Sofia woke up in the civilian's body and immediately felt the weight of some object pinching the bridge of her nose. This guy. He wore glasses.

This is why Sofia thought guys were icky. They always had glasses or wristwatches and other weird stuff like that. But, those rumors about the guys being smelly kooks with no care for personal hygiene? Untrue. Even after spending a day in the sun this guy was much less sticky than Sofia was.

What's also good was that non-magic people didn't have soul gems– so that fine print on Sofia's powers that stole all the despair from the people she possessed? That could all be ignored.

But it didn't matter who was possessed. All that mattered was that she possessed someone. Because when she possessed someone, she also freed–

Sofia's projectile radar lit up.

And the next moment, she felt a lump of metal slam into her back and knock the wind out of her lungs. It wasn't a hard throw at all, something she'd probably be able to shrug off if she was in a magi body with a gem in its prime. Wouldn't that have been nice.

She tried to turn back to face her attacker, but found that her entire body under her neck had disappeared into thin air, at least according to her brain. She lost her balance, and fell face down onto the floor. The nose pads on her glasses lodged deep into her skin.

Fuck.

Sofia breathed slowly, in and out, until the pain began to subside. She tried to get herself back up, but that was definitely rather hard when your brain insisted that you had no backs, arms, or any muscles at all.

This feeling. It was Lucia's paralysis. She'd realized Sofia was her enemy faster this time. Probably because she could sense her gem in Sofia's pocket. But Sofia only predicted this– though she couldn't feel her left hand anymore, it should still be in her pocket, enclosed around Lucia's gem. She'd had the cognitive capacity to secure it while she could.

It was the third gem that Sofia had in her hands that day. Sofia would love to be able to crush it into shards, ending Lucia's pitiful existence one and for all, but 1) her hand was paralyzed and 2) there was a better place to put it. Fucking ironic, really. She'd killed the one who might have been innocent, and spared the two that should've died.

Sofia closed her eyes. Her costume materialized. The burst of magic threw a wrecking ball to the wall that was her sanity. Her brain did backflips inside her skull. Reality blinked in and out of existence.

But that was fine.

Sofia visualized, as hard as she could, that Lucia's gem in her hands was a part of her costume. Another strangely oblong mushroom in the colony. And then, she released her magic and untransformed.

And Sofia heard muffled screaming in her ear as Lucia approached her. She grabbed Sofia's collar and shook, mouth moving soundlessly, spit flying everywhere.

"-DID YOU DO," and the universe was taken off of mute. "WHERE DID YOU PUT MY GEM. I CAN'T SENSE MY–"

It fucking worked.

Sofia was only thirty percent sure that it would. It was hard to pretend that something was part of your costume if you couldn't see it or feel it. All that training she did, paid off at last.

"YOU– YOU– YOU–"

Unable to control her violent tendencies, Lucia balled her hand into a fist and swung at Sofia's face. Sofia flinched in fear– but no impact came. She opened her eyes and found Lucia's fist hovering an inch from her.

Now that Sofia had her gem in mystery land she was too scared to punch her. That's gold. That's GOLD. "That's– that's right," Sofia said. "you better not fucking punch me, one wrong move and you fucking die–"

Lucia slammed her fist into Sofia's face like a sledgehammer.

Sofia felt her teeth cut into her cheeks and tasted blood in her mouth. Her ears rang and her vision became hazy again– Lucia knocked her glasses off.

"Do it," Lucia said. The crazy person act disappeared in an instant. Her voice became cold. "Make me fucking die, as you said."

"I–" Sofia said, dredging desperately in her subconscious to find the right words to regain control of the conversation. "I–"

"Looks like you can't," Lucia said.

"Shut– shut up. If you're going to fucking sit– sit here, and negotiate when I have your, your gem–"

Lucia's shield flashed into existence. She tapped it on Sofia's legs to refresh her paralysis. Then she leaned close, very close, filling Sofia's nose with the sour, metallic smell of sweat and vomit.

"You are deluding yourself." Lucia said. "You are paralyzed and at my mercy. You can't get out of this if you had all the gems in the world."

It took several moments of mental reconfiguration for Sofia's nerves to calm. And she remembered that she hadn't lost. By declaring Lucia's gem a part of her costume, she'd sent it to the theoretical pseudospace that magi kept their costumes and weapons when they weren't using them. It was stuck, sealed off from the universe things existed in, and the only way Lucia would ever get it back was if Sofia gave it of her own volition. If she could keep her cool, she would win. Calm down, become Kyubey. Calculated and rational, in control of every situation. Exude confidence through every pore in her body.

