A/N: As promised. :3
Note for PMMM-only readers: "Sado" and "Chad" are the same person. Yasutora Sado is referred to by his nickname, Chad, by very few people. If they think of him as or call him Chad, they're very close. Except Karin; she gets special privileges for being Ichigo's little sister who has thought him cool since they fought a Hollow together when she was like 10.
Some of the girls from Kazumi Magica appear in this chapter. Vague spoilers for the end of that manga ahoy. If you haven't read the manga, no worries. You don't need to know anything deeper about them than what I'm showing: They're magical girls who have been through hell, know about the Witch thing, and are persevering despite it.
The entire manga is online if you do want to read it. Beware plot-breaking powers doled out like Halloween candy hahahaha.
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NEUNUNDZWANZIG
TIMELINE X + N
Urahara Shop was closed for the day as it hosted a dozen people working on the strangest essay assignment ever. They staked out different parts of the shop. Ichigo, Uryū, Orihime, and Chad claimed a spare room so they could coordinate to figure out where they had all been in the jumble that was their life in a shared condo between two different colleges in a big city. Tessai, Jinta, and Ururu holed up in the stock room. Yoruichi had stalked down the hall after Urahara as he returned to his lab. Karin's father had retreated to the spare room that held Yuzu's body with a pen and a spiral notebook.
Karin hadn't been able to bring herself to go back to that room to stay near him, so she sat at the dining table with Homura and Tōshirō. Her Soul Gem was a shiny little centerpiece at their table— everyone had insisted she leave it out where its status could be monitored so Orihime could be fetched to purify it if need be. It was irritating. The jewel was pretty, but she didn't want to look at it. The Soul Gem felt like a curse now. She looked down at her paper but couldn't focus enough to write much, so she watched her friends. Homura was industriously typing on a laptop Urahara had provided to her. The slight changes in her facial expressions as she typed particular passages was sufficiently distracting for awhile, but Karin got twitchy so she looked at Tōshirō. He was scowling at a notebook, sometimes scrawling things before glaring and scratching them out, other times looking deeply sad and tired. It was more depressing than watching Homura, so Karin watched Homura until she got too twitchy to sit still.
Karin abruptly stood. Her friends looked up at her in worried surprise. Tōshirō opened his mouth to say something, but Karin interrupted him and blurted, "Toilet." He shut his mouth so fast she wondered if he had literally bitten his tongue. The thought entertained her until she got to the bathroom. She didn't do anything there but shut the door and stare at a wall with the lights off. The dim, silent stillness and lack of worried glances burning against the back of her head calmed her. The lack of outside distraction allowed her mind to dwell on the memory of her sister's corpse strung up inside her own rib cage, though, so it was a wash.
Eventually, Homura came and knocked on the door to check on her. Karin scrubbed the tears from her face and followed her friend back to the dining room. Instead of approaching the table, she veered off into the kitchen with vague words about food that she immediately forgot. She stood in the kitchen and looked around blankly while scratching her ribs, not really sure why she had gone in there.
When Tessai walked in five minutes later, the drawers and cabinet doors were in disarray as Karin shuffled through a selection of utensils. Rather than startle, she slowly looked up at him and blinked owlishly. After a pause to make sure the knives were all still in their block— rude— Tessai asked her what she was looking for.
Karin blinked some more, wondering the answer to the question herself, and looked back at the drawer. She held up a simple nutcracker— two steel arms connected by a hinge. "Do you have walnuts?" she blurted. "I really want walnuts. I need to— I want—" She faltered.
Tessai eyed her as he carefully began closing cabinets. "No need for the nutcracker. I have some shelled walnuts in a jar—"
"No!" Karin objected with a childish pout. "I wanna open them."
"Why?"
Karin fidgeted, held the nutcracker lever up by one side and rocked it so she could watch the loose side clack back and forth like some novel invention. "Can't sit still. I gotta do something."
