Sofia was woken up by the sound of a vacuum cleaner, signifying the holy presence of Arlene, Sofia's maid. Usually Sofia would be up way before she ever arrived, though.

She checked the clock on her nightstand.

Nine thirty.

That was way later than usual.

Sofia felt different, too. The vague throb somewhere behind the bridge of her nose was gone.

Holy shit.

The symptoms were all there.

Sofia had just gotten a good night of sleep.

Looks like Lucia Mount's circadian rhythm wasn't as fucked up as Sofia's. For a girl that was in high school, that was rather impressive.

Give it a few days, though.

Sofia got up. The morning cold had long since faded, so there was no need to scramble to cover herself in layers. She dragged herself to the bathroom and locked the door.

Before Sofia moved in, it would have been a room fit for the house she lived in– the floor was tiled in beige marble and a jacuzzi overlooked Santa Monica Bay through framed windows. Since Sofia rarely goes inside it, the only thing that changed in it since its glory days was a thin layer of dust.

Sofia made her way to the sink, rinsed the gunk out of her eyes, and looked in the mirror.

On it was the unfamiliar face of a blonde teenager.

Sofia jumped, poised her hands to summon her gun, but then realized it was only herself. She had just done a termination yesterday, remember? Shot Lucia with her gun? Possessed her? After ten or so years of hopping bodies, Sofia has never failed to be scared by her own reflection. She pulled a nearby chair under her and sat down.

There was an electric toothbrush on the sink counter.

Normally, Sofia never brushed her teeth. Magical girls are immune to cavities, so there was no reason to bother. But today she had a sudden urge to do it. She knew it was probably part of Lucia's nasty habits, but she was in a really good mood today, so, screw it, why the hell not?

The brush was coarse and dry, but still had enough charge to function. The paste tasted spicy, but it wasn't really that bad. Incisors. Canines. Premolars. Molars. Upper layer, lower layer. Great plaque purge of 2012. She brushed for the full three minutes, rinsed her teeth, and smelled the mint inside her mouth. It was good! Maybe she should brush her teeth more often, who knew? Sofia spat the water out of her mouth, wiped the toothpaste mustache off her face, and–

Heard something rumble somewhere above her.

A sudden wave of panic struck her. The sound came from the mansion's attic, which was where she put all her grief seeds.

Another rumble.

Sofia froze.

Logically, she shouldn't worry. Unlike amongst normal Magis, Kyubey took actual effort to ensure that the addresses of all CKs remained unknown. And if Kyubey did not want something to happen, then it didn't happen. There was no one breaking into her house. It was probably just a Sudden Squirrel Manifestation. Sofia heard that those tended to happen in places that were too sad and gloomy for too long.

And she was probably right– Before long, the rumbling stopped and the house fell into complete, utter silence.

Too silent.

What about Arlene? Arlene was supposed to be here. Sofia vividly remembered being woken up by the sound of her vacuum cleaner.

Sofia strained her ears, trying to hear something and prove herself wrong. A footstep. Maybe a washcloth scraping across a table. Heck, maybe even a chair squeaking, if Arlene suddenly came up with a bad case of arthritis or something. But the room remained silent.

Isolated rumbling in the attic, Sofia could probably ignore. But coupled with Arlene's sudden disappearance–

Kyubey. Are you there? Sofia telepathied. I think there's something wrong.

Sofia didn't know what she thought she'd hear. An "I don't know what you mean, Sofia. I don't see anything wrong there on your end," likely. Maybe even a "You needn't be scared, Sofia. I'm coming over." That would be so romantic.

Hell, at this point, Sofia would even take a Contractee spotted entering through attic windows, powerful, motives unclear. Don't do anything while I analyze the situation.

But there was no response.

While Kyubey wasn't obligated to deign every word uttered from a magi's mouth with a reply, he definitely would sort the situation out for you if you felt threatened by anything lest you slay yourself in unchecked paranoia.

