"Things were all well and good when the FBEM and Utopia were in their weird cold war, even back when the New Caliphate kept sending threats at both. But after Utopia fell, things… fell apart all over the place."

"How so?" asked Sarah. Lucy started leaning against a wall, trying to calm down while paying attention.

She stared at her own Soul Gem. Valentina glanced at it occasionally.

"Imagine what would happen if the United States just… collapsed. Instantly, in the midst of the 1960s, when the cold war was at its height."

Sarah thought for a second. "My history's a bit rusty, but I assume the Soviet Union would rush to fill in the power vacuum?"

"Yeah that's what we would expect." Valentina lounged in her chair. "But that's not what happened, not in the slightest. What happened after Utopia fell would be like if the US government dissolved out of nowhere, and subsequently the entire nuclear supply of the Soviet Union went off… in their silos."

Sarah took a bit to process this in her mind.

"And then after the fallout of those nukes fell, from the ashes rose a new organization, one who, against all reason, took it upon themselves to kill all Magical Girls in North America. An organization made up of a fifty-fifty split of both humans and Magical Girls. They called themselves the 'Order of the Broken Cycle,' said their goals were to 'finally end the cycle of Magical Girls and Witches.' Besides that, I don't know. They're fucking insane murderers."

"The Magical Girls in this group, they went to war against themselves?" asked Sarah.

"Heh, 'war.'" Valentina chuckled. She leaned forward in her chair. "It was a complete massacre. Ninety-nine percent of Magical Girls in the US died within the first few days. Cartels were back in Mexico within a week, only to all fall near-simultaneously a day later. No humans, except the ones directly aligned with the FBEM, knew that this 'war' even happened." She leaned back.

"But… somebody outside those two nations would notice, right? What about the New Caliphate?"

"The New Caliphate was scared shitless, thinking what happened to the two nations might happen to them. They hunkered down, closed borders, and started being strict at airports. Nobody but the top brass were allowed to know why. And that leaves the moon…"

The girl audibly sighed, as if she'd been dealing with all of this for the last forty years.

"Lunar Republic may have split off from the US, but the FBEM still had majority control over Magical Girls here, which means the Order took control when they fell. Other Magical Girl controlled bases fell one by one, except mine…"

"Forty years…" said Lucy, as if she couldn't believe how long a time frame that was. As she claimed before, a Magical Girl living more than a year is an anomaly, a Magical Girl living more than forty years… sounded completely impossible.

"Yup, forty years of attempts on my life. Luckily for me the Order was driven out of here twenty years ago by Magical Girls fed up with living in the shadows. While they may be gone, however, their orders remain, and the Lunar Republic marked my base for destruction, where it remains ever since."

"This is a lot to take in," said Sarah. "I… there's not really a way to help you, is there?"

"There might be a way, but it's a bit… long winded. Somewhere in Utopia there's a launch platform designed to ferry cargo to and from this base. When Utopia died, I lost my only rocket, so I'm stuck here. And even if I had one, I know it'd be shot down the moment it lifted off. You've got that tour AI don't you? As much as I hate her, she's still a smart AI. Give her a few days and she could design an armed transport rocket for me, and the nanobots in Utopia could build it."

Sarah nodded. "We'll see what we can do."

"Thank you." Valentina scratched the back of her head. "Sorry for exploding at you earlier, it's… been a while since I talked to someone beyond my Grief Seed dealer. And I'm starting to think she hates the drive out here, but she likes the money I'll pay."

Valentina looked between the both of them, the concerned face of Sarah and the confused contempt of Lucy.

"You two should get going." said Valentina. "Find out what happened to Utopia and let me know once you do. I can't do much from up here but I'll be praying for you two."

"Magical Girls can be religious?" asked Lucy, bouncing off the wall and standing back up.

"..." Valentina didn't respond for a second. "There's a Magical Girl controlled nation called the New Caliphate, and you're just now wondering if we can hold onto our religion after becoming a Magical Girl?"

"It's just… not something I've thought about until now." said Lucy.

"God created man and the universe in his design. Incubators like Kyubey created us. As for what created the incubators… who knows, maybe those gnostics were onto something, as blasphemous as that sounds. That's my take on it, now get going."

