Beltane Is The New Samhain (Or How Walpurgisnacht Became Halloween)

by MiddleEarthThestral

When a dying Madoka makes a wish to help Homura, her wish slowly turns the next cycle's Mitakihara and the surrounding cities into a land of Halloween themed horror. An unaware Homura is at first surprised by how well the new cycle is going, but no good thing lasts for long in her life, and new and terrible dangers lurk in the shadows. Zombie Sayaka, Werewolf Kyoko, Vampire Hitomi

4. Chapter 4 When Monsters Hunger

I get to update on Christmas. Yay! Happy Holidays everyone, and I hope you enjoy this holiday gift of a new chapter. Unfortunately, it's a new chapter for a Halloween story. It's like seeing the Christmas decorations for sale in the middle of October, but reversed.

Chapter 4 When Monsters Hunger, When Monsters Feast

Kyoko stared in horror at the Chitose blood that stained the bedroom. Her hands were covered in blood and there was something sticky on her chin. A half eaten body lay at her feet. Kyoko backed away from the corpse, her hands shaking. She had killed before, but never like this. "Oh God, what have I done?!"

"Is it safe for me to come in?" asked Yuma from outside the room. Yuma was outside the room! Yuma was outside the room where her parents died!

"No, don't come in. It's… it's…"

"They're dead aren't they?"

"I'm so sorry, Yuma! I'm a monster!" Kyoko backed away from the broken down door, she could not see Yuma from where she stood, and started walking towards a shattered window, the only source of light in the room. She stepped in something that went crunch and as she tried to free her foot, she fell over onto Yuma's parents' bed.

"I don't actually feel anything about their deaths. Am I a monster, too?" asked Yuma.

"Huh? No, you aren't a monster. You're probably just in shock." Why was Yuma not running away from her?

"Shock? I think my mom did that to me once." Kyoko was feeling less bad about the murders she could barely remember committing, but still why was Yuma here? Kyoko could barely recall any details of the previous night. It all felt like a dream.

She decided to focus on the present. "Shock is when you just go through something really scary or difficult or painful and your brain kind of has trouble catching up to what just happened."

"Oh, I've had that before. It usually goes away after a little time, so I don't think that's what is happening."

"How…how long have you been standing out there?"

"A few hours, and I'm not standing. You set me down on the couch and whenever I tried to get up you would pick me up with your mouth by the back of my dress and set me back onto it. It was kind of fun to play like that, but I could tell you were getting a little annoyed after I did it for the fifteenth time."

"Uh huh…well uh… stay where you are then."

"Okay. Um…"

"Is there something you want to say? It's okay, you can say it."

"I took a nap earlier, so I'm not really tired, but I am getting a little hungry. Um… sorry Kyoko."

"Don't apologize for getting hungry. It's my responsibility to take care of you… especially since I did… uh…this, so you can always tell me when you're hungry."

"Are you hungry, too?"

Kyoko looked at the half eaten bodies of a man and a woman. "I don't think I'll ever be hungry again."

"In that case, can I have your portion of the food?"

"Yeah, sure."

Kyoko heard a scream from the other room. It was not Yuma. Kyoko rushed in to see that last night she had also broken down the front door of the apartment as well and outside the door was an elderly woman with a walker staring. Kyoko saw the woman with the walker start to slowly hobble away.

"We might need to go." said Kyoko.

"You have something on your chin." said Yuma.

Kyoko felt the stickiness on her chin and saw the blood on her hands. "I should probably wash this off."

Yuma pointed her towards the bathroom door.

"Yuma, you left your book bag here right? Can you throw any food you can find in the kitchen into your bag?"

"Sure."

Kyoko stepped into the bathroom and saw that her mouth and the area around it was stained with blood. She started cleaning herself up using some water from the sink and a few hand towels from a cupboard.

Thankfully there was very little blood on her hoodie which she could vaguely remember magically disappearing when she had initially transformed similar to her magical girl transformations.

She could probably transform now and escape, but what to do with Yuma?

Kyoko was seen at the scene of a horrible double homicide, covered in blood and she was not about to kill the old lady to silence the woman. If she kept Yuma with her, the girl would be at risk of being caught in the crossfire with anyone hunting Kyoko.

If Kyoko left Yuma, the girl would at least not be brought back to her parents who were now dead, and there was no way a foster parent could be worse, but Yuma was a magical girl now. Foster parents might not understand that Yuma needed to hunt witches to survive. Unfortunately, the only person Kyoko could think of to leave Yuma with would be old Mami, but that would mean explaining everything that happened to Mami.

What had happened though? Kyoko did not want to admit it, but she thought she knew. The moon started the transformation. She was bitten on the full moon by a giant wolf monster that turned out after being killed to be a human woman.

Kyoko was a werewolf.

She had just under a month before the next full moon. She would have to lock herself up somewhere so she could not bite anyone and that was assuming that her transformations would not be a nightly affair, that what had happened last night was a one off thing due to her being a newly turned werewolf or her being a magical girl.

Kyoko finished cleaning off her face and hands.

"Alright Yuma, I know there is a window in the bedroom, but are there any other windows in your apartment?"

Yuma shook her head. This was not going to be pleasant.

"In that case, I need you to close your eyes and not open them until I tell you to. I'm going to carry you and we're going to jump. Can you do that?"

"Yeah. I can do that."

The apartment was a few stories up, but that was nothing to a transformed magical girl. Their transformed bodies were much more durable and resilient than a human's. Even untransformed, they were just beyond peak human ability.

Kyoko held up her hand with the ring which was actually her disguised soul gem, but saw the gem was not on her hand anymore.

"Yuma, what happened to my soul gem?"

"It's on your chest." Yuma pointed at the center of Kyoko's chest.

Kyoko put her hand over her sternum and could feel something hard underneath her hoodie. Lifting up the front she could see a faint red glow shining from the gem that was now embedded into the top of her chest right below her collar bone.

She touched it and tried to turn the gem back into ring form figuring she could just heal the hole in her chest. Nothing happened.

Kyoko decided to ignore the inconvenience and tried to transform. Her clothing disappeared and her bones began to stretch and snap.

Wait… this was not the transformation she wanted!

The process was much less painful and thankfully a little faster this time, but Kyoko did not like it at all. The transformation ended with her soul gem returning back inside of her body.

She collapsed panting with Yuma healing the fresh scratches all over her body from where she had clawed herself again.

Yuma was taking this way too well!

Kyoko realized she was still mostly in control of herself. She could feel something almost new inside her prowling about, like it was stalking prey, or perhaps like a caged animal and it almost felt like the thing was free now, but not really truly free, not yet. Kyoko guessed that the wolf was only truly free, only completely in control on the full moon or at least under the light of the moon. She at least hoped that that was the case!

Kyoko tried to speak, but all that came out were whines and yips.

Yuma looked at Kyoko in confusion. Kyoko sighed. Sitting on her haunches she picked up Yuma who was now wearing a backpack of food with one arm and waited for Yuma to close her eyes. Kyoko had to demonstrate closing her own eyes and covering them with a hand and then gently tapping the side of Yuma's head with a clawed finger to get her point across.

Yuma closed her eyes and covered them with a hand. Kyoko checked that the other girl was not peeking and then used her free hand and back legs to maneuver into the parents' bedroom, away from the bits of body, around the massive pools of blood, over a spilled ashtray that reminded her of Yuma's scars and why these two adults deserved this, and then out the broken window.

After jumping down and quickly crawling into an alleyway she found she was able to detransform with just a thought combined with a touch of her clawed paw hand to where her gem used to be and a few seconds of further pain and discomfort.

"You can open your eyes now, Yuma."

Looking at her soul gem back to being embedded in her body, Kyoko was shocked to see it completely pure and untainted even though her transformation should have used magic. She tried using magic to summon a spear.

The spear formed like it normally would, but to Kyoko's surprise her soul gem did darken just a little, just like it normally would if she used magic.

Kyoko could fight untransformed with her spear and might still be able to protect Yuma from fully transformed rookie magical girls, she was a veteran after all, but if things went badly with Mami, Kyoko's only option would be the wolf. Kyoko did not want to bring the wolf out any more than she had to. Not after what it did.

That meant Kyoko would be next to defenseless going into Mami's territory. Worse, she would have to explain to Mami what happened, because the News was bound to cover the double homicide with a side of cannibalism. Once Mami heard about that, she might just attack Kyoko on sight. Still, looking at the newly orphaned Yuma, a girl who reminded Kyoko too much of her dead little sister, Kyoko knew what she had to choose.