Tōshirō wandered into the kitchen, probably concerned by her long absence. Worrywart. "Are you okay, Karin?"
Karin gave him a distantly offended look as she repeatedly opened and closed the nutcracker, click-squeak-click-squeak-click-squeak. "Tessai won't get me walnuts." Her tone said Can you believe the service in this place?! Karin used her free hand to reach across her chest and scratch her arm before rolling her shoulders. She felt uncomfortable in her own skin, felt like her eyes were hollow as the sockets of a bare skull. Did she even have eyes? Must, if she could see. Maybe. Hm.
Tōshirō just stared. It was kinda funny. "Uh, what?"
Her reply was flat and without inflection. "Tessai wants me to eat walnuts without shells but breaking shells is the fun part and I want to do it but he won't let me but I want to do it and you can't crack shells when walnuts are already shelled the shell is all gone how are you supposed to shell them?" Click-squeak-click-squeak-click-squeak. It was a pleasant sound.
"Oh... kaaaay...?" Tōshirō looked at Tessai. They thought she was too distracted by the tool to notice the silent conversation they had with furtive facial expressions that expressed concerns for her sanity. It was as touching as it was dumb. They cared.
Maybe they'd care enough to get her some goddamn walnuts.
"We have a small amount of whole walnuts in the shop," Tessai said slowly. "Why don't you go sit at the table while I get them? If you want more than we have, I'll send Jinta out to buy some."
Score!
Karin put her nose up snobbily and wandered out of the kitchen with an airy "If you would, Tessai." Like an aristocrat condescending to a servant. God. She'd lost a sister and her eyes felt like rocks; getting her some walnuts was the least they could do for her.
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What the hell? Lieutenant Renji Abarai thought as his team reached the center of the bizarre house of mirrors they had entered upon detection of an anomaly in far northern Asunaro. Fighting their way through the maze that took distinctions between things like "walls and floors" or "up and down" as vague suggestions had been weird enough, but here they were in a cathedral completely made of stained glass and cracked mirrors. The icing on the cake was the demented living kaleidoscope monster of shifting stained glass on the other side of the chamber. Stranger still, it was getting its ass handed to it by girls in beribboned costumes.
"Uh, your orders, sir?" one of Renji's subordinates prompted when they had been standing in the same place for two minutes.
"Hold your positions," Renji ordered distractedly. He had half thought Hitsugaya was out of his damn mind at the meeting— or perhaps hoped so— but here were real-life magical girls fighting a living nightmare before his very eyes. Renji analyzed how the girls fought. They moved fluidly, anticipating one another's moves with the ease of frequent teamwork. He wasn't sure what the hell the bespectacled girl in white and indigo was doing wielding a big book in battle, but something like kidō occasionally spewed from its pages so he decided to ignore the part of his brain that screamed it was the stupidest weapon ever. The orange-haired girl wearing an orange, white, and black equestrian outfit without jodhpurs was randomly darting in to kick the shit out of the monster with her spiked boots. Colored glass would explode in all directions, leaving metallic framework behind. The two girls soon had the monster reeling. Both leapt into the air above the Witch. The orange girl unsheathed and expanded some kind of magic fucking wand from a scabbard on her thigh while the indigo girl snapped her book flat and slid the covers apart at the spine, whereupon they turned metallic and sharp and formed the weirdest double-headed polearm he had ever fucking seen. The two girls dove with a synchronized shout and pinned the Witch to the ground from two sides. Renji wondered what the point was until a previously unseen girl in a poofy white dress stood, braced herself, and leveled a tall white staff at the monster. A wide, intense beam of white reiatsu obliterated the central mass of the Witch. The creature and the labyrinth immediately wobbled and faded.
Behind him, Renji heard the team's scientist mutter a long whoaaa. In his own head, he agreed: That had been a lieutenant-class attack. Something like standing near his friend Rukia while she practiced firing Sōren Sōkatsui— the Seventy-Third Way of Destruction out of Ninety-Nine.