Valentina reached for the screen and the connection cut out.

"Let's go." said Sarah. She turned to walk out the door and back to the elevator shaft.

"Sarah, wait…" Lucy reached to physically stop her, and Sarah caught herself once again surprised by Lucy's superhuman strength.

"Yes?" Sarah said back. "Do you want your Soul Gem back? I-"

"No! No, keep it on you, in case I…" Whatever Lucy was trying to say, Sarah noticed she had extreme difficulty doing so. She looked down and sighed. "Nevermind…"

Sarah nodded, trying to show at least some sympathy.

The AI had been quiet, and continued to broadcast a deafening silence from the speakers above. Smart AIs were specifically created for their emotional intelligence, but the consequences of such meant that they were just as susceptible to negative emotions as humans were. Those words Valentina said to her must have hurt. To have one of the few Magical Girls who knew about Utopia insult and belittle her, it must have been a new kind of pain previously unfelt.

At least, not since she learned Utopia fell.

"The elevator is working again, but running on reserve power." The AI's voice was more dour than previous. Sarah could barely understand the emotions of a human girl, do smart AIs even have therapy failsafes? Are they receptive to it? Could Sarah even help?

These thoughts circled in Sarah's mind. The voice of the AI back in the hospital echoed through her mind, repeating that she had to try to be a better person for Lucy's sake. But through this, Sarah knew now that the AI herself said that out of selflessness.

Unfortunately for Sarah… she just didn't know what to say.

"It'll take an hour or two to get back up to the central mainframe from your current location. I'll meet you all there." the voice cut out, more suddenly than previous.

A newly repaired elevator grinded against the uneven metal of the damaged shaft before even coming into view. But after seeing it, Sarah noted how pristine it was, as if it had just been fabricated by an intricate 3D printer.

Sarah walked in and pressed the correct floor button, then leaned on one of the walls as it started upward. Lucy stood upright and unmoving, staring at the door with a blank expression.

Seconds turned to minutes.

Lucy sighed.

"Three years ago…" she started. "I was happy. I had… a stable home, a good family… good grades… anything a kid could ask for. But then I just… threw it away…"

She took a deep breath.

"All because of that damn cat."


Lucy woke up. The room she was in was seeped in pitch blackness, she couldn't even see her hands in front of her. As soon as she woke up, lights shined on her from every direction and she tried to keep herself from being blinded.

"Lucy Chambers, fourteen, decent standing, no connections to oligarchal groups…" a girl around her age listed off details in a monotone voice. "And recently contacted by Kyubey?" Lucy turned to her.

The girl was wearing a pantsuit, the kind of thing that one would expect a CIA or FBI spook to wear, but tailored specifically for a fourteen-year-old girl. Her emotions were hidden behind opaque sunglasses and an unmoving frown.

"Can you confirm this?"

Lucy looked around her as she just realized she was sitting in a metal chair, conscious thoughts slowly returning to her as the ringing in her head ceased. Though Lucy hadn't been knocked out before, she figured that this was what it felt like.

Although anything immediately before this place was a blur.

"What? Where am I? Who are you?" Her voice was filled with quivering fear. Rapidly looking around the room as her eyes adjusted. There were no obvious exits. Just her and this suited girl in a featureless room, alone.

The girl had a large sidearm inside a black holster with a large gem situated on it. That's what Lucy noticed before the girl continued talking.

"From henceforth you may refer to me as simply 'agent.' The less you know about me specifically, the better. As for where you are…" She took off her sunglasses, folded them up, and placed them in her front pocket. "This is a secure location, there is no getting out of here unless you answer all of our questions. If you cooperate, no harm will come to you or your family."

Lucy heard the last phrase, and a part of her internally panicked. She wasn't smart, but she could pick up the implication.

"I… I'll cooperate… please don't hurt them…" she said, meekly.

"Very good. That kind of thinking will get us through this quickly. Now…" She cleared her throat. "How much do you know about Magical Girls?"

"K-Kyubey told me they are p-powerful beings… and th-they get a wish for becoming one…" Lucy was having trouble recalling details amidst this stressful experience.