"What will you do," Sofia said. "If I d-didn't return your gem? You would kill me?"

"Yeah." Lucia said. "I would. If you would stoop to take my gem hostage, don't be surprised if I–"

She forced a grin on her face. "But if you kill me– what would happen to your gem?"

A pause settled over the conversation. Lucia's smug expression momentarily froze as she realized full well what would happen to her gem.

"I know what you're thinking," Sofia said. "T–torture me until I change my mind, right? That won't work. I've a gem too. It's gone– gone through a lot of shit today. Blacker than anything you've ever seen, let me tell you. Do anything I don't like, I witch out, and you fucking die. I– I own you, and if you want– my permission to live, you do exactly. What. I. Fucking. Say."

A moment of silence. Sofia suppressed her dumb awkwardness and glued her gaze against Lucia's.

"I knew there'd be a bluff," Lucia finally said. "But from someone who engaged in tactical puking, I expected something more creative."

"Come on." Sofia said. "You think I'm lying? You think that your gem is just gonna– just gonna magically come into existence?"

"Uh… yeah?" Lucia shrugged. "Magical Girl 101. A magi's enchantments disappear when they die. Whatever pocket dimension you have going on will melt back into reality too."

That couldn't be the actual reason. "You're fucking with me," Sofia said. "You're not this stupid. What, if I kill you, does everything that you've ever teleported go back where they were?"

"Don't care," Lucia said. "I count to three. You know what happens at three, if you don't give my gem back. Now–"

"No. No no no no. LISTEN. If a magi dies, does her– does her costume pop back into real life? No it fucking doesn't. You can't just–"

"Three."

"You can do it too! No just try it, wrap, wrap something around your dress and untransform. It'll disappear. I swear. I SWEAR."

"Two. "

"YOU FUCKING IDIOT YOU'RE GOING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED–"

"One." With a spark of lightning, Lucia's shield appeared buckled to her hand.

What the fuck was Sofia supposed to do? Was this why Lucia was on the bounty board? Because she was so transcendentally stupid that even Kyubey didn't know how to deal with her?

"Zero."

And she swung her shield down towards Sofia's midsection.

Fuck this shit.

Sofia felt for her soul gem. And transformed. And everything hurt, everything was burning, each one of her cells were on fire– She separated Lucia's gem from her costume and let go of the magic.

The pain localized itself to her brain. Every neuron throbbed in sync, a metronome of pain, with every beat came a fresh wave of agony that made Sofia want to die. Her vision fluctuated between black and scarlet. It was seconds later that her hearing recovered enough to make out words.

"You weren't lying about your gem being in rough shape." Lucia said. Her voice was muffled and echoey. Like she was underwater.

"Fuck you," Sofia slurred.

A bright amber glowed in the center of her vision, growing distinct from the bichromatic haze around it. Lucia got her soul gem back, did she?

And absolutely nothing changed. Sofia was still paralyzed. Still at Lucia's mercy, but without her bargaining chip this time.

"By the way, I know you weren't lying. With all the 'dematerializing' stuff." Lucia said. "I was making stuff up."

…Bullshit.

That couldn't be true. There was no way in all the layers of hell that was true. Lucia was bullshitting, trying to get a rise out of her.

"That's, that's fucking right," Lucia said. "I wasn't going to kill you. If you didn't hand me my gem like a coward nothing would have happened. I would have surrendered! You did this to yourself, you–"

Lucia was lying. Lying through her teeth, trying to make Sofia witch out so she could have two seeds for the price of one. That's what's happening. Had to be.

Lucia grabbed Sofia's wrist, and four sparkling hieroglyphs appeared on the skin surrounding it, glowing brighter and brighter until Sofia had to squint to look at them. And then she conjured a Pearl.

"You have no more tricks up to your sleeve," Lucia said. "If I see you again, I will break every bone in your body, and then I'll heal you and do it again until you beg to die. You got it?"

"Dig a hole and die there you human filth," Sofia bit out.

And the next moment Lucia was on top of her. Sofia felt her kneecaps pressing against her stomach. Lucia conjured her shield, electrified and all, and smashed it at Sofia's skull.

Sofia closed her eyes like a coward and braced for impact. Will that kind of trauma immediately make her witch out? Or would she get a couple of seconds to wallow in all the blood?

But nothing happened.

Sofia opened her eyes to find Lucia nowhere to be seen. She assessed her surroundings– same labyrinth. Marble checkerboard platform floating in the void. But no Lucia.