O . O . O . O . O

To: MakeLoveNotWorkMan at mail dot com

Subject: Pro War Terrorist Break In

I still don't get why you insist on us using our personal emails for this communication, but fine Daichi, I'll play along. Switching to personal emails instead of continuing to use our New Age Solutions company emails honestly won't matter if the government is already looking into us (you know they probably have all kinds of ways to spy on us), but fine, I'll play along!

Those pro-war terrorists that broke in Sunday evening did not cause any serious damage to most of the Peace Shroom batches. That's the good news.

The bad news is that we were in the process of genetically modifying a new batch to produce more of the Peace Proteins, those proteins we created to theoretically reduce aggression and help people mellow out, and that entire vat was irreversibly compromised. One of the intruders coughed up some blood on it. Really gross stuff!

We did not think anything was too wrong with the batch, though of course we could not use it for testing anymore, so a few of the other doctors decided to eat it rather than let it go to waste. Turns out after we handed the coughing up blood guy to the police, he was rushed off to his own special room in Mitakihara General Hospital and those cops were all put into quarantine. The government is covering whatever it is up and we're getting worried.

Doctor Nao, who on a dare ate ten times as many of the shrooms as anyone else, didn't show up for work yesterday and nobody has heard from her. Worse, most of the staff who ate those shrooms have started to complain of fever. We obviously washed the blood off, but it was not like we were going to use bleach on something we were about to eat. (they were about to eat. The rest of us just watched)

I just hope there are no weird interactions with this new genetic modification process and whatever pathogen was introduced. It should be harmless to have the Peace Proteins produced inside the human body, and I doubt the proteins would be harmful even if they got denatured, but for obvious reasons we have never tested this out.

Anyways, I sent all those workers home and told them to stay home and avoid contact with anyone until we know what is going on. Hopefully they'll be right as rain in a few days, but given all the secrecy from the police and the hospital, I am not getting my hopes up.

I just wish I knew what that guy was sick with. One of the other guys involved in the break in had mentioned something about vacationing to the Congo, something about studying bats.

O . O . O . O . O

Sayaka shambled to a stop on the track field after successfully lapping her fastest classmates which for some reason now included Hitomi and lapping twice or even thrice her slower classmates which included Madoka which was not to say anything bad about Madoka. Sayaka knew Madoka had plenty of other strengths, but running was not one of them. Hitomi for some reason had told Sayaka when Sayaka was passing her that they should race at night, as if that would somehow make Hitomi run better.

"That's a new record, Sayaka!" said her wide eyed PE teacher in a slightly shrill voice, a very nice woman in her thirties who was a former gymnast with a half dozen marathons under her belt.

Sayaka looked at her freshly rebandaged arm and then back out towards her friends. Truly, the arm giveth. She was sure this improvement to her already not insignificant athletic ability, this newfound ability to go full sprint nonstop, was due to her arm and her new unusual condition, perhaps as some kind of blessing for her sticking up for Hitomi and Madoka over the past few days since the school rumor mill declared Madoka as openly polyamorous and Hitomi as not so secretly gay.

Kids could be cruel sometimes, but nobody was going to mess with Sayaka's friends on her watch. Sayaka smirked, feeling proud and triumphant.

The effect was somewhat ruined by her slouched posture. The arm also taketh and she found herself slouching more after having unkind thoughts about Hitomi's new aesthetics. The other girl had taken to wearing a wide white sun hat during the day and even got a special dispensation from the teachers to wear her hat during PE which she usually wore with a new pale white face mask. The girl was wearing both right now.

Sayaka had thought that the hat made Hitomi look like an old woman and now Sayaka was cursed with slouched posture and a hanging head just like an old woman unless she put in actual effort to correct her posture and stand, sit, or walk normally. Her posture was worse when running since her arms would sometimes flail around a little if she was not careful which made her recent victories on the track field just a little less cool and a little more embarrassing. Still, she could live with looking a little silly in exchange for superhuman endurance.

More embarrassing than the occasional flailing arms while running though was what happened in Science class the other day. The class had been a boring anatomy class and she had been daydreaming about taking a bite out of that Ijiwaru girl when she noticed Madoka who was sitting behind her and one seat to the right had fallen asleep.

The teacher for this class usually just droned on and on and never noticed if anyone was asleep or goofing off so long as they goofed off quietly.

Rather than wake Madoka up or just leave her alone, both of which would have been the right thing to do, Sayaka had instead decided to play what she thought to be a harmless prank on her friend. She had thought it would be good fun and a good laugh.

It turns out putting a little plastic spider onto your friend's hand while she is asleep is a good way to make said friend injure herself trying to jump out of her seat. Hitomi had also sent a very unimpressed look at Sayaka which just made Sayaka feel even worse about what she did.

She was going to be a lot more careful about the things she did as jokes in the future, but her arm decided she needed an extra reminder. As soon as she finished whispering apologies to Madoka, she turned back towards the front of the class to make sure the teacher had not noticed anything. The newest slides on the board featured images of the human brain, and after a moment she realized she was drooling. Her mouth was hanging open, and she was just staring dumbly at the board until the slide changed to show a diagram of the spine. Thankfully she was able to get the drooling under control after that, and the weird drooling and staring had not happened again, but it was really embarrassing and helped Sayaka to better understand what it was like being on the receiving end of a seemingly harmless prank. She at least presumed this to be a prank by her arm.

At least the effects of the prank were not permanent.

Speaking of hopefully not permanent problems related to arms, Kyosuke's next surgery was tomorrow. She really hoped this surgery went well. He seemed really optimistic during her visit yesterday, but she still did not understand why he texted Hitomi about the upcoming surgery and not her.

O . O . O . O . O

The surgery was a success.

That was the sum of the call Hitomi had just shared with Kyosuke. She set her light pink cell phone down onto her new black marble side table carved with gargoyles, right beside tonight's math homework and a wine goblet full of ethically sourced human blood. She leaned back in her new high backed, red velvet and ebony chair crossing her legs in a manner that would have earned her a harsh scolding about the rules just a week earlier. She wore a rather daring black nightgown owned by her great grandmother that if she was lucky would have only resulted in a scolding.

The new outfit and new decorations had come from the family storage, and they were not the only new items she had brought out of storage to enhance her living space. She had added massive heavy black velvet curtains blocking out her enormous window, new scarlet drapes around her massive four poster bed arranged to look like a princess's grand pavilion in a manner similar to her previous drapes, paintings of her ancestors both asian and european who now glared or smiled cruelly from the walls, a few spiked iron braziers covered in metal wrought images of people in agony that lined the walkway to the door, her new iron maiden, her new bookcase of old texts and grimoires, only a fraction of which about sixteen and a half being bound in human skin with a smaller fraction being written in human or animal blood, and last, but certainly not least, her night black coffin with plush crimson velvet interior that she spent her actual sleeping time in, though thankfully she did not need much sleep anymore so long as she did not use her new powers often or go out into the sun more than was absolutely necessary.

Hitomi supposed her new bookcase with its dark wood elegantly carved to show the beasts of the night and full of ancient tomes did look slightly out of place next to her other bookcases of rose wood carved with unicorns, doves, and the like and full of textbooks, notebooks, and novels. She had hardly ever found any time to read these novels due to the tutoring that used to be a constant time sink in her life, but she was looking forward to finally diving in even if a few of the more garishly decorated books clashed with her aesthetic. A few of the books on her new bookcase were textbooks, but even these clashed with the old textbooks as a not insignificant number of her new textbooks were among the sixteen and a half bound in human skin books.

Of these textbooks, her favorite would have to be De Humani Corporis Fabrica with its beautifully posed images of the human muscular and skeletal system she could salivate over for hours if she did not have better things to do, and if salivating was not also a behavior unbecoming of a lady, even one who was now emancipated from the familial rules. Thankfully, she always had better things to do like read another skin bound book, her copy of Des Destinées de l'Amour, The Destinies of Love. It was so romantic even when it was telling tales of platonic or familial love, and she could and did gush over that book for hours. The binding only made the book even more perfect as a fine addition to her collection.