Agent was waiting for more to be said, but sighed when she realized that was it. "Right. Let's get you caught up to speed then." She cleared her throat. "Magical Girls are beings created by Kyubey, the other incubators, and his owner species. One thing you need to realize is that Magical Girls are not human."

Agent pointed to her holster. "Much like what you were about to do, I became a Magical Girl. I lost my humanity seventeen years ago and now the body you see isn't human, it's a corpse."

She unholstered her pistol, causing Lucy to instantly recoil.

Agent shot herself in the head, the bullet traveled clean through her skull, causing a spray of blood to coat the wall and the sound to reverberate through the room, deafening Lucy for a few seconds.

She couldn't hear her own screams of fear and pain.

The other girl, meanwhile, had barely any reaction. Her deadpan expression was maintained throughout the entire experience.

If anything, she looked slightly mad that blood had gotten on her suit.

Agent holstered her pistol, and waited patiently for Lucy to calm down. Minutes of babbling, cowering, and frozenness from being paralyzed by fear.

"Why would you do that!?" yelled Lucy.

"To prove a point. I'm not human, and if you take Kyubey's deal, you won't be either." Agent gestured to herself. "This isn't the body of a human, it's a husk, a corpse puppeted by my disconnected soul, which was shoved into the small gem you can see on my holster.

"B-but this is good… right…?" Lucy's insanely nervous voice was hard to control. "C-can't you go around… helping people…? Like a superhero…?"

Agent let out a small chuckle. "Goddamn, you really are fourteen. Sorry, through this line of work I tend to forget you can tell how old someone is by how they look. Magical Girls stop aging past the point they were turned, so I see a lot of adults stuck in a child's body, myself included." she cleared her throat again. "Anyway, there's caveats Kyubey has chosen not to mention."

She unlatched the gem from her holster and enveloped it in white light, causing it to shift into an egg-shape. "This is our Soul Gem. It's the… gem where our souls are stored. If it breaks, we die. If it gets hit during combat but doesn't break… you'll wish you had died instead."

Agent's head wound began to reseal itself, an aura of energy surrounding the hole as flesh and hair formed around it. Small clouds of blackness coalesced within the Soul Gem.

"The things you see swirling in my gem is stress. Not stress like you know it; the kind you get before a big test or when a family member calls you out of the blue, but a more technical stress. Stress builds up the more you use magic, whether it's offensively, defensively, or to heal your wounds. Stress is removed by applying these:"

She pulled out a black gem surrounded by silvery metal, with two spikes on the top of bottom. It balanced on Agent's hand by the tip of the needle, defying gravity.

"This is a Grief Seed. It will absorb the stress from a Gem, and then break once they reach capacity."

Lucy stared at the Soul Gem for a few moments. "W-what happens when there's a lot of stress…?"

Agent smiled. "That's the best part. When a Magical Girl reaches maximum stress, they explode in a fireball of emotional energy, and become a Witch: a monster. A monster that has no mind except for destruction, desolation, and misery. An emotionless killing machine that attacks human and Magical Girl alike, that can't be reasoned with and only exists to be eliminated."

There was the catch; the crux of Agent's entire argument. People who became Magical Girls who didn't get enough of these Grief Seeds would become a Witch. Their final bit of humanity, their souls, would be forfeit and destroyed, and their energy stolen and used to perpetuate terror.

But Lucy had a final question.

"... Where do grief seeds come from?"

"Killing Witches, of course." Agent responded, with no waiting and in her normal deadpan voice. "You kill Witches for Grief Seeds. Every Witch was once a Magical Girl, so if you become one…" She got closer to Lucy. "You will be using the corpses of Magical Girls for the rest of your life to keep yourself alive. For the rest of time, until you too will become a Witch yourself, only to be killed by another Magical Girl, who herself will become a Witch someday, and then a Grief Seed…"

"A cycle…" said Lucy.

"The Law of Cycles." said Agent. "Truth be told, nobody knows where that phrase comes from. It just spawned into the colloquialisms of Magical Girls back in the early two-thousands. As far as FBEM research could divine, this phrase has… startling implications for its existence, although it mostly served to tell us we were using it wrong."

"I don't understand… what's the FBEM?"