Sofia wriggled her fingers, and her fingers actually wriggled. Lucia's paralysis wore off. She was free to move.

But… why?

Why did Lucia leave her alive? If she had any moral qualms against murder, she wouldn't have been a bounty. Had she set some kind of trap? If Sofia moved, was she going to trigger some bomb attached to her and die?

Sofia pushed herself upright. Nothing happened.

She had an idea of where Lucia went, too. Before teleporting Sofia here, Lucia threw another Pearl straight up, so high that it'd take some time to land. That some time had probably passed now, and so Lucia had been teleported away.

That Pearl. It went straight up, Sofia was sure of it. And if it went straight up, that meant it landed exactly where she threw it. Back at the doorsteps of Mimi's arena.

Lucia didn't intend to go run back to her friends in Pasadena. She intended to finish off Mimi first.

Guess Lucia was truly stupid after all. Did she somehow think that she'd scared Sofia off? Or did she somehow think she'd be able to take Sofia and Mimi at the same time?

Either way, it seems that through sheer luck, fate had given her one last chance to fix this.

She conjured up her witch radar. After the resultant headache cleared, Sofia started her trek back to Mimi's red silhouette.

Other than a love tap on her face, Lucia hadn't really roughed Sofia up. Yet she still felt herself falling apart, her tissues ripping at their seams, like she was going to collapse into a pile of flesh at any second. Her throat was dry, her eyes were melting, yet her legs walked on autopilot and could not stop.

To distract herself from her body's blaring warning signs, Sofia tried to think of something nice and positive. Sunshine, rainbows, unicorns, hash browns, all that. But, hard as she tried to look, Sofia's mind could not fathom a happy moment. So, instead, she thought about that moment where she gave Lucia's gem back to her. How she said she knew that Sofia hadn't been bluffing.

Sofia realized that Lucia didn't lie. Since Sofia gave up the gem, it'd be more logical to assume she did bluff. But she'd known.

Sofia really thought she had it. She thought she could get Lucia to do what she wanted. Could be like Kyubey, exude confidence and rationality in the face of danger, prove once and for all that she had the potential to be just as smart as him. It shouldn't have been that hard! Sofia had her gem! Lucia's existence wrapped around her little finger!

But– somehow, even then, she'd failed. Instead of controlling Lucia, she'd fallen for the world's worst bluff, and Lucia controlled her instead.

She was so fucking worthless. Was about time that Kyubey left her.

Sofia may not be able to cheer herself up, but at least the cyan dancing marbles were there, giving her a good indicator how far away Mimi's arena was, and how much more walking she had to do.

In the end, Sofia heard Mimi's arena before she saw it. Odd, guttural murmurs that were revealed to be the incoherent mumblings of bewitched civilians. They made a crowd in front of the entrance. Sofia recognized Orange Shirt guy, who Mouth Face made puke out beef. Somehow, he appeared completely fine.

Why were they even outside anyway? Mimi was perfectly content throwing them burgers to eat. Had Lucia done this herself?

Mouth Face couldn't extend its tentacles beyond the arena. Sofia hadn't seen any familiars other than Mouth Face and the clone with her costume. If that was true, then these people would be safe here.

Why didn't Sofia think of this?

She'd known that it'd be risky to fight Mimi with all these civilians involved. And yet she'd done absolutely nothing about it. If any did die Sofia wouldn't even have been upset. She'd write them off as "necessary casualties" and move on. But they had been avoidable. And it wasn't some fucking astronomically complicated Kyubey plan, either.

And of course Lucia thought of it, and Sofia didn't.

Sofia pushed through the crowd and found the entrance. An old lady was thumping on the door with a gnarled fist, but the door did not give.

There was no going further. Lucia was in there, beating Mimi up, and Sofia did not trust her ability to sneak in undetected. There was nothing more to do than to wait.

The witch did not pay attention to Lucia Chiara Mount when she stepped into its arena. It was a human body duplicated over itself countless times, a tower of torsos. And on each one were attached two arms which moved at lightning speed, combining various ingredients into cheeseburgers and tossing them at the civs all around her.

The burgers looked normal, but with how much the civs liked them that couldn't be the case. The labyrinth outside the restaurant didn't seem to have any familiars at all, it made sense to get them outside the arena. Using runes and Pearls to bring everyone outside would be too expensive, so Lucia did the old fashioned way and dragged them all outside, three at a time. Once free, the civs gave a half hearted attempt to go back inside, but they seemed unable to get past an unlocked door.