The juxtaposition of the bookcases was not quite as jarring as that of her light pink cellphone against the black marble side table carved with gargoyles or her old slippers against her new nightgown. Her old purple slippers with their fuzzy white tops and cute yellow bows with pink hearts just did not match the look and feel of the flowing black silk gown with its spider web designs and many unnecessary slits and inner pockets for poisons and daggers. Still, Hitomi liked those slippers. They had been a gift from Madoka for her 12th birthday. Madoka had said that she thought they looked like something a magical girl would wear, so Hitomi should wear them since Madoka thought her friend was simply magical. Ah Madoka…

Returning her focus to the room, she reflected that not all of her old possessions and decorations looked out of place with the new look she was now finally allowed to embrace. There was her old grand piano which looked right at home against the now much more delightfully pleasant and comfortable atmosphere as did, strangely enough, her old statues of a beautiful mermaid, a dashing violinist, an elegant 19th century lady, and a ram. She had them all arranged next to her iron maiden.

Hitomi especially liked her mermaid and violinist statues for how they reminded her of two of her friends, though she really should find a good statue to represent Madoka, something that was as cute and precious as that radiant and pure hearted maiden. She really should have her friends over some time to see her redecorated room and let them finally see the new her, the her that she had had to keep hidden all her life. In the privacy of her own room she would be free of the remaining constraints of the rules of society, a set of rules that she sadly still had to adhere to while in public.

Still, Hitomi could live with those simple and easy to follow rules at least when she only had to follow them outside of the home. It did not hurt that one of society's rules overlapped with her new biological constraint of needing to be invited into a dwelling. She was just glad to finally be free of the family rules. She was really shocked by the very recent revelation that her family was one of only a tiny handful of families that had rules like this in place, a tiny handful of families that had a habit of intermarrying just like their Hapsburg ancestors, meaning most of the people bound by the rules were her cousins.

Most families of the world could do what they wanted consequence free, but Hitomi could not hold that against them. She knew she had been born into privilege and power. There was a reason she only redecorated using possessions already owned by her family that were kept in storage as opposed to wasting money on new ones, and she did most of the moving and rearranging herself, not wanting to trouble the serving staff with the extra work. Her newfound strength and ability to climb almost smooth vertical surfaces in defiance of gravity had proved very useful.

And of course, Hitomi could never hold any of her pains over the rules against her parents who still had to abide by the same exact rules and only enforced the family rules to protect her. She knew her life was now going to be either much shorter or much much longer, though only if she found herself buried alive. Her family and those like them had many many enemies which she had already learned existed the hard way.

She still saw the light leaving that man's eyes as he stared up almost accusingly at her, or perhaps he stared with a joyous satisfaction like someone who had finally found evidence that validated their world view. One of the two, but whatever it was, it disturbed Hitomi. She was grateful that she now needed less sleep, because she could hardly sleep at all those first three nights.

Still, she resolved to make the most of her likely short remaining life, especially since her friends were still somehow able to accept her in spite of knowing the truth. Well, Madoka definitely knew the truth. Sayaka probably had worked it out given that the other girl had asked her about supernatural powers controlling destiny and about the undead. Hitomi had of course responded as well as she could. She was still waiting to tell Kyosuke, but given her seemingly complete and unconditional acceptance from the other two, she was sure he would accept her too.

She was now free of the rules and free of the fear of rejection that had haunted her every day of her life.

No longer did she have the rules constraining her creative freedom when it came to decorating her room. No longer were there rules dictating what she could wear and what she could eat. No longer would she get in trouble for melodramatic monologuing, the threat of punishment for this had often left her afraid to speak up and speak her mind, especially since she had always for some reason had trouble knowing what was and was not saying too much. Of course, learning to speak up and speak her mind after so many years of having to be relatively quiet was not going to be easy.

No longer would she have to bury herself in endless hours of tutoring and practicing to keep herself from getting bored and giving into one of a hundred ultimately fatal temptations. She was done with most of her tutoring, forever! She would still of course continue tutoring on fun and interesting subjects like dance, sword fighting, animal care, hypnotherapy, and seduction. The latter two were new additions to the schedule and both would have once scandalized her parents at how flagrantly they violated the rules.

Perhaps best of all, no longer did she have rules constraining who she could love or how many people she could marry. Vampires had a well deserved reputation for homosexuality and bisexuality with such famous examples as her great great great aunt Carmilla or her great great uncle Byron, and one of her most famous ancestors was a man who famously had quite a few brides though he was perhaps best known for impaling his enemies and for that awkward bit of business in England after that little incident with that lawyer. Now Hitomi would be able fantasize guilt free about having two or three handsome, dangerous grooms and ethereal, beautiful brides.

On that subject of romance was the matter of this most recent call with Kyosuke. His surgery was a miraculous success and she hoped he was no longer haunted by the specter of the accident destroying his ambitions for his life. Hitomi could not have brought herself to ask him out while he was suffering so much. How could he ever accept anyone's love when his pain was so fresh even if love might help him heal?

Hitomi felt, between both of their near death experiences and both of their liberations, and of course her impending death, that she had to share her feelings for him now! Well, perhaps not now, exactly, but as soon as was reasonable at least. She still was not sure what on earth to say to him, and worse still, she did not want her love for Kyosuke to come between her and Sayaka who also had feelings for Kyosuke. Still, if Hitomi's ancestors could be polygamous and if Madoka could maybe be polyamorous and Sayaka definitely be polyamorous based on her love of Kyousuke and her rather public relationship with Madoka then Hitomi could at least try to be, too, even if Hitomi was not sure that she and Madoka were actually dating, or about to start dating, or had even done anything more than an accidental hickey. They had certainly not yet declared their love for each other or their intentions to start courting. Whatever the case, she could share Kyosuke with Sayaka the way she was maybe sort of already sharing Madoka with Sayaka. Sayaka at least believed something was going on between her and Madoka, and Sayaka was definitely doing something with Madoka, so logically Sayaka should be okay with Hitomi going after Kyousuke. Sayaka was a perfectly rational human being afterall.

She really should sit down with Madoka and figure out what was going on between them, but first she had to figure out what to say to Sayaka. Sayaka still had not confessed her feelings for Kyousuke yet, and Hitomi figured she should give the other girl a push to confess first since Sayaka had known Kyosuke the longest and been in love with him the longest. After that, Hitomi would confess her feelings.

Everything should work out so long as she talked to Sayaka beforehand. She just wished she could be better with words when it came to these tough and confusing emotional conversations. Emotions really were somewhat difficult and illogical sometimes. Oh, this was going to take a few days to plan out.

Hitomi decided she would confront Sayaka after school on Monday, which would give Hitomi a few days to figure out exactly how to talk to the girl.

Everything was looking up in the world. Everything was going to be fine!

O . O . O . O . O

Everything was not going to be fine!

They had planned to do everything right, everything Victor Frankenstein had failed to do. Ui was not as well read as either of her friends, but she had read the book that had inspired both her friends to perform the operation in preparation for her part in helping save her sister's life. It was one of the few fiction books Touka would willingly read.

"Touka, I can hardly believe I am saying this, but you somehow managed to commit an even greater atrocity than that time when you set fire to half of my books with one of your contraptions."

"How is this my fault, huh? I thought it was your job to watch over Iroha and be here when she wakes up."

"I told you that I had to check on that Uwasa that went missing from the Radio Tower." Ah, the Uwasa experiments that her friends were conducting. Ui had at least managed to talk them out of making anything too dangerous and talk them out of starting their own cult though both of these restrictions also greatly diminished their ability to use their creations to try to save magical girls everywhere.

This was sadly not the first time she had had to talk her friends out of making a monster or starting a cult and probably would not be the last. Technically, they were in the situation they were currently in because they had all agreed to create a monster, one of the rare times all three of them agreed on anything, but this time was different! This time it was her sister's life on the line!

"And I told you that that could wait."

"Yes, a possibly rogue Uwasa can definitely wait, and please enlighten me dear Touka on what could have been oh so important as to necessitate you also leaving Iroha's side, especially without telling anyone."

This was all Ui's fault! If she was just better at running interference on her parents then she could have been there to keep an eye on her sister who her parents did not know was being kept in the same hospital as their other daughter. Ui's parents were fairly laissez faire with their parenting style, so probably did not even realize that Iroha had been killed.

"I was talking to my father to make sure we could continue using this room. Iroha was supposed to already be awake days ago, so that I could avoid having to get his permission for anything. And for your information, I did send a message with that secure messaging app I wrote and loaded onto both your laptops specifically so we could communicate."

"You mean the laptop I don't use outside of classes?" asked Nemu.

"It's not my fault you hate technology."