What the hell. How were these girls so powerful?
The entire party warily watched the Grief Seed drift to the roof of the salon where they had found an anomaly. The girl in the poofy white dress pushed her long black hair behind her ears and knelt to retrieve the Grief Seed with a regretful expression. Bookworm noticed the shinigami and snapped into a defensive stance. Carrot-Top and Poofy reacted instantly, the former assuming her own defensive pose as the latter tucked the Grief Seed in her top while she retreated behind the other two girls and brought her big staff to bear once again.
The shinigami all remembered their briefing: Some magical girls will aggressively defend their territory. Proceed with caution.
Everyone stood still as statues in the sunset, no one wanting to touch off a fight. Finally, Renji slowly raised his empty hands to his sides and firmly called out, "We don't want to fight you."
Poofy managed to look worried, confused, and hopeful at the same time. Bookworm and Carrot-Top squinted suspiciously. Bookworm in particular had the sharp look of someone analyzing everything she saw in minute detail. "Who are you?" she snapped.
"Lieutenant Renji Abarai of the Sixth Division of the Thirteen Court Guard Divisions." He nodded a respectful greeting.
"That means nothing to me," Bookworm said coldly.
"We're shinigami."
"Say what now?" blurted Carrot-Top.
"Ehhhhhhhhh? Really?!" Poofy asked excitedly, red eyes wide with curiosity. "Shinigami are real?!"
"Yeah." Renji drawled, his lips twitching as he was distinctly reminded of Orihime Inoue. "This is where I go all 'Whaaat, magical girls are real?' and we all stare dramatically as the episode ends, right?" He tipped his head westward and smirked. "We even have a sunset in the background." Renji could feel the confusion in his officers— they hadn't spent as much time blending into the World of the Living as he had during the war. He had long felt that temporary assimilation would serve him well as time went by. Here he was, being proven right. Hell yeah.
Poofy burst into giggles. She dropped her staff— which dissolved into white sparkles— and clapped with delight. Carrot-Top and Bookworm looked torn between grimaces and affectionate eyerolls. Poofy clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward playfully. "What'll happen in the next episode, Mister Shinigami?"
Renji noted that while her face was cheerful and warm, her eyes were watching him keenly and she stayed behind her friends. So she wasn't completely naive. He approved. "Pretty sure we'll have a peaceful conversation about why us shinigami are here now when we haven't been before," he answered with a shrug. "Talk about how we're here to figure things out and help you, that kind of stuff. Hopefully end with us being friends who work together to protect the people with no powers while we figure out how to stop Witches from appearing so girls like you don't have to fight." Lure cast; would they bite? Did they know? The intel he read overnight said most magical girls didn't.
All three girls went utterly still. Poofy's face went carefully serious. Bookworm and Carrot-Top looked grim. The atmosphere on the roof became tense once more.
Bookworm scowled. "Do you even know where Witches come from?"
Renji crossed his arms over his chest. He was pretty sure they knew, but just to be sure... "Yup. A magical girl from Mitakihara stumbled upon a shinigami and told him about Soul Gems, Grief Seeds, and Incubators."
Hatred burned in Bookworm's reiatsu so fiercely it showed in her blue eyes. "You know about the Incubators? What they do to girls?"
"Yep." He kept his face grim. "It's sick. The shinigami brass are pissed that they've managed to sneak around messing with souls for so long." Renji tilted his head. "The magical girl who provided our intel said most magical girls don't know where Witches really come from. How did you learn?"
"The hard way," Carrot-Top said bitterly.
"There used to be seven of us," Poofy said sadly.
Renji sighed and closed his eyes. "I see."
"Why do shinigami care about the Incubators?" Bookworm demanded.
The lieutenant looked to her and let his frustration show. "We're guardians of human souls. We protect them from corrupted spirits and help them pass on. We should have stopped the things from messing with souls like they are. It's a failure we want to correct."
"To save your wounded pride?" Bookworm said scathingly.