One time, the witch threw a burger at her as she walked. Lucia dropped the guy in her left hand. And, magnetized to her harness– the copper bracelet clasped on her wrist– her shield appeared. The burger splat harmlessly against it.

For a second, nothing seemed to happen. But then Lucia looked down at the civ she dropped and found her mouth opening wider and wider, like she was preparing to swallow a watermelon–

Lucia dropped the other two people she carried and began to back away.

A mass of beef shot out of her mouth. Lucia blocked with her shield, extending the copper plates out the valleys of her cross and giving it a kite shape. But the tentacle struck with a CLANG.

It was a respectable strike. But Lucia didn't budge, not even an inch. Because she's cool like that.

And the tentacle, whatever it was, had gotten a lethal dose of electricity. It started to melt– into not viscous oil, but watery brown slop. Disgusting, but Lucia was not the one with that stuff literally coming out of her mouth–

Speaking of the person with that stuff literally coming out of her mouth, she was now puking up a gross, brown slop, much more than should have been contained within one human. And after that she collapsed head-first into it, staining her UCLA tee brown.

Good God had Lucia had enough of puking for one day. Making sure not to get any brown stuff on her, Lucia grabbed the tentacle puker and continued her rescue mission.

And after like three minutes she was done. The arena was completely empty, save for her and the witch. Her preparations were complete. No chance for an interruption. The civs were safe. The body snatcher magi hadn't been defeated– despite Lucia's warnings, she'd probably be waiting outside for when Lucia defeated the witch and try to get her with that gun. Alas, Lucia was too awesome for that ability to work on her. So she'll be fine.

Sitting crisscross applesauce atop the cashier counter, was a humanoid figure who– hold on just a minute. It was– it was wearing–

Well, it was obviously a familiar. Instead of facial features, its face was composed entirely of a single gigantic mouth. That was not surprising. But what it was wearing– she'd seen that blue costume before.

A pure blue bodysuit, and a shawl bluer still, its outer edge filled with tiny, iridescent eye-like patterns. On its head was the helmet stylized to a peacock's head, with a beak outlined in stripes of black and a dandelion-fluff crown. It was an outfit that Lucia had only seen once or twice before, yet the person who had worn it then commanded such a presence that Lucia would never forget it in her life.

That person. The leader of Pasadena. The haver of only these two titles. Maia Cheburg.

This– a perfect rendition of Maia's costume. Far too uncorrupted to be generated by an escaped familiar or a witch that grew up from one. There was no mistake. Mere moments ago, the witch Lucia now faced was a magi.

And Lucia thought she knew who that magi was.

That magi knew Maia personally enough to manifest her as a familiar. Even had her labyrinth manifest the burger joint in LA. Pasa area for sure. And, of the nine people in there, who was perpetually on the brink of despair, fighting constantly to survive?

More likely than not, it would be Mimi.

Mimi– not a well liked figure in Pasadena by any means. She was an LA girl before Pasa started attracting witches. Even after Pasa rejected her, she begged to be allowed to join the communal witch hunts whenever her obsolete territory ran out. That Mimi's witch manifested as the leader of Pasadena, the city that had helped her so much throughout the months–

It was honestly sad.

It made sense that Mimi hated Pasa. They were the one that drove all the witches away from Mimi's original city. Reduced her life to sifting through territory twice the size of New York for stray witches. And what happened when she couldn't find any? Back to Pasa she goes, to beg the people who stomped the life she'd treasured so much into the ground for a slim chance at survival–

She could pretend it was Abby's fault. Abby was the one who insisted that Mimi be banished from Pasa. Yet Lucia had the influence to veto her– but she didn't. She allowed it to happen and breathed a sigh of relief afterwards. But this witch- it wasn't Lucia's fault. After all, Mimi could have left any time she wanted to, found a better city somewhere far from Pasadena and lived the rest of her life there. But she chose to stay. This was on her.

Either way, it was too late now.

Once a magi witches out, it was theoretically possible to reverse the process and return them to humanity. The incubator could do it, but it was, according to them, "inefficient", which meant it was never going to happen in a million billion years. Your only chance was for someone to blow their wish on it. But such a wish attacked the basic foundation of entropy, and few magi in history had enough power for that.

But that wasn't true. Lucia knew of someone who could do such a thing without even lifting a finger.

God.

In six days, God created all that exists. He is infinite in power, wisdom, and justice. God sees the hardship that all magical girls go through, and so He prepared in His domain salvation for every last one of them.

But now, even as Mimi's soul gem had shattered, her soul was still trapped on Earth, held hostage by her own mortality, the despair she'd accumulated forcing her to do despicable things. The only want to free her was to destroy the witch and commend her soul to God.