"I don't hate technology, but you literally could have told me verbally where you were going before I left."

"Girls, stop fighting!" said Ui speaking for the first time since the three had found the room to be empty after running into each other in the hospital hallway. "We are either all equally to blame or none of us are, but right now we need to find out what happened to Iroha."

"I locked the door when I left." said Touka. All three girls looked to the open window.

"Right, magical girl." said Ui, "So, Iroha wakes up in a locked room with replacement body parts and pieces of machinery grafted onto her body. She probably freaked out and ran away. Question is where to?"

"In the book, Frankenstein's creation went into the wilderness and started learning about things like fire, people, and old European literature," said Nemu.

"I don't think that will apply to my sister, unless you only count the people part." said Ui. Her sister could really benefit from learning more about people and interacting with them more. Iroha's social interaction was almost exclusively limited to the three of them and her sister becoming a magical girl had not helped on that front.

"Well, afterwards, the monster went after his creator's family and friends," said Nemu.

"If Iroha comes after the friends of her creators then we've automatically found her. Same for if she goes after my dad." said Touka falling into one of her customary smug thinking poses, of the kind where she says with her body language that she is the smartest person in the room even if that room includes Nemu in it, sometimes she just does the pose, because that room includes Nemu in it, "Where's your family right now Ui?"

"They just told me that they were traveling to see friends in Mitakihara." said Ui. Her parents were always traveling. At least this time they were staying in the country.

"And would Iroha know this or would she just go back to Takarazaki?" asked Nemu.

"She would know this." said Ui, "My parents told me that they told Iroha about their plans for the trip. It was the last conversation they had with her before she died."

"Then let's head over to Mitakihara before Iroha kills anyone and forces us to resurrect even more of your family!" said Touka.

O . O . O . O . O

Homura stood inside the entrance to the Yakuza armory staring in confusion, Amy the cat on a leash at her side. The cat was a cat Madoka would often sell her soul to save or resurrect and the leash was just in case Homura needed to stop time without trapping the cat outside her time stop. She had not needed to stop time to get into this armory. For some reason most of the doors leading to the armory had been unlocked and the entire building was abandoned.

Stranger still, the armory was overstocked with weapons and munitions. Every shelf was crammed with guns. Crates of guns and ammo were piled to the ceiling, even blocking most of the walkways. The crates were not standardized. Many of them were marked as if they were carrying everything from seafood to construction equipment. She even recognized some of the containers from her hundreds of time loops as belonging to other Yakuza groups in the area like the ones pretending to be full of drills. Some of the containers like the ones pretending to be full of seafood were completely unrecognizable.

Homura could not believe her luck. This was easily the equivalent of all of the remaining Yakuza weapons she would normally be trying to get her hands on across the entire time loop.

She moved to open the nearest crate and noticed a very large envelope sitting on top of it. She froze time and set about carefully opening it, just in case it was some kind of trap. Inside was a handwritten letter and a second only slightly smaller envelope.

The letter was addressed to an Antichrist-San and said that the writer did not believe in any of those Christian ideas, but was being paid a lot of money to help someone out and may also have been blackmailed. As such, all of the weapons that could be stockpiled since Monday were being brought to this room with the expectation that they would one day be taken by this Antichrist-San.

There were also details for some kind of anonymous bank account full of millions of yen and for how to get in contact with the Yakuza boss to ask for hitmen and lawyers, and implying that all of this could be done with no questions asked.

Homura did not trust any of it, but threw the letter into her shield anyway. She would probably try using the bank details at an ATM and while wearing a disguise, but the rest was definitely a trap. She would have to make sure none of these crates were rigged to explode, but the ability to freeze time and her years of experience did have some benefits.

Homura opened the second envelope and almost dropped it when she saw the contents.

Inside the envelope were a bunch of cards with crayon drawings and occasionally misspelled motivational messages like the kind that would be churned out by the work of an entire elementary school class.

Homura gingerly examined one of the cards. On the front of the card written in big bubble letters were the words 'You Can Do It!' and under that an image of some kind of cat thing with seven heads each of which had a smiley face, and the creature had ten horns. Each of the horns had a cutesy little princess tiara. The thing seemed to be coming out of either the sea or a bathtub, or maybe it was floating in the sky? Homura could not tell.

Homura opened the card to find images of devils playing with smiling and laughing children along with a lot of pictures of flowers and animals and the words 'Dear Antichrist-San' but antichrist was misspelled, 'You can do it! Love and hugs and kisses from Choco-Chan PS Your story is so sad! I hope you get a happy ending! PS Please don't destroy my home when you bring the end times. Thanks! PS Can I have a pony for Antichristmas?'

Homura was deeply confused by what she read. Her magically repaired raised Catholic heart was having trouble with the strangeness of the card. Picking up another card she saw more of the same. Homura was about to toss aside the second envelope when a typed letter at the back caught her eye.

It appeared to be from an Abbess Nakamura Hana of a local Satanic Church here in Mitakihara. Homura had not even realized that was a thing. The letter said that the children from the church's daycare wanted to send this Antichrist-San letters of encouragement after one of the church members had a vision and shared it with the whole congregation. At the end were yet another set of bank details and an apology that the Satanic Church could not provide more resources to help this Anitchrist-San, and that apparently the vision had also told them to give everything intended for this person to the local Yakuza.

Homura shrugged and put the second envelope with the notes and the typed letter into her shield. She could puzzle over a Satanic Church working with the yaks another time loop. Right now, she had just gotten a leg up on her mission to protect Madoka and she was not going to let that go to waste!

O . O . O . O . O

"I think Kaname-San is sus. She's been too cheerful this entire meeting." said Baldy from Accounting. His name was not actually Baldy, but that's what most of the people in the company called the useless and obstructionist fossil.

Junko was feeling cheerful. She had had a wonderful morning. She had woken up without a hangover. Her daughter told her how she managed to work through some kind of problem with one of her friends and her daughter had done all of this without even needing too much help from Junko - they grow up so fast! Her son had learned a new word, even if that word was just 'alien'. Junko's wonderful husband Tomohisa had made her such a nice breakfast, and when they kissed earlier today, oh boy! She had definitely left him blushing like the school boy he once was, and he had had such a look of desperate hunger in his eyes afterwards, a desperate hunger that Junko could not wait to satisfy tonight, or maybe even immediately after she got off work, though she did have to wonder, was her tongue always so long? She could have sworn Tomo had even been rubbing his throat afterwards.

The only little hiccup in her entire morning was when she was backing out of her driveway and accidentally ran over either a stuffed animal or some kind of rodent. The thing had made the loudest squeaking noise when she squished it, sort of like running over a giant rubber duck. She had hoped it was not someone's cat.

She had immediately stopped her car and gone out to investigate only to find some weird… thing lying on the pavement. It looked strange, not like a cat and not like a bunny with cold red eyes that seemed to stare dead and empty at the world even as it presumably lay dying.

It was unlike anything she had ever seen before and strangely, when it looked at her face, those cold empty eyes became for just a moment very very wide and fearful. Then it was dead.

She was a little sad about that, except this thing could not have actually been real or alive. It definitely did not look like any animal she had ever seen before. It also did not smell like any animal she had ever seen before.

It smelled so wonderful. It smelled better than her husband's cooking. It smelled better than her husband or her two children. Junko had noticed her sense of smell was just much better after her night out on the town last Sunday with her old friend Saotome who had apparently managed to get into yet another relationship just after Junko had left the bar. Apparently, all those nights of drinking were really agreeing with Junko.

She had even realized she had been smelling this stuffed animal thing for the last few days, a heady wonderful smell like bacon mixed with cinnamon and lavender. The smell was so good that before she even knew what was going on she had swallowed the entire bunny cat thing whole and it tasted even better than her husband's cooking.

She finally felt full which she had not really felt for the last few days even with an extra serving or three at every meal.

She was sad about running over someone's stuffed animal and then eating it which she knew was definitely not a normal thing to do, but nobody had seen her do it-she had checked-and she was definitely also feeling cheerful about having had such a good meal. She was even feeling cheerful enough to be just a little forgiving of Baldy calling her cheerfulness today suspicious.

"Are you trying to say that she somehow sabotaged a project that she was not even a part of?" asked Jousai Hisoka from the Marketing Department. She was here standing in for Kenta Tarou, one of the two useless trustees who were put on the board, because of their family ties rather than actual qualifications.

