rest of the chapter. So from now on, every time one Angel follows up another (without making a ridiculously long sentence), I'll break it up with a single-line instead of a double.

also if anyone's willing to tell me which one's which, it'll be greatly appreciated