Thus was the greatest service that one could perform for a magical girl. Lucia hoped this would be enough for Mimi to forgive the things that Pasadena had done to her.

Electricity sparkled in the air and coagulated into her shield. Fitting that it was shaped like a cross, the symbol of salvation. Four legs three feet wide extending from the emblem of a lion, amethyst eyes glowing in the miasma. Internal batteries switched on, charging the shield until every inch of its surface rippled with electricity. With a thought, Lucia deactivated her harness, but before gravity could do its work she grabbed one leg with her hand and assumed a combat stance.

The civs were secured. And Lucia was free to deliver upon the witch the eternal damnation it deserved.

With a thought, platings, with rounded edges this time, extruded from the arm of the cross until it looked more like a frisbee. And Lucia threw it as hard as she could at the pillar of bodies.

From behind the restaurant's counter, a civ pushed themselves upright. Their mouth opened wide as a baseball bat was tall and beef began to pour out like water out a hole in a dam. The stream of beef grew wider and wider until it formed a protective barrier around the witch–

But it wasn't very protective after all. Lucia's shield burst right through it like paper and struck something metal behind it with a CLANG–

Wait. Metal?

The wall of beef, apparently only as thick as a veil of curtains, unraveled and collapsed into a pile of slush. Revealing what really happened– her shield, lodged inside not the witch's body but a minifridge in front of it, held in place by several tentacles.

And so the familiar dodged the attack. Without getting paralyzed.

That wasn't an action on impulse. This familiar was capable of strategic thought.

Lucia hated these kinds of witches. There was no way for sapience to come except from the girl the witch had been. It had repurposed Mimi's intellect to harm and kill the ones that she had once protected. And harm Lucia, who was trying to save her.

Unforgivable.

With a thought, Lucia activated her harness. The air near her wrist crackled with blinding cyan electricity, and on cue, her shield dislodged itself from the minifridge and flew back to her. Lucia caught it in midair. With a grim look, she noticed it was covered in disgusting beef residue.

And literally the moment she caught it, from the back of the kitchen, a pillar of flesh the width of a bicycle wheel shot towards her.

Lucia instinctively raised her shield to block, again. This time, though, the tentacle had much more distance to accelerate. The resultant CLANG knocked the shield out of her hands. Her ears rang, and every cell on her left arm buzzed in pain.

Meanwhile, The tentacle did not collapse into meat juice. The tip of it, Lucia realized, was strangely black and boxy. (Hard to see under the dim purple light.) It was wearing that minifridge again like a rubber glove, insulating itself from the electricity–

In Lucia's head, a lightbulb lit up.

Without activating her harness, she conjured a Pearl and threw it at the wall to her left. It landed seconds later and after a second spent reorienting herself Lucia saw the tentacle smash into the spot where she had just been, crashing a crater in the floor and splattering the minifridge into a billion pieces.

It did not change direction to attack Lucia.

She knew it! The Maia couldn't see. Instead, it tracked bits of patty meat like magi tracked their magical weapons. Since she wasn't touching any beef, she was off its radar. In a blind rage, the tentacle thrashed wildly, smashing craters into the walls and crushing tables into woodchip.

Lucia ran to her shield and dematerialized it. And she re-conjured it, now free from beef residue.

The tentacle froze mid-swing, just a couple of feet away from slamming into a basketball jersey framed on the wall. And before Lucia could attack– it grew exponentially girthier and girthier until it touched the floor and ceiling and both walls and formed a barricade of beef that split the room in half.

This had to be like earlier, a thin film of meat decoupled from the rest so the main thing won't be paralyzed if Lucia struck it. That won't work on her again.

Lucia charged her shield and threw it at the wall.

It connected. The beef was properly paralyzed and began to disintegrate, splitting into pieces of slop the size of volleyballs that splat onto the floor in a manner that did not reflect the consistency of real ground beef.

But Lucia did not have time to celebrate her victory. A witchy presence rushed towards her from behind. Actually, not exactly– it seemed to teleport there, no warning at all. Lucia turned to look.

It was a new familiar. It had the same mouth face as the Maia, but it was in a mushroom costume. Polka dotted cap, fly agaric shelf mushrooms. Reminded her of that body snatcher's costume. Lucia tried to shrug past her and run off– but found that she couldn't move. No. She could move, but she felt every movement was being negated by an invisible force, like she had been staked to an invisible wall in the fourth dimension–

And in the next instant something scalding hot was dumped over her head.