Kenta Tarou, the CEO's eldest son, was away in Kamihama where he was officially inspecting the company facilities. Unofficially, he was being sent away from Mitakihara and especially this meeting, because this meeting was about addressing the young man's not so insignificant screw up with the most recent magical girl themed marketing campaign that was supposed to have launched days ago and had managed to be both lazy and offensive. Thankfully, they had caught the problem just before any of the advertisements could be released.

"No, I'm saying that she is suspiciously happy that Kenta failed." said Baldy with his almost coughing nasally voice.

"Apologies, I was just thinking about my daughter. She's a huge fan of magical girls" Junko said. Normally, she would have stayed silent for this meeting, at least until the initial conversational landmines of a topic involving the CEO's own son screwing up had been cleared, but since she had been called out, she had to give some kind of answer. Liking to talk about their children was one of many things she had in common with their aging CEO who was also at the meeting but had remained fairly silent.

Everyone here knew she liked to talk about how great her family was, and to be fair her family were pretty awesome. Better still, everything she just said was absolutely true and several of the people at the table knew that. They knew her little Madoka was a very big fan of magical girls. If only Kenta Tarou had been less of a fan of the genre or at least a fan in a different way.

Baldy's accusation was however an opportunity to push him out and give herself a leg up, especially now that everyone was focused on her, so she said, "None of us are happy that the latest marketing campaign is still in the development phase," Junko was very impressed with herself that she could say that about the monumental screw up, one that would be costing the company tens if not hundreds of millions of yen, with a straight face, "but I am bothered that you would try to create conflict at a time like this when we should be working together." Now that she had cast doubt on Baldy she needed to move the conversation along before Baldy could respond or one of Baldy's few allies could speak in his favor. She turned towards Hisoka, "Jousai, you said that we can't change the images on the boxes and products, especially since we've already produced tens of thousands, but the way I see it, those weren't the problem."

There just was no time to alter the products without changing their release schedule. Everyone was going to eventually reach that consensus. Most of the people in the room already had even if they did not like it, but Junko was the first one to say the words out loud and she carefully phrased her words so that anyone trying to add anything would seem like they were piggybacking off of her idea.

"I hate to say it Kaname, but that still leaves the problem of our target audience. Magical girls just don't have much appeal to adults unless you're Tarou." said Tensai from Sales. He was normally one of her supporters, but he would only follow her if he could clearly see what her plan was.

"We have to find some way to make the Magical Girl theme for the products work." said the CEO, finally contributing something to the conversation, even if he was just stating the obvious. The old man had been slowing down lately, but this business with his son had only hastened the inevitable. Unfortunately, he still had not appointed a successor yet, "Kaname, you have an idea?"

Junko had not meant to get singled out to actually fix the problem. Still, she had to look like she knew what she was doing, "I might, but what do our focus groups say?"

"That they hate all of our promotional material, especially the ads," said Hisoka. "They were extremely vocal about that."

Everyone looked at Junko. She had tried to buy a little time, but now she had to see just how good her improvisational skills could be, "Kenta trying to use magical girls to appeal to an adult audience was not a bad idea in and of itself. The problem was the execution." There were some snorts from some of the other people at the table, but when the CEO cast his gaze towards the offenders, there was no evidence of who had made the noises. "What do adults like? What does anyone like, things that relate to their lives, desires, and interests. There are plenty of adults who grew up with the magical girl genre. Kenta's only mistake then was that he was focusing on his own desires and interests." There she went saying a lot of words with no real actual meaning behind them. Could someone else please say something?

"By God, she's got a point!" said the second useless trustee, a second son of a key investor. To her astonishment, there were some nods from some of the other people at the table. Hisoka was giving her a skeptical look as were Tensai and Baldy.

The CEO snorted and shook his head. He had to know that she was bullshitting, something she tried to never do, but sometimes you just were not given any good choices. The CEO said, "Then I will leave cleaning up this mess in your capable hands. Personally, I think it's a lost cause, but if anyone can pull this off, it's you. Motion to vote for Junko Kaname to be put in charge of fixing this catastrophe?"

"Motion seconded." said Watanabe from general affairs and the round of voting began.

"All in favor?" said the CEO. Hands went up.

"All opposed?" fewer hands, mainly from Baldy's contingent.

"All abstaining?" Junko and Baldy were the only two abstaining.

"Kaname is now the acting head of marketing with all the authority that entails and you will choose one of your subordinates to take over running your department in your absence. The CIO will give your account the necessary permissions and you can talk to HR and relevant department heads if you need to move anyone onto the marketing team." said the CEO

"I hope you can fit this inside the Marketing Department's current budget." said Baldy with a sneer, "We just can't afford to waste any more money on this."

The CEO frowned for a few seconds in thought before nodding, "Yes, try to stretch whatever is left of the existing budget out as much as you can. Motion to adjourn." said the CEO and a vote was quickly held with everyone wanting to leave. Junko and Baldy were late votes in favor even though Junko would much rather have stayed to negotiate for some resource concessions from the other departments, particularly those that would only budge if the CEO was watching. Still, she could just get anything she needed later in one on one meetings and use the threat of bringing in the CEO, so it was not worth looking less confident in her ability to get things done by not voting with the group.

As the CEO dismissed the meeting, inviting Baldy to his office for a conversation Junko would dearly like to listen in on, if only she could find some way into the cramped ventilation system running through the building, she could not help but regret getting herself into this situation. Still, she would make the most of it. She would make this one of the most successful marketing campaigns in the company's history… somehow.

O . O . O . O . O

Felicia was having more trouble than usual finding a new group of magical girls to join. There was still the old problem of magical girls hearing from her past groups about her history of being a lone wolf and a rebel when it came to taking on witches, but now she had magical girls running away or even attacking her.

It was weird.

Thankfully, this new magic hammer had helped her protect herself. The hammer was definitely making her stronger and the magic beef she made over her dumpster fire was really agreeing with her even if she did feel just a little guilty about eating the not witch cow monster, because it was sort of a cow, an intelligent thinking, feeling creature. Just taking a single bite made her feel stronger and made her powers as a magical girl feel more powerful. She had now managed to eat almost the entire cow monster and she felt better than ever. Her soul gem had even stopped darkening no matter how dark her own thoughts got, though it had for some reason also become cow themed. She was not going to complain about that!

Her soul gem and magical girl outfit had also changed color to red, either as a result of her new magic hammer with its red lightning effect or her new diet. Looking in a bathroom mirror in one of the few bathrooms that was actually available for use by the homeless population, and the place where she also refilled her water bottles, she saw that her eyes had also changed color to the same red as her soul gem. The eyes really were the windows to the soul!

Another change was that whenever she transformed, red lightning would cover her body, but it was always thickest at whatever part of her body was in contact with her hammer. She would even see a little red lightning appear even if she was not touching her hammer. Her magical girl outfit now also came with actual cow horns growing out of her head, and a cute little functional cow tail that was unfortunately painful to pull or sit on.

A less cool change was that her giant pigtail-like cloak that reminded her of Hatsune Miku's hair had over the past few days slowly transformed into leathery bat-like wings. After her most recent transformation to kill a witch yesterday, she discovered that her new wings were now attached to her back, she could feel anything that touched them, and with enough effort she could even move them. Bats were okay, but they were not cows. They were not even as cool as wolves. She was a lone wolf type, so she could live with having some wolf parts if she had to, but bats?

Unfortunately, she was stuck like this, and unfortunately she was also running low on food, her already massive appetite from before getting her hammer upgrade had only increased, and she was now even lower on options. The magical girls here did not want her around, or rather they did not want her around even more than usual, and Kamihama was not a friendly place to the homeless.

Felicia had tried to talk to Tsurino about an old offer from the girl to work in exchange for room and board, but when she tried to stop by she saw Kanagi, the magical girl boss of Daito Ward and another magical girl leaving the restaurant. Felicia had no idea what the boss of the East was doing at Banbanzai, and she did not want to know. More troubling was that Kanagi and the other magical girl brought out their soul gems which were glowing as if there was a witch nearby, but Felicia knew from her own soul gem not glowing that there were no witches. Then the two had turned in her direction.

She had run. She would never run away from a fight with witches, but these were other magical girls. Felicia had an uncomfortable idea why the other girl's soul gems had been glowing, but she really did not want to think about that right now.

Besides, she had other problems to worry about aside from magical girls who were over eager to go after witches, problems like finding more food or money.