"Not important." Agent snapped back. "What is important is what the Law of Cycles means to us, here, in this universe. The Law of Cycles is the law by which all girls are indoctrinated into the moment they become a Magical Girl. The Law of Cycles is what causes Magical Girls to harvest Grief Seeds from Witches, who were once Magical Girls who harvested their own Grief Seeds from their own Witches, who in turn… you get the idea."

"So what… does all this mean…?"

"It means we had a job to do, Lucy," said Agent. "The world needed to be liberated from this endless cycle of despair and suffering. The world needed to be liberated from Witches and stress. It needed to be liberated… from Magical Girls. Those at the top of the former FBEM had an epiphany. Life as we had it couldn't go on, it was inherently unsustainable. So we made the simple decision:"

Agent got even closer.

"We had to break the cycle." she stood back up, placed her arms behind her back, and started pacing. "The Order of the Broken Cycle was formed that day, and through our efforts we slashed the Magical Girl population in North America by nearly ninety-nine percent within a few days. No more Magical Girls, no more witches, no more subjugated humanity."

Lucy's eyes widened as she realized what Agent's statement really meant. "But… those Magical Girls had families… right? And you just…"

"Sacrifices had to be made, Lucy." Agent stopped pacing and stared at her. "And besides…" she pointed to her pistol. "We aren't human, remember? Our wants and desires do not matter within the context of humanity. We are nothing but anomalies that need to be taken care of. The best thing we can do is either help that goal to transpire… or die silently."

Agent didn't have any hints of regret in her voice. As far Lucy could tell, Agent believed fully what she was saying, as if it had been internalized her entire life.

"But that's not true!" yelled lucy. "You act human, you look human, why don't you consider yourself one?!"

"Need I shoot myself again?" said Agent, in a way that communicated just how much she had said this in the past. Lucy wasn't the first to ask this, and she wouldn't be the last. "Kyubey is an alien, he's admitted as such. When he modifies girls into Magical Girls, they become alien as well: a malicious parasite living among humanity just waiting to sprout into a deadly Witch. And once that Witch dies, it gives its Grief Seed to another Magical Girl, ready to become a Witch herself."

"..." Lucy didn't have a response.

"So, I've got one final question for you now that you know everything you need to know. You know now of the infinite suffering that awaits you as a Magical Girl, your short life will end unceremoniously as you become a Witch and kill hundreds. And worst of all, your death will only fuel the existence of other parasites like yourself. My final question is… do you want to become a Magical Girl?"

"..." Lucy thought for a second. "What if I still do?" she asked.

Agent sighed. "Now, the Order can't have this, Lucy. We're trying to stop girls from becoming Magical Girls, but we don't like plain murder, and we especially don't like sending our soldiers in to die against a Magical Girl who happened to have a particularly strong wish. So our proposition is simple."

Agent turned to Lucy, that same emotionless expression burning holes in Lucy's soul.

"If you decide to become a Magical Girl, we will kill your entire family. You will watch us as we execute each member one-by-one. They will be given final words to you, where they know full well that it is your fault they are going to die, and then we will kill them." She turned to her side, talking as if this was all standard procedure. "Of course edge cases exist. Perhaps this fate seems alluring if your family is particularly abusive, so know that we are fully capable of customizing how exactly you are tortured, until you too are killed alongside everyone and everything you value. You, as surveillance has shown, care for your family deeply, so we know we won't have to fall back on customization for you."

"..." Lucy was trying to take in all this information, her breathing turned to hyperventilating, now grasping the full ramifications of what Agent's said.

"And finally, the way you are killed is important," said Agent. "You will be allowed to turn into a Magical Girl, but your wish is forced to be something completely mundane, like a sandwich, or a ton of bricks, it doesn't matter. If you wish for something else, we'll cut your vocal cords and wish on your behalf, we have our methods. Once you become a Magical Girl, you will be tortured until your stress hits its maximum, at which point, you'll become a Witch. We'll destroy your witch form, and use your Grief Seed to further fuel the efforts of the Order of the Broken Cycle. This is your ultimate and unavoidable fate if you decide to become a Magical Girl."

Agent got closer, for the final time. She was in Lucy's face.

"So I'll ask for a final time. Will you become a Magical Girl?"