"To an extent, I guess," Renji admitted. "For some more than others. For me, I just think it's sick. There was a mess south of here where a human ally of the shinigami lost one sister to a Witch and another sister to becoming a Witch. I knew the kids a bit and their brother is a good friend. It's personal for me." His captain would probably censure him for being so frank, but he let his instincts lead him. The girls obviously had personal grudges against the Incubators. Putting himself on equal footing with them seemed the smart thing to do to get them to cooperate. "If there used to be seven of you... well, I'm guessing it's extra personal for you." He waited, giving them a chance to respond, but they all just looked at him with the kind of thousand-yard stares he saw on the survivors of Hollow-hunting missions gone catastrophically wrong. Seen-your-buddies-torn-apart-and-eaten wrong. It was unsettling to see the expression on the faces of such young girls. Renji nodded slowly. "Sooo... how do you feel about stopping this Incubator thing?"
"We tried," Carrot-Top snapped, obviously frustrated. "They just sat back and waited for us to get tired and fail."
Bookworm looked mournful. "As long as we have Soul Gems, we'll need to fight Witches and use the Incubator to keep from falling ourselves. Trying to defy that system from within brought only insanity and death."
Poofy had nothing to say, but she averted her eyes as her face fell into melancholy. She reached up and brushed a white-gloved hand against one of her silver jinglebell earrings like it was a sacred object.
Renji reached up and dug one finger under his bandanna to scratch his temple. "Well, no promises, but we have some people looking into ways of reversing the damage to Soul Gems without whatever that thing is."
Shock. "What?! Really?! We tried that! What have they found?! Are you sure?! When will it work?!"
Renji held his hands up and waved them in a cautioning gesture. "Whoa, slow down. No promises. The scientists looking at Grief Seeds and Soul Gems have ideas, but nothing concrete yet. They're the most scary-smart shinigami around, though, and a magical girl is helping them. So cross your fingers, I guess."
"Is it Mami?" Poofy asked hopefully. "Mami's from Mitakihara, and she's really helpful and nice! I bet she's helping!" She smiled and bounced expectantly.
Renji thought back to the intel dossiers. "Uh... Mami Tomoe?"
Poofy looked completely lost. "I dunno?"
Carrot-Top looked dismayed. "Kazumi, what are you on about? Who's Mami?"
Poofy— Kazumi— pouted cartoonishly. "Mami is the magical girl who saved Mmeeeee." She looked embarrassed for a moment, then laughed. "She had curly blond hair and wore yellow and made guns fall out of her hat and protected M-me with ribbons and called her attacks in Italian and—"
"Oh. That one," Carrot-Top said with a bit of dull surprise.
"She's so cool!" Kazumi gushed. She turned to the shinigami with stars in her eyes. "Mami's the one helping, right? Right? I wanna help, too!"
Renji stared blankly, unsure how to proceed. Carefully? Dodge. "Uh, the name of the magical girl helping us is Homura Akemi."
Kazumi mumbled a crestfallen, "Oh."
Bookworm eyed the shinigami carefully. "You mentioned a Mami Tomoe, though. What of her?"
Dammit. Busted. Renji sighed. Deflection wasn't his strong suit. "The intel from Akemi listed a Mami Tomoe as killed in action. I dunno if we're talking about the same girl, though."
Kazumi teared up and looked heartbroken. Renji really didn't know how to handle that.
Bookworm sighed and lowered her polearm, then let it dissolve entirely. Stepping to Kazumi's side as the girl began to cry, she looked back at the shinigami. "I'm Umika Misaki. This is Kazumi Subaru—" she squeezed Poofy's shoulder and was promptly wrapped in a hug— "and this is Kaoru Maki." Carrot-Top waved silently. Umika shared a significant glance with Kaoru, then turned back to the shinigami. "Let's continue this at our house instead of this rooftop. I think we're going to be talking a lot and we may as well be comfortable."