Lucia snapped out of her trance. Without thinking, she bashed her shield into the mushroom familiar's skull with a crunch. It collapsed, paralyzed.

Lucia wiped some of the stuff from her hair, and her worst fears were confirmed. A huge slop of beef had fallen on her. Weird, watery beef that dripped rapidly cooling beef juice, still smelling exactly like beef patties.

And to the Maia, with the beef touch radar, this must've been like wearing a bright white dress wrapped in blinking Christmas lights in the middle of the night.

Crapcicles.

Lucia felt the wind stir on her right and blocked there, extending plates on her shield and preparing for impact. But, instead of smashing into Lucia's shield as it had as before, the tentacle latched onto it like a coiling python and pulled.

The familiar's admittedly gargantuan strength was not enough to separate the shield from Lucia's activated harness, but it was enough to lift Lucia off the ground and go flying with it. Her vision turned into a blur and wind rushed through every piece of exposed skin and all of a sudden–

CRACK

Lucia's back slammed a crater into the wall. Pain rippled through her spine. Lucia activated her gem and repaired the broken stuff the best she could. Before the tentacle could fling her somewhere else, she deactivated her harness and slid onto the ground.

No time to process pain. The tentacle ate her shield and shot towards her again. Lucia conjured a pearl, but before she could throw it the tentacle slammed itself into her face like a solid steel sledgehammer, reducing her vision to a kaleidoscope. But then it had the consistency of boiling quicksand. Lucia's head was sinking into it. With a start Lucia realized it was pushing her inside—

Lucia threw the Pearl in her hand, willing it to take her far, far away. But there was nowhere but the other side of the room.

The tentacles processed her new position, changing direction midair and slamming towards it at light speed. Lucia conjured another Pearl, threw it, and winced as her vision suddenly bubbled– darn. Her ability wasn't designed to be used this frequently, and her gem was suffering.

Lucia landed and activated her harness. Her shield, now covered in tens of layers of saran wrap, burst out of the flesh wall and clasped onto her wrist. That was how the tentacles had avoided paralysis– using kitchen wrap as an insulator. If only the real Maia was as smart as this!

A lightbulb went off in Lucia's head. Saran wrap. Soft, inflexible saran wrap. She could deal with that, even without touching her shield.

Her eureka moment was interrupted by electricity jolting through her brain, informing her that the mushroom familiar's paralysis had expired.

Lucia had completely forgotten about that.

If the mushroom familiar could freeze her– yeah, that might put a dent in her plan of moving as fast and unpredictably as she could so the tentacle can't catch her.

But wait, wait, wait, the mushroom familiar only paralyzed with sustained eye contact. It needed to startle Lucia into looking at it before. There was a foolproof solution to that problem.

Lucia slammed her eyes shut.

Then she threw a pearl haphazardly. She'd felt it land a moment later, the familiar lurch of teleportation on her collar.

Lucia didn't know which part of the restaurant she was in. Was the mushroom familiar in front of her, waiting for her to open her eyes and be captured in its spell?

Oh God help her.

Lucia conjured her shield, and swung it a wide arc in front. And she felt sparks go through her brain as she felt something become paralyzed, coupled with the unmistakable thump of metal hitting flesh.

She'd hit the mushroom familiar. Was that it? One out of two down? That meant she won't have to worry about random bouts of paralysis anymore– all she needed was to finish the Maia off–

Something hot and greasy pressed onto both of her hands, pressing them into one place.

Lucia opened her eyes in panic. She saw the mushroom familiar collapse in front of her. But, dragged along with her, was a civ.

The guy who had been behind the counter. Lucia barely made out any physical characteristics. She was too busy staring at his mouth, spread impossibly wide to accommodate the massive tentacle slowly crawling out of its throat like a worm out of an apple. It'd pressed both of Lucia's arms together. She couldn't make Pearls like this.

But she didn't need Pearls.

Lucia activated the harness and her shield flew back towards her from the ether. Judging by how the tentacles didn't collapse into a meat slurry, the familiar had probably wrapped it in saran wrap already.

More meat poured out from the man's mouth and pooled around her hands, reinforcing the bind.

And then the tentacle started to crush.

Instead of a mound of burger patties, Lucia felt giant boulders rolling across her arms, pulverizing her skin and bones into viscera. Lucia howled in pain but moments later her cries were silenced by another mass of flesh that pressed itself directly into her face.

Lucia called on her gem, and soon magical morphine was pumped through her system. The crushing boulders deafened somewhat. Lucia breathed a sigh of relief, and–

Wait a minute she COULDN'T BREATHE.