Lucy desperately tried to dig for a response. She was faced with trauma beyond her wildest sensibilities.

She wanted to cry, but she was too afraid. Tears refused to come out, for fear they may face the same fate she might.

"No." she responded.

"Fantastic." Agent moved back. "Now before we send you off, some details:"

Lucy prepared herself for even more information. But how could she? This girl- no, this woman, this wolf in sheep's clothing, had abducted and threatened her and her family. Lucy wished she could fight back, that she had the power to do the right thing, to right this injustice.

And unfortunately for her… Kyubey was watching.

Kyubey was always watching.

"We're going to keep monitoring you until you turn fifteen, at which point Kyubey will mark you as a failed Magical Girl and move on with his plans. If at any point you start talking to Kyubey, we'll know, even if it's telepathically. Live this year normally, and we will not interfere with your life ever again. The memory you are experiencing now will slowly devolve into a forgotten, traumatic experience in the psyche of a mature woman. A common delusion or dream shared between some, but never in the same way. Sure you can go to the police or your parents and tell them what happened here, but they won't believe you. We've made sure of that."

Agent moved her sunglasses back up and pocketed her hands.

"One last thing, though. Kyubey will encourage you to fight us. Rest assured no matter what you wish for, you won't win. Our mission and organization is protected by fate, by tens of Magical Girl wishes used to solidify its persistence in this universe, the same magic that protects the law of cycles protects us. You will not win."

She turned away.

"We won't be in touch, unless you make a severe mistake."


"After that I just… woke up back in my room, like it was a bad dream."

"..." Sarah wasn't sure how to respond. She dug into her mind and tried to find the right words to say, but struggled to come up with anything.

"Except Kyubey was standing over me, complaining about the Order in his usual emotionless voice, while simultaneously encouraging me to become Magical Girl to fight them, just as Agent said he would."

"Did you ever ask Kyubey what he thought of this organization?" asked Sarah.

Lucy shrugged. "I didn't really care."

"I have mixed thoughts on them." said Kyubey, sitting in the corner of the elevator in the position a cat would sleep in.

Sarah, of course, couldn't perceive Kyubey like Lucy could. And Lucy tried her best to ignore him, despite several eye glances towards his location.

He raised his head and looked at Lucy. "While I appreciate that unlike other Magical Girl organizations, they place value on their fate as Witches, I would prefer if they let Magical Girls live their full lives, maximizing their karmic destiny and thus their energy potential. I also don't enjoy how they try to kill me on sight, it's made it very difficult to do my job in North America. The Order also tries their best to get humans to not become Magical Girls, which works directly against my purposes, and thus I usually encourage Magical Girls to try and defeat them."

Lucy crossed her arms, still trying to ignore Kyubey.

"Kyubey used false promises and white lies to get me to make my wish. For three long weeks I mulled it over in my head again and again. Whenever I had a free thought, he was there in the corner of my room, in an empty seat in a classroom, sitting next to me on the school bus, prodding me for conversation and trying to get me to become a Magical Girl. At first he started large, saying that I could save my family, and protect the innocent using my powers, and that my wish could fix the world. But as I ignored him he shot smaller, saying that I could wish to not need school, or to stop my brother from doing something annoying. I think he was exhausting his options, desperately trying to get me to become a Magical Girl."

Lucy sighed.

"I had the ability to become a superhero, to make the changes to the world I wanted, to finally be the person I'd always wanted to be, but…"

She stopped for a moment, and looked down.

"I… the thoughts in the back of my mind didn't stop. If I took this gift, I'd have no time to think. I'd need to fight a group of Magical Girls nearly immediately. And then we get… to my wish…"

"You mentioned that talking about wishes was taboo," said Sarah. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yeah…" said Lucy. "Yeah. One day it dawned me, a thought. A dumb, stupid, idiot thought. A thought I wish I could take back, a thought that's to this day, plagued my nightmares."

Lucy sighed again.

"I thought I could beat the order and save my family, but I just needed the skill to do so." Lucy let out a hurt chuckle. "As if I was some… fucking anime protagonist who could defeat her enemies after a training arc."