That was how she found herself in Kosho ward, ironically a place inside Kanagi's territory, because Felicia had heard from another homeless girl about a family of bento sellers that gave away the food they would otherwise be forced to throw away to the homeless in the ward without asking for anything in exchange.

Felicia's pride told her she should at least do something to earn her food and maybe there was some task that the family had that only a magically enhanced mercenary like her could complete, but her stomach was telling her that it did not want any more cow creature and it definitely did not want to go hungry. She was almost out of cow creature. She had been starved before, part of the reason for her large appetite, but with her now even greater appetite from her new hammer, the thought of going hungry became even more terrifying.

If she had to fight Kanagi to get to this bento shop, she would. She would do whatever it took.

"Excuse me miss, but are you a witch?" asked a small magical girl who had snuck up on her while she was lost in the internal monologue only a true rough and tumble mercenary could have.

"Don't be ridiculous!" said Felicia sounding a little insulted as she sized up the small child, clearly a magical girl, in front of her. The girl had black hair and was wearing a white and blue dress with a wide opening in the skirt at the front for mobility and a big blue bow. Felicia ignored all of these details in favor of the oversized bento pick in the girl's hands. "I am not a witch, but Felicia Mitsuki, a world class mercenary, the strongest mercenary in the world, and if you tell me where the Chiaki Bento Shop is then I will do any one job for you, especially if that job involves fighting witches."

"Really?" asked the little girl.

"Really really! I was super strong when I first became a magical girl, but then I got this cool magic hammer" Felicia held out her cool cow hammer for the other girl to see, "And now I'm even stronger!"

"Then can you help me carry something and in exchange I'll show you to my… to the Chiaki Bento Shop."

The girl pointed to an old CRT TV that was sitting next to a dumpster. "Someone threw it out, but it looks like it still works. I'm Riko by the way."

"A pleasure to meet you Riko." said Felicia as she easily lifted the TV with her free hand. "Where to and will we get to fight any witches along the way?"

"Yes. There's a witch that's in the way. Otherwise I would take the TV back myself." Riko led the way towards what Felicia was presuming was the girl's home. "So, why were you interested in my… in the Chiaki Bento Shop?"

"Well you see, as a mercenary, I'm a bit of a lone wanderer, not really tied down to anywhere, and I heard that the shop had food that a lone wanderer like myself might partake in."

"You're homeless?" asked Riko.

"Yep." said Felicia trying to force her voice to sound cheerful.

"Don't you have a family?" Felicia winced.

"They were killed by witches and then my home burned down."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Riko turned to look at her, an expression of horror all over her face.

"I don't want anyone's pity. I'm getting my revenge on the witches, on all the witches."

"So why does my soul gem think you're a witch?" Riko asked, holding up her soul gem which was pulsing in the familiar thrum that would normally send Felicia's blood pumping.

"It's my magic hammer. It's got really powerful magic, but it makes everyone else's soul gems act stupid."

"But not your soul gem?"

"Nope." said Felicia holding up her crimson soul gem with its cow horns. There was also a little upside pentagram decoration on it with a little cow skull which she thought was just so cool. It was like she was a cow pirate!

Her cool soul gem started faintly pulsing. Showing that they were nearing the witch Riko had mentioned and soon Riko's gem started to do the same, but its pulses were also confused by Felicia's magic hammer.

"So why don't you get rid of your hammer if it is just going to make you look like a witch to magical girls?"

Felicia was silent for a minute, long enough for them to start drawing near the witch. Riko may have been asking a good question, but… it was her hammer. Felicia did not really have much in this world after the fire, and the magic hammer was really cool and magical. "This is why." said Felicia, carefully setting down the TV and then charging into the labyrinth with Riko just a few seconds behind her.

Felicia was instantly in a crowd of twenty or so massive oni looking familiars wearing colorful bath towels and inflatable life preserver rings with little inflatable animal heads. She immediately set about herself with her magic hammer and mid swing transformed so that she could access her full might. Her cow hammer grew even larger and more spiky with the power of her magical girl transformation.

By the time Riko arrived inside the labyrinth mere moments after Felicia, all the familiars around Felicia were dead, and the first one was just now starting to dissolve.

"I couldn't even fight one of them." said Riko. "You're amazing!"

"Thanks." said Felicia with false modesty, "But this is just what I do."

After a few minutes the two had made their way through to the end of the labyrinth and killed the witch at the end who was an even larger oni, this one wearing a scuba suit and dual wielding pool noodles. Riko even managed to kill one of the oni familiars along the way.

"Here." said Felicia tossing Riko the grief seed from the fallen witch. "I don't need it with my magic hammer. My hammer makes it so my soul gem is always fine."

Riko stared down at the grief seed before tapping it against her slightly foggy soul gem and putting it away. "Thank you." she said, looking away. She looked almost guilty for some reason, "Hey, if I could help you find a place to live where you could get food, what would you say?"

"Well, I need to earn my place in the world if I can," said Felicia. She did not want to sound too desperate. She had her pride after all. "I am a mercenary and I need to fight witches."

"What if you did that in exchange for a home and food?" asked Riko.

"You mean, someone hires me and pays me with room and board?" asked Felicia.

"And money, too. You'd get an allowance!"

"Sure. If you can help me find this job. I'd be grateful." and Felicia meant it. It would be really nice to have a proper roof over her head with the frequent rains. Maybe she would even get some actual heating for the cold and air conditioning for when it got hot, but she was not going to get her hopes up. She was a doubly magically enhanced mercenary. She did not need creature comforts. She only needed to kill witches, so why were her eyes watering? She turned away from Riko who had been watching her and seemed to have some wetness in her eyes as well. Felicia ignored that and picked up the TV. "Where to, boss lady? The sooner we drop this off, the sooner I can get that delicious bento."

"This way." said Riko, leading her deeper into the ward.

A few minutes later they arrived at their destination. "You live next to the Bento shop?" asked Felicia. She was really happy she took this job!

"I live over it. Come on in." Felicia followed Riko inside and inhaled the delicious smells of rice, egg, fish, and various fruits. "You can just set the TV down by the door and have a seat. I'll get you that bento."

Felicia was getting food, food that wasn't charred cow person!

Felicia could hear Riko talking to someone before coming out with a man and a woman wearing aprons and plastic gloves who looked similar to the girl.

Riko approached Felicia, setting a really nice looking boxed lunch onto the table in front of her, and all of it was fresh and still hot. Felicia began digging in as Riko said something. It took a moment for Feliicia to process the words as, "So, how would you like to take a mercenary job helping me hunt witches in this area and helping my family out around the shop? In exchange you'll get food, a place to sleep, time off whenever you need it, an allowa"

"Yes, yes, yes!" said Felicia. It took her a moment to realize that she had pulled the smaller girl into a hug and she pulled away. She wiped at her eyes realizing that there must have been onions in her bento. Riko was also wiping at her eyes, which made sense if she was just in the kitchen with some onions.

Felicia had been on the streets for so long. She had been doing her duty for so long, fulfilling her destiny, but now, maybe this latest job would work out. Maybe she could be happy here.

The world smelled of wonderful tasting food and was looking so much brighter.

O . O . O . O . O

The world smelled of wonderful tasting food and was looking so much brighter, but Tsurino knew exactly what kind of meat she was working with.

Still, she let herself feel a brief glimmer of hope for the future. Nothing had gone wrong yet and if anything did, she would be ready to face it.

She delicately diced a piece of thigh that would be going into pork filled baozi. The pie-like nature of the food reminded Tsurino of an English woman she had heard of who had somehow shared in Tsurino's family's curse in spite of being half a world away and completely unrelated. Tsurino's best guess was that there was something in human nature itself or in the nature of the world itself, something ancient and powerful, that called out to people in this way promising survival and even success and power in exchange for…well… serving fine pies.

Her equivalent to the demon barber walked into the room. Tsurino stopped cutting and glanced over. She did not want to accidentally add the genuine article to her dish afterall. "I can't believe you're actually doing that." said the newly arrived Daito girl.

"You're surprised, Kanagi? It's going to take something scarier than a strangely shaped familiar to make this magical girl back down."

In the Daito ward lived a witch called the Mirror Witch who like all witches had familiars.

"Oh, I'm sure, but you know what this familiar looked like." said Kanagi. Tsurino went back to her cutting and could see out of the corner of her eye that the other girl was watching her with a kind of morbid fascination.

"I think that makes it better."