Her nose was clogged. Clogged by something she could feel wriggling inside it. Oh God, the tentacles, they were going inside her nose–

Lucia thrashed. Or tried to, but flesh held her in place like a vice. She panicked more, thoughts of death danced throughout her head in a frenzy. She blasted her soul gem and juiced her bicep with all the super strength, and with a gargantuan rip broke the hold on her hands. Tried, then, to dislodge the tentacle hugging her face, but her fingers only digged uselessly into an endless expanse of meat–

It was getting worse. The tentacle was ripping the internal structure in her head to pieces. Torturous pain rippled somewhere just beneath the bridge of her nose like her cavities were being filled with lava. Lucia howled in pain. But the beef covered her mouth and nothing came out but a pathetic whimper.

Lucia battered her shield somewhere vaguely in front of her. But that still did nothing. The tentacles did not care, only drilled deeper and into deeper Lucia's skull–

Wait.

Through the pain– the briefest moment of clarity. And she realized that she had a plan. A plan for dealing with the saran wrap–

Lucia, with her last flash of sanity, sent out the command to her shield.

And in her mind, she felt something spark. The spark that indicated her shield hit something. And the aforementioned something had been paralyzed.

On cue, the tentacles started to soften. The vice grip around her arms and her face loosened until Lucia could no longer feel them. The same runny substance poured out of her nose, filling it with the scent of beef so overpowering that she could smell it even without breathing. Lucia melted with the tentacle, her back sliding down the wall until she rested amidst the cesspool of slowly deforming beef.

Her shield was clasped onto her harness. The copper plates were extended as far out as Lucia could– as big as a dinner table– and they burst through the thick layers of saran wrap and left broken pieces of film covering it. The outer plates were still electrified. And they'd poked the meat pentacles and paralyzed it.

She'd won.

And suddenly her lunch did cartwheels in her stomach. Lucia did not have time to get up and emptied her stomach right on her lap.

And she couldn't even smell it. The smell of cheesy grilled beef overpowered everything else.

The familiar had probably tore her nose to pieces. Something just beneath her eyes felt like something had just exploded inside. And– Lucia blinked and realized that she couldn't see out of her right eye.

But all that could be healed. Important thing was– she'd won.

By some miracle. Breaking the saran wrap with her shield's plating– she had realized that'd be the way to win, before unimaginable pain scrambled all the wires in her brain and purged all coherent thought. If she hadn't remembered, Lucia would have met the most gruesome death imaginable, her orifices choked by literal beef patties. Ended up on some– some fetish video sites.

Only with the grace of God she survived. Tomorrow was church right? She was listening to the whole sermon. No phones at all. Won't even bring it there.

She closed her eyes. It would have been nice to allow herself to double over in pain and sleep, because her face still hurt oh God make it stop. But she could rest after she struck this witch from history and freed Mimi's soul.

The mushrooms familiar laid faceup before her feet, covered in beef and unmoving. Lucia's magic was a lot more potent against familiars, so the paralysis hadn't yet worn off. She stood up. Wordlessly, she staked one leg of her shield into its neck and decapitated the mushroom familiar. The two remaining halves melted into cheese-colored orange liquid and seeped into the ground.

With the tentacles paralyzed– the Maia imitation was defenseless. Lucia stepped to the counter, and staked her shield into its heart. The Maia melted into brown liquids not dissimilar to the beef juice and seeped into the ground too.

Lucia looked around, daring the witch to throw another familiar at her, but nothing happened. She looked to the witch at last.

The tower of torsos had stopped moving. Its arms hung limply. Charcoal colored beef sizzled on the grill. The witch had admitted defeat. It stood disarmed in front of her, as if asking for her forgiveness.

It will find none with her.

Lucia charged her arm with her gem and swung her shield at the witch as hard as she could. This time, there were no tentacles to block. Next time Lucia looked, The shield hit square in the middle and pierced right through, cleaving the tower into two halves.

The top half smashed into the ground and broke into pieces like it was made out of soft clay. The bottom half simply crumbled into dust. And on the ground, was left nothing but a grief seed, standing uncannily upright with its needle-thin base like a ballerina. She picked the grief seed up and pocketed it– there was something she needed to do first before she could cleanse her gem.

The labyrinth around her began to wobble, like a rock disturbing a reflection in a pond. The gloomy membrane the witch created around the restaurant peeled away. The room brightened. The destroyed furnitures returned to normal. Out of the room, Lucia saw the storefronts of downtown Los Angeles, illuminated by the bright noonday sun.