"Should I do this…?" Said Lucy, sitting down on the couch next to her younger brother. Jack was Lucy's twin, they'd been difficult to separate, always evolving similar interests and trying to stay together whenever possible. While her situation had forced Lucy to mature very quickly. Jack was still mostly ignorant to it, and honestly, Jack wasn't sure if Lucy was just fucking with him or talking about some video game.

"I'm still not really sure what you're talking about…" said Jack, scratching the back of his head. "When you say Magical Girls, do you mean like… an anime? Is this a video game?"

She'd learned very quickly that whenever she talked about Magical Girls, the other person quickly forgot all the information within hours.

After all, Lucy had been in this exact conversation five times by now.

"Yeah, it's a part of that MMO I've been playing." said Lucy.

"So hang on." Jack paused the TV in front of them and turned to her. "So if you take this, you can do whatever you want, but a shadowy organization will destroy your guild?"

Lucy internally cringed at the reductionism of her situation. Unfortunately, this was the only way to talk about it with him.

It's not like he could see Kyubey standing in front of the TV.

"Yeah… yeah. It's like that. I think the best choice is to use my wish to protect my guild, but the organization said they were prepared for every opportunity, every wish I could make."

"Hmm…" Jack thought for a moment. "I dunno. I guess if you can't wish for them to be gone, or to have the power to beat them, then you're kinda shit outta luck. Although I know if I was in your guild, I'd want you to have the wish. I could handle my own against a shadow organization for sure."

A single tear fell from Lucy's eye, she tried hard to mask her emotional response as best as she could. She sniffled. "Thanks… Jack…"

"Woah Luce, you alright? I-"

She went in for a hug, and he cautiously kept his arms away from her back, before slowly moving them to embrace her. "Hey things are gonna be alright, it's just a game, right?"


"Those were my final words to him. And he didn't… he didn't…"

Lucy ran at Sarah with blinding speed and wrapped her in a bone-crunching hug. "He didn't remember!" She sobbed. "They killed him… in front of me… the last time… I saw his face… he died… he died in pain… Everyone did…"

"It was regrettable what happened to you, Lucy." Kyubey closed his eyes, but didn't change the tone with which he spoke. "But doesn't it make you want to fight harder? Those girls who control this Order of the Broken Cycle are still out there causing injustices against Magical Girls like you. You can fight them!"

"I tried, Kyubey!" Lucy let go and turned to an empty corner of the elevator. "You didn't give me enough power, or enough time! Because of you my family is dead!"

"It can't be helped. I gave you exactly what you wished for, Lucy Chambers. Any issues with you achieving your goals lie within you, not me."

"I should kill you here and now, where will you run?! Huh?!"

Sarah put her hand on Lucy's shoulder.

She couldn't see what Lucy was yelling at.

"This body is one of many, I'll just retrieve another. Physical violence against this one would be highly illogical. But you should consider my previous words, Lucy Chambers. You possess power above that of the average Magical Girl due to your age, you just don't realize it yet."

"What the hell are you talking about." Lucy was barely masking her rage. "I can turn invisible and throw butterflies that barely scrape metal, how the fuck can I use those against the damn Order?!"

"Oh, Lucy Chambers. You have fallen victim to the thoughts of several other Magical Girls. Your power doesn't come from your status as a Magical Girl. Your power comes from your eventual transformation into a Witch! And your age and accrued karmic destiny means you'll be a powerful one, fully capable of hunting down agents of the Order."

Kyubey stood up. Lucy continued listening.

"The Order has grown complacent, I've seen it myself. They have lost much of their combat skills fighting novice Magical Girls and regular humans. They do not have the equipment or the expertise to fight a powerful Witch off. In fact, if we were to take one of the Soul Gems from the basement level below and fuse it back with its host Magical Girl, then release them into the United States, the Order would fall in hours!"

"And what about the humans?" asked Lucy. "What about them!?"

"They'll just make more. Humans are quite good at that."

Lucy took a deep breath. She turned away from Kyubey.

"We're done here."

"As you wish." Kyubey vanished, walking off into a shadow and disappearing.

Sarah found it difficult to follow the one-sided conversation, all she could do was keep her hand on Lucy's shoulder.

Lucy kept staring at the corner for a few moments, before turning to hug Sarah again.

She sobbed quietly.

Sarah glanced up.