"You look forward to serving your customers yourself then?"

The familiars of the Mirror Witch were unlike the familiars any magical girl in Kamihama had ever encountered before.

"Naturally! Surely it is only appropriate that someone as mighty and responsible as myself should be willing to sacrifice even my own body in service to others."

The familiars took on a human form, specifically the form of local magical girls.

"Yes, how fortunate you have spares and that one of my girls has the magic to make magical things permanent if also utterly mundane."

One of the witch's familiars had taken on the form of Tsurino. That familiar was now mince meat, or rather on ice and currently in the process of becoming mince meat. Familiars being magical would normally vanish after death, but magic and a little money could solve that.

"Where is Yui anyway?" Tsurino Yui was amused that the other magical girl involved in the cooking process of the familiars shared her name.

"She's at the KFC across the street. Knowing her, she is probably going to blow through half the paycheck you're giving her on that."

"She knows she can eat here for free same as you." said Tsurino while adding the meat to the vegetables that would make up the rest of the filling for the baozi. She glanced in the direction she knew the KFC was in.

The KFC was not a bad neighbor even if they sometimes took the odd customer away. The truth was that with how mediocre tasting everything at Banbanzai was and the relatively low cost of their dishes, the two restaurants usually did not step on each other's toes. Banbanzai was where you went if you were looking for the most food for your yen and the KFC was where you went if you were looking for something that tasted a little nicer.

There was a chance that would change a little now that Banbanzai's food would be both cheap and tasty. Tsurino was reluctant to raise the price on anything and either hurt the ability of poor kids like Felicia to get food or potentially scare away her handful of old customers before they had a chance to try the cursed family recipes, not that the curse did anything wrong to the people eating the food. Quite the contrary.

"I don't think I'll ever be eating here again, so I can definitely see why she won't be." said Kanagi, "No offense."

"None taken, but you're missing out." said Tsurino. "The meal I made with that piece of the first mirror familiar you ran into actually gave me a small boost to my strength for a bit and cleaned my soul gem a little." Tsurino knew she would be eating this before dangerous fights. Nothing wrong with a hearty healthy meal so long as it's not actual human you are eating.

"Still not going to happen." said Kanagi, "But I'll let my girls know, especially with that big discount you're giving us. I'll still be telling them what they're eating of course."

"Of course. They're the ones who are helping us gather the stuff in the first place. They deserve to know."

"So, that's the first one you're serving to an actual customer?" asked Kanagi as Tsurino put the pastries into the oven before turning to prepare some meat-free sides of noodles and rice.

"Yep, some rich guy in a suit. He said something about being in Kamihama to inspect some company property or something. He seemed really really interested in the new magical girl themed menus for some reason."

"Probably a closet otaku."

"Imagine how he'd react if he knew he was being served by magical girls?" What she did not mention was that the meat was from magical clones of magical girls.

"I don't want to imagine that on the off chance he is a pervert, and if he is perverse, I especially don't want to imagine his reaction to a magical girl with a riding crop. I have been told it has other meanings and connotations." said Kanagi referring to her signature weapon with a shiver. Tsurino was surprised it had taken the girl this long to realize she was effectively a magical girl dominatrix especially since she sometimes fit the mold a little too well.

"A magical girl with a riding crop who works at a maid cafe." said Tsurino with a toothy grin.

"You run a restaurant where you feed people bits of artificial people."

"I never said there was anything wrong with working at a maid cafe, especially if you like the work. Do you like working there?"

"Are you offering me a job?"

"No. You're my supplier. That's already your job, though I wouldn't say no if any of your girls want to help out around here and make a little money while they're at it. No, I'm asking because, well, I want to make sure I'm paying you enough. You're doing me and my family a great service. We really couldn't have done this without you, so I can't in good conscience leave you working a job you hate, because I didn't pay you enough."

"You're paying me what we agreed on, and that is no small amount of money. I won't take advantage of you when your situation is even more desperate than mine is. I will admit, I did start working at the maid cafe for the money and money was tight then. I only moved out of the kitchen for the money, and I was a hopeless maid at first, Hopeless Maid Nagitan, only continuing to try and be a maid for the money. I needed a reference book from Karin to even figure out the first thing about how I was supposed to greet and interact with customers in spite of my past job experience with customer service, and I still don't completely understand this master-servant dynamic."

Tsurino was a little shocked to be hearing Kanagi open up to her like this, but she supposed she herself had opened up to the other girl about her past and her problems at the start of their shared business venture, and she supposed even the infamous boss of the East was only human or she supposed magical girl.

"That being said, I do like working at the maid cafe now." said Kanagi, "There is a feeling of triumph from overcoming the obstacles in your path, the chains holding you back. Every day I am there and putting the hard won lessons I learned to the test is a celebration of my past labor. I am still going to see about reducing the number of hours I'm working there to focus on school. The cafe isn't as short staffed as it was when I first started working there."

The timer for the oven dinged. "I'm glad to hear that." said Tsurino, taking the pork buns out and setting them with the sides. "Time to put this curse to the test with a normal human then."

Tsurino approached the suited young man with no small amount of trepidation. She hid it behind a confident smile and a boisterous laugh, "Here's a mighty meal for a mighty fine customer!" she declared, setting the dish in front of him.

"There's a lot of food here. Thanks." the man said before picking up one of the meat pie like baozi on his plate with his chopsticks and taking a bite. His face lit up and he sat motionless for several long seconds slowly chewing in a sort of daze.

Tsurino was not sure she had ever seen a reaction like that to any food outside of anime. "Is the food to your liking?"

"Marry me."

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Tsurino asked. It's not that the man was bad looking by any means, in fact he could even be called handsome, but they obviously came from two very different worlds, and she doubted it would work out especially when combined with the whole cannibal restaurant thing even if he would probably be supportive of her secret life as a magical girl.

"I said, could my company pay you a lot of money to help promote a product and maybe provide catering at company events?" said the now very embarrassed young man.

"Sure." said Tsurino, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment. "Here's one of our business cards, and uh… just let me know if you need anything."

Tsurino quickly took a new customer's order before returning to the kitchen and Kanagi.

"Your face is red. Are you feeling well?" asked Kanagi, putting a hand to her forehead. Tsurino was not sure how to feel about the sudden physical contact from her business partner.

"Perfectly fine, just a little flustered." Kanagi really was not helping the flustered state. That state was definitely not helped by Kanagi also being one of the few people in Kamihama strong enough to actually beat Tsurino in a duel. The only other notable magical girl in the area who could beat her was Yachiyo, who was once sort of like the Boss of the West. Yachiyo was a girl Felicia used to work with, a girl she used to have a crush on, a girl who had abandoned her, a girl who was now missing and presumed dead.

"Good." said Kanagi with a nod, letting her go, "Was the food to the customers liking?"

"Yes, very very much so." said Tsurino. She was starting to wonder if the food was too good. Would she need to start deliberately sabotaging dishes? But how could she do such a thing in good conscience? She had to keep to the recipes. It was for her family!

"This is good to hear. I will admit I had my doubts, but I am satisfied. You will have the continued support of my girls in this endeavor." said Kanagi, "Now I must go to my own work."

No sooner had Kanagi left out the side door into the alley beside the building that they were going to use to smuggle in the bodies than Tsurino's father appeared. He had probably been waiting for the other girl to leave before making his presence known.

He watched her as she got out the meat she had taken out to thaw, in this case a severed arm which she set onto a carving board. She would be using the remaining pieces of the thigh which were already waiting on a cutting board for another customer's order. She did not bother trying to hide what she was doing. She knew her father had seen her clone's body lying in the walk-in freezer. There was no hiding something like that from the man.

When she had seen him looking in she had told him that they were not people and nobody was killed. He had not said anything then. He had not even looked at her.

Any good mood she had had from the earlier success was gone. She did not want to have this conversation right now. She really did not want to have this conversation ever. There were several conversations she did not want to ever have with her dad, but this one could not be put off forever.

"Dad?"

"You could have tried something different, something better! I thought I raised you better than this." He said gesturing at the clone arm on the carving board in front of her.

"I tried to do something different and better and it all went to shit."

"What are you talking about?" She had said too much. Her dad was a little too smart for his own good or for her own good. "You can't mean you were behind the lottery ticket." She knew he did not just mean buying the ticket. Tsurino said nothing. "Tell me you weren't."

She could not meet her dad's eyes. "I made a mistake." She had hoped it would feel good admitting that she had done something wrong. It was the right thing to do, to confess even after so long. It did not feel good. She just felt empty.