Kyubey, are you there? Give me an answer.

Nothing.

With a flash of light, Sofia transformed. Her recent possession meant she had Lucia's costume– a pretty typical Victorian England steampunk attire, with a simple corset over frilly linen. Under Sofia's influence, shelf mushrooms had started growing out of the sides.

This was the ultimatum – absolutely no way Kyubey could ignore Sofia soliciting inside her house costumed with Arlene supposedly roaming inside. But– still nothing.

No other way to slice it. Something was wrong. One intruder at least, blocking her telepathy and stealing her gem. Very real chance it was more.

Not only that, the intruders had caught Sofia at a particularly bad time. Given time, Sofia's magic would naturally crush the consciousness of whoever she possessed. But one day was not nearly enough time, so Lucia's consciousness was very much alive. Which meant if Sofia possessed anyone right now, Lucia would go free.

Lucia who, according to Kyubey, was "incredibly dangerous", and he "could not risk her freedom".

But that wasn't a reason to be afraid. Even without possession, Sofia could definitely beat anyone in hand-to-hand combat. And not just hand-to-hand, either; Sofia slowly gained mastery over the abilities of whoever she possessed, and one day definitely gave her some minor stuff to work with.

Sofia walked towards the bathroom door, trying to make her footsteps sound casual, which was probably a useless gesture since the clip-clopping of her heels on the marble would tell any intruders listening in that she was transformed anyways. Why had she transformed already? Couldn't she just wait until she was at the doors? Ah, whatever, the damage was already done.

The walk from the sink to the bathroom entrance took about ten seconds. The door leading to the rest of her house was closed, but Sofia knew from memory that it led to a fairly narrow hallway that left very few escape spots. She was probably walking into an ambush.

Sofia checked her gem: only slight corruption. Shouldn't be an issue.

She turned the knob and pulled. The door opened. Sofia stepped outside.

The chirping of cicadas became the increasingly deafening noise of roaring flames. Sofia felt a blast of heat, considerably hotter than her not-air-conditioned room on the eve of summer, approaching rapidly from the right.

If Sofia hadn't been sent to terminate Lucia yesterday, she might've been screwed. But now that she did–

With a cascade of electric currents, Lucia's cross-shaped shield materialized buckled around Sofia's wrist, oriented perfectly to block the incoming projectile. Sofia squatted down, made herself as small as possible, covering herself completely behind the metal plating in the middle–

Then the fireball hit her.

The shield took the blunt of the damage. The leftovers were still enough to smoke her half to death. Copper, which Lucia's shield was presumably made out of, conducts everything, including heat. The moment the flames touched the shield, Sofia might as well have had two pounds of lava attached to her hand, streaking spots of raw, pink flesh on Sofia's palm.

This won't do.

Sofia conjured one of Lucia's Pearls of teleportation. The flames blocked her entire field of vision, so Sofia couldn't see anything, could not afford to try to see anything lest one of her appendages be burnt off, so she just chucked the pearl in some vague direction and hoped for the best.

Moments later, Sofia felt something yank on the collar of her costume. The pearl had landed somewhere, and space and time was bending to push Sofia to wherever that was. Luckily, it was a spot two feet behind one of the intruders.

Said ambusher a white hazmat suit that covered her entire body. She held a flamethrower whose fuel tube was connected to the gas mask on her visor instead of any fuel tanks. Hazmat chick didn't seem to have the spatial awareness to realize that a person had appeared behind her. The flamethrower kept spewing out flames.

Sneak attack?

Sofia threw a punch, aiming for Hazmat chick's neck, but the movement must've alerted Hazmat chick of her presence, and in the space of less than a second Hazmat chick managed to dismiss her flamethrower, turn a hundred eighty degrees to face Sofia, and blocked the punch with the hard bone on her wrist.

Ah shit.

Sofi went for another punch, but this time Hazmat chick was ready.