"That's nice, yeah," Renji said, scratching his head. "Your parents won't notice you talking to invisible people?"
"You're invisible?" Kaoru blurted. "But you're right there!"
Umika looked interested at that point, but let it slide. "Our parents are overseas. We manage."
"If you're sure, yeah," Renji reluctantly agreed. Their intel could be priceless. But the assignment... He glanced at his team. They were tired from a day of patrolling and would have to strike camp soon anyway. "We'll have to report to our superiors before we go. We already lost one team to a Witch before we knew what they were; no use letting the commander think he's lost another."
Umika inclined her head regally. "That is acceptable."
Renji eyed the three girls, two hovering around and comforting the third, as he dug out his Soul Phone. Poor kids.
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Beady red eyes watched the encounter from atop a nearby apartment building. The creature's white ears flattened back like a displeased cat's as the magical girls led the shinigami across the rooftops.
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The sky outside the windows of Urahara Shop was brilliant orange. Homura was absently chewing one nail while editing her censored pseudo-text on all things magical girl. Hitsugaya was tiredly copying his most acceptable rough draft of a long letter to his past self. Karin was completely absorbed in messing around with walnuts.
Mr. Tsukabishi had sent Jinta out to buy a large quantity of the nuts when it became apparent that the repetitive task of cracking them, eating the insides, and making a pattern out of shells on the table was unexpectedly soothing for the girl. Karin had pulled her Soul Gem closer to her edge of the table and built an intricate design around it. She alternated shells between upright and upside-down, stacked some, and so on, making ever-widening rings around the Gem's golden pedestal. Homura and Tōshirō had long since come to tolerate the constant squeak-CRACK of the nutcracker. They sat in wordless near-silence for a long time.
Out of the blue, Karin conversationally said, "I'm sorry I hit you, Homura. And I'm sorry I blew fire at you guys." squeak-CRACK
Homura and Tōshirō froze and looked up at her, dreading what they would see. Karin just kept calmly cracking and arranging walnuts, face mostly aloof. squeak-CRACK
"That wasn't you," Hitsugaya mumbled as he glanced away.
"Yes, it was. I even remember doing it. So I'm sorry." squeak-CRACK
Hitsugaya looked like he might protest again, but Homura spoke up first. "We forgave you even before the labyrinth had collapsed."
After a long pause, Karin murmured, "You two are good friends." Said friends looked at her again, but she didn't take her dull eyes off her project. squeak-CRACK
An uncomfortable silence dragged on for a few minutes. Karin eventually took a deep breath and asked, "Homura. When you go back in time, everyone will be better, right?" squeak-CRACK
Homura blinked and looked up at her. "Yes."
Karin looked like she was thinking about that answer. "Even if their souls were destroyed, they'll come back?"
"Yes." Homura guiltily avoided eye contact by watching the girl's hands work. "Yuzu's soul will be just as it was on the March sixteenth you remember."
Karin bit her lip, but still kept her eyes on the nutcracker. "W-will they remember any of it?" she asked in a wobbly voice.
Homura closed her eyes. "No. When I go back, it will be as if nothing after that point had ever happened. I am the only one who remembers anything."
After a few shallow breaths, Karin whispered, "That's good." squeak-CRACK
Homura's heart hurt. It really wasn't good— for her, anyway. But for Karin— "Yes."
They fell back into silence, Homura and Hitsugaya reluctantly returning to their tasks when it seemed Karin had drifted off into her own little world again. Ten minutes later, Karin quietly said, "I'm really sorry about this."
squeak-crack-PING!
Alarmed, Homura and Hitsugaya looked up in time to see Karin's Soul Gem shatter in the nutcracker.
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WITCH DATA
ROSAMUND, the Glass Witch with a vengeful nature. She will never forgive the one who killed her beloved. She sees that person's face everywhere, though, so she will never forgive anyone. It is almost enough to distract her from blaming herself.
A/N: Uh, Merry Christmas?
This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.