"You didn't…" he did not complete the sentence and just stood there in silence and swallowed.

"It's my fault." She could not look him in the eye.

"Oh, Tsurino. I don't want to imagine what you had to give up to make that happen." There was something wrong with her dad's voice. It was softer and raspier.

"It's not what you're thinking… but it was still pretty bad and there's no going back to how I used to be. I gave up everything but the restaurant and our family to make my wish happen."

"Oh God! Oh Tsurino, oh Tsurino." She risked a glance at her dad's face. He was crying. Her dad was crying. He never cried where anyone could see him. She knew he cried when her mother left, but otherwise he never cried. He definitely would never let her see him crying. Never! Why was he crying?!

"It's fine. I'm fine." She could not keep watching. She looked away and cut the arm in front of her with much more force than was necessary. "Like I said, I can't go back to the way I was, and our family definitely can't go back to the way things were."

"And it's all because I failed you as your father. You lost everything trying to take care of us."

"Not quite everything. I still have you don't I?" It was a question. She hated how desperate she sounded as she peeked in his direction.

"Of course. Always. I don't like what you've done, what you're doing. I can't ever approve of it, but I will always love you, and…" his voice caught again, "I will support you," she saw him step over to the other cutting board with what was left of her clone's thigh, and with no small amount of hesitation began to cut, "try to support you at least. I've failed again and again up to now,"

"You did not fail. You did the right thing by not using those recipes."

"You say that, but you still felt you needed to give up everything for that lottery money, because I failed to provide. If I had just…"

"Done what? Killed someone? Crossed a line we haven't crossed yet? These," she gestured to the meat in front of him, "these aren't people. I told you they just look and taste like it."

"It's hard to believe, but I believe you. I saw the body, this is a copy of you, somehow. Still… you shouldn't have had to do any of this."

"No I shouldn't have, but that's not your fault. You didn't make the curse. This is just me making the best of a shitty situation and at least now big sis can pursue her dreams without the curse affecting her, at least until I'm dead." She kind of trailed off at the end.

"What do you mean until you're dead?" She should not have said that. It was all spilling out. She used to filter this stuff out, but her filter stopped working when she admitted that she had been behind the ticket.

"The… the deal I made. It'll… I'm…" She did not like sounding scared in front of anyone. She was too used to being vulnerable with her dad, but she could not do that anymore, not anymore. She had to be strong, because someone had to be, so she put on a brave face, the face she used to fight witches, and said what she had to. "Sometime in the next few months or years, I am going to die." Her father stopped cutting, "It's not a matter of if, but when, so before that, I'll try to make things work here as long as I can."

"Is there anything that can be done? If we caught the person who did this to you…" he said gesturing with the knife in a way that suggested he planned to add Kyubey to the menu.

"It wouldn't matter. The other girls say they've tried making him do things before and one or two even tried killing the little bastard, but he's… he can't be forced to do anything he doesn't want to, and even if he died the damage is already done."

"The other girls? You mean the girls who are helping you." He must have seen Yui in addition to Kanagi then.

"Yeah. They're in the same boat as me."

"I suppose that explains why they would get involved in something like this then." said her dad gesturing at the cut up thigh. "They're all just children, too, aren't they?"

"Yeah. All of us are."

"If I ever get ahold of that monster, I will cook him, slowly, and painfully, while he is still alive."

"I might just help you with that, but…" She was in this deep. Maybe she could open up to her dad about the rest of the details. He had already accepted her even with everything else. Maybe she could finally share what she really was doing at night. He would worry, sure, but he would understand and he would probably even appreciate knowing where she was disappearing to so often. She also did not really need to hunt many witches anymore with the magically enhanced food from the curse. She made her decision. "Well dad, he's not exactly human."

O . O . O . O . O

KAZAMINO'S KILLER CANNIBAL! 2 DEAD, CHILD KIDNAPPED written by Foni Balowni

Residents of Kazamino were disturbed to find Tuesday morning what can only be described as the work of a nascent serial killer when the bodies of Mako Chitose and Maki Chitose were found partially consumed (pictures on pages 3). Seeing these images, one wonders was this the result of some kind of psychological dysfunction (and probably also serious drug use) to lead to such horrifying behavior as double homicide and cannibalism or were these the actions of a cold blooded predator who understood the food chain and their place at the top of it? A concerned neighbor, the elderly Gurani Obaa saw the presumed killer who she described as "a teenage ghoul (metaphorical ghoul of course as supernatural monsters do not and never have existed) with blood dripping from her hands and fanged mouth, waist length blood red hair tied in a ponytail, and dressed like some homeless delinquent in a dirty green hoodie of the sort that back in my day no self respecting lady would be caught dead in, and ratty denim shorts so short they could make a street walker blush." A security camera on a store near to the apartment building where the Chitose family (or at least the mother and daughter) lived caught footage of a girl matching this description accompanied by the still missing Yuma Chitose (picture on page 4). Yuma Chitose, a troubled girl with a messy disciplinary record who according to neighbors was often described by her mother as a useless lazy, disgusting, waste of space, had run away from home just days ago and there is ongoing debate on whether the child had led the killer to her family to feast on them in exchange for the preservation of her own life or if she had just been unlucky enough to return home on the night when the killer made her attack as was the case with upstanding Maki Chitose who was almost always away from the home either on business or to spend time with female friends and colleagues. The gnawed bones of Yuma Chitose are expected to be found in the coming days and not considered a serious loss. Still, residents of Kazamino and surrounding municipalities including Mitakihara are advised to be on the lookout for this crazed cannibal and the kidnapped child and to call the police immediately if they see anything. With two horrifying killers claiming victims a mere day apart in the same prefecture, citizens are asking what is the world coming to and who is to blame? Was this a failing of the police for allowing delinquents and drugs to run wild, parents and the school system for letting down our children, or could it be the influence of those liberals?.

Excerpt from the newspaper Most Marvelous Magical Morning Mitakihara (5Ms)

O . O . O . O . O

The teacup fell from nerveless yet dainty and well manicured fingers to shatter on the floor. The holder of the teacup stared at the tv news report in a mix of shame and horror. Her lips mouthed the words food chain that the announcer had just uttered as a grainy image of a painfully familiar redhead appeared on the screen.

Mami Tomoe, third year at Mitakihara Middle School and secret magical girl, stared in shock, thinking back to her once heroic and passionate partner. That was a year ago and her partner seemed to have taken a turn for the worst.

Mami was familiar with Kyoko's new philosophy of the magical girl food chain, where magical girls ate witches which ate humans and how Kyoko's philosophy mandated allowing witch familiars to live and grow, kill and consume. Had Kyoko cut out the witch entirely and just gone for the humans?

Eating humans would not cleanse a soul gem, or at least Mami hoped not, but it would at least fill a belly and she knew Kyoko was familiar with literal starvation and likely still struggled with food… or had struggled. This could simply be the logical extension of Kyoko's casual disregard towards killing combined with her beliefs in magical girl superiority and never wasting food. Mami wanted to imagine that Kyoko would not kill and eat this child Yuma Chitose - even her fallen protege could not be that far gone, right? - but at this point, did she even know Kyoko anymore?

At this point, was there any difference between Kyoko and a witch? Both were supernatural creatures that preyed on humans while spreading negativity.

Mami could think of two differences. The first, was that Kyoko was arguably more dangerous than a witch with her ability to understand and even blend in with humans, and second, that Mami herself was responsible for this monster being on the loose.

She knew what Kyoko was becoming even before hearing about this, but she had done nothing. She knew the blood that was already on Kyoko's hands, blood of both magical and non magical humans, but she had done nothing.

Now it was time to do something, so why did her cheeks feel so wet? Why did her chest have to hurt so much?

She would cry and eat some extra slices of cake today and think about better times. She would drown herself in the memory of a girl who was once a hero of justice.

The weekend was coming up. It would be the perfect time to go hunting. There was a rabid dog that needed to be put down.

I hope you enjoyed, and let me know your thoughts, and I will see you next time!

In the future, I'm just going to divide a stupidly massive chapter like this into two chapters. That will also let me update more often.

I will probably either be updating Spyaka next or start putting out chapters for a new story for another fandom. I've already written much of that story so it will not be cutting much into my writing time for this fandom. The next Beltane chapter will be focused on the weekend before Homura transfers in. Have yourselves some Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!