Sofia felt something press against her wrist. It was hot, so hot that her Magi nervous system censored the connections in the local nerves so that she didn't immediately go into shock. The flesh in her wrist blackened and necrotized before her very eyes.

Then, Sofia felt her entire body fly up into the air. The house folded inwards onto itself like it had turned into a gigantic washing machine, the carpets and the walls and the ceiling trading places like a kaleidoscope. And before Sofia knew it–

Crunch

The world returned to normal. It took a second and a sharp wave of pain in Sofia's midsection to realize that she had just heard her ribs shatter. It took another second for her mind to piece the slideshow of different sensations into a coherent picture– Hazmat chick had blocked her punch, and then threw her karate-style onto the floor.

Before Sofia could take another second to plan out her next course of action, she saw an amorphous black shape expand in her vision until it pressed onto her face with an audible sizzle. It was Hazmat chick's gloves, but this time, it hurt. It felt like someone was carving large slices of flesh off her face with a pair of rusty scissors.

Sofia's train of thought ran out of rails and crashed into a gaping chasm. The plan of action that she been meticulously developing vanished into thin air, leaving but four words in the mist:

Teleport teleport shit teleport

Sofia conjured another Pearl and flicked it away as far as she could. She landed about fifteen feet away from Hazmat chick, on the other end of the hallway. In the brief second of contact, Hazmat chick had given Sofia a scar on her face in the shape of a handprint. The skin had been completely flaked off, revealing the bloodred muscle fibers beneath, surrounded by gnarled flaps of charred dead skin where connective tissues had failed.

Not only that, Sofia also felt something burning on her right leg. She checked, and found peppered on it five holes the shape of perfect squares , big enough that you could easily fit a golf ball through. They went through her whole leg, even the bones, like someone pressed a cookie cutter all the way through.

Ah shit.

This wasn't Hazmat chick's special ability, but a consequence of recklessly using Lucia's. Sofia knew it well. The Pearl that she had just thrown had not been cooked enough, and as a result, some of her leg didn't make it.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Sofia had just been utterly defeated. Without Lucia's powers, she would have been dead, her brain dissolved into mush.

That was enough.

Sofia didn't want to possess Hazmat chick. She could have, at any point, but possessing her would mean that Lucia would instantly regain consciousness, just like Kylie at the school. And Sofia did not have the resources to deal with Lucia right now.

But, to be honest, dealing with Lucia would be preferable to dealing with Hazmat chick.

With a flash of crimson, Sofia manifested her gun and pulled the trigger. The gun squirted a jet of thick, kool-aid colored liquid, aimed perfectly for Hazmat chick's center of gravity.

As soon as Sofia's enchanted water touched any parts of Hazmat chick, the individual that she was would be no more. All facets of Hazmat chick's consciousness, her memories, likes and dislikes, fears, emotions, whatever, all pushed back to the recesses of somewhere which Sofia knew little of and cared even less, leaving nothing but an empty husk to be controlled. The Hazmat suit won't save her, either– regardless of what form it takes, a Magi's costume was still composed of her magic and is therefore synonymous with the Magi herself. Plenty of magic for Sofia's evil witcheries to work with.

Meanwhile, Hazmat chick made no attempts to dodge the shot. Instead, she started re-manifesting her flamethrower, but there was no way that she would manage to fire it before Sofia's slug hit. It was incredible how nonchalant Hazmat chick was; basic common sense, if a magi was firing her magical weapon at you, especially if it was something that appeared nonlethal, it was probably going to mess you up somehow.

But then. A hideous sizzle filled the air. Where Sofia's water was seconds ago was replaced by gently rising vapor.

Sofia felt no connection. Hazmat chick was still Hazmat chick.

But that was impossible. Sofia saw with her eyes the kool-aid hit Hazmat chick's center of gravity. But obviously, it hasn't. What the fuck happened?

Could it be her ability? Was Hazmat chick was superheating air to such a degree that it evaporated the water and killed the spores mid-air before the shot hit?