Sofia saw the labyrinth disappear. Lucia managed to beat Mimi after all. Wonder what she did. Probably some stupid magical girl stuff that Sofia couldn't possibly comprehend. Leave the experts to it, huh?

In other news, Sofia wasn't doing very well.

Bursts of pain rippled across her skull at random intervals. It feels like something was inside her brain, trying to claw its way out like tentacles coming out of Orange Shirt guy's mouth. What was that metaphor Kyubey liked? Magical girls were eggs and witches were the chicks inside? Yeah. And now the eggshells were cracking and Sofia was going to hatch.

But there was good news. Sofia found her glasses on the platform around her. Now she could see slightly better.

Either way, the end was nigh. Lucia was inside the door. One timely and precise shot on her gun, and all her problems are solved. Lucia under control, grief seed scored, Sofia lives another day. Just this last time, god. Bail Sofia out this one last time, make this go well, in the future she'll never be this stupid again.

The labyrinth had evaporated completely. The floating platform and columns disappeared, replaced by regular old Downtown LA. The urban chatter, the beating heat of the sun, it was all so familiar and Sofia wanted to collapse here and die–

But the crowd of bewitched civilians behind her started to recover their senses and murmured panickedly amongst themselves. Sofia needed to do this now.

Sofia walked forward and pushed the glass door open. Her eyes were going hazy now and her glasses weren't helping, but she could still make out a figure amidst the empty restaurant dressed in a pink cotton nightgown sitting on a chair facing the door. She regarded Sofia grimly.

Lucia.

As she'd taken a lot of damage. She smelled of barbecued beef, and her nose was swollen three times its normal size, and– Sofia had to double check to see if she was seeing right– one of her eyeballs dangled on a thin line of flesh on her face.

Sofia conjured her gun. And then it felt like a frag grenade detonated inside her cerebrum. Reality became a hazy dream of colors and sounds. No. No. NO. This was NOT THE TIME.

Sofia bit her lips hard enough to draw blood. Through sheer force of will, the world recovered enough that Sofia made out a particularly pink blob in the center of the room where Lucia had been.

Even with no sight Sofia still had projectile sense. And Lucia, for some reason, wasn't moving. This would be an easy shot–

Then her vision cleared up even more.

And Sofia realized why Lucia hadn't moved.

On her table sat a soul gem that doubtlessly belonged to Lucia. Sofia hadn't realized it was a gem because it looked nothing more than a strange brown and dark blob, but it was giving off a strange, glittering iridescence that only soul gems could.

Lucia's gem was amber colored. After she beat Mimi– did she not cleanse her gem? No. It couldn't be. Why would she not cleanse her gem, she had Mimi's grief seed right fucking there, for WHAT REASON could she possibly want to cleanse her gem in some moment other than right then–

Her vision returned more. When she squinted she could make out the gem. Had the same stripes of metal as a gem did. Some force spun mists of blackness inside it in a soundless cyclone.

"When you released my consciousness inside Mimi's labyrinth, my gem was clear," Lucia said. "Even though I'd used plenty of magic fighting you back in the mansion."

Sofia said nothing.

"Despair can only be exchanged amongst soul gems. If one magi's gem were to lose despair, that despair must be given to a grief seed– or another magi's gem. That's the rule.

"And, unless you wasted a grief seed to cleanse my gem for some reason, there's only one place that my gem could have exchanged grief with." Lucia said. "Your gem. That's the downside to your magic, isn't it? If you used it on a magical girl, your gem automatically takes on all of their despair."

So Lucia knew.

A needle pierced through the fragile plastic membrane of the balloon that was Sofia. She deflated, her dreams of victory spilled out and mixed with the dead air around her.

Sofia realized that this was why Lucia let her go after she recovered her gem. She'd posed no threat after that. Her luck ran out long ago, and reality had caught up to her at last.

Lucia's gem transformed into light and wrapped itself into a ring around her fingers. Her face was slowly healing – skin rippled and bones cracked as her nose healed. Her dangling eyeball had disappeared, and in her eye socket Sofia saw pink flesh and colorful arteries pulse as her eye reconstructed itself.

Not even a fucking dent. In the end, Lucia will have walked away from all this with a half-used grief seed.

Somewhere out there, with some corner of his omniscience, maybe Kyubey was staring at her. Slowly but surely, he was coming to terms with the fact that he had placed his trust and friendship in the wrong person. Maybe he had already come up with a replacement. Maybe that replacement was Lucia! She was so much smarter than her, after all– beat her so pathetically, too–

Sofia slumped into a random seat next to her.

She gave up.