Hazmat chick had already conjured her flamethrower. She did not fire it, instead waiting an extra second for Sofia to process the situation, the ease by which she had just deflected her most powerful attack. Sofia could smell it, fucking smell it, through the dark opaque hazmat visor; Hazmat chick's expression, that victorious smirk no one ever ought to have when they looked at her. It pissed Sofia off, it took every last bit of Sofia's willpower to restrain herself from lunging for Hazmat chick then and there, which unfortunately left her too stupid to retain that there was still a flamethrower pointed at her –

Hazmat chick pulled the trigger. Flames roared towards her. With nowhere to go, Sofia conjured Lucia's shield again. The fire soared everywhere, beyond the edges of the shield that Sofia hid behind for dear life, obfuscating her vision in a world of flames. The heat around Sofia ebbed into her.

There was but one option left. And that was to run. And despite everything, Sofia still had plenty of energy in her reserves for Pearls.

Sofia hated it. She hated the fact that she had to run. But she hated the pain more. The feeling of the blood boiling, bursting from the vessels. They say that a burn wound is the one of the most painful things that can happen to a human. There was no way she could win. It wasn't worth it.

Then, the fire dissipated.

Sofia peeked from behind her shield.

Hazmat chick had dismissed her flamethrower. She walked away from Sofia with slow, mechanical strides, like a fucking miscalibrated robot.

Was she… leaving?

After all of that? She was just going to leave? Sofia ought to have been furious that Hazmat chick considered so little of a threat that she wasn't even bothering to look at her, but the whole thing was so outrageous that it left Sofia dumbfounded. Why come all this way, waste all this magic, just to spook her? Sofia trained her eyes on Hazmat chick, but she pulled no sudden moves, just the same rigid motion again and again, slamming the front door on her way out.

Sofia assessed the aftermath of the ambush. Half the shit in the hallway was ablaze. Even though the fire was blinding to the eye, it wasn't doing a good job illuminating the rest of the hallway, tinting it in an orange light.

Sofia took slower than she probably should have to get herself upright again. Despite the pain dampening, the burns on it still felt like a poisonous snake was steadily dripping acid on Sofia's face.

Sofia checked her internal soul gem clock.

It was almost completely black.

Sofia froze. There was no fucking way that she expended that much energy in this fight. Sofia had checked her gem beforehand, and it had been almost completely pure. What had she even done? She used a single pearl, conjured her gun once or twice, and healed some burn wounds. It shouldn't have been a big deal.

Now that Sofia was really paying attention, she noticed that the gem was steadily accumulating despair, at a much faster rate than healing her wounds ought to have warranted.

Hazmat chick.

She must've had some kind of ability that drained soul gems. That's why she left. She had already won. Sofia would wither and die on her own.

The revelation was only mildly disconcerting. Having a half-dead gem puts everything in a shade of gray. But maybe the grief wasn't the only part of it? Just yesterday, Sofia was having thoughts about the way she lived her life, on how stupid and boring it was–

No, shut the fuck up. Of course Sofia wanted to live. She tried to justify it by searching for a reason in her brain, but found none. Which was natural! If she had any reasons to live to begin with, her pseudo-dead gem would be censoring them anyway.. She simply needed to purify her gem, and all of this would go away.

All good magical girls had a spare grief seed in reserve. Sofia kept hers in a pocket on her dress, but she had Lucia's costumes now and Lucia's stupid corset had two billion pockets. She fumbled through each one until she found it.

Grief seed was out. That was a good start.

Sofia conjured her gun and willed her liquified gem to pour out of it. The sludge was barely red, now, almost the same color as the seed in her other hands. Sofia clinked the two stones together. Immediately, the dark clouds started clearing away and her gem brightened until it became its usual shade of crimson.

Sofia's mind went clear. The black veil lifted itself. The existential crisis suddenly mattered much less. And not just mentally- the wounds Hazmat chick's inflicted on her had hurt much less, too. The blackened wrist on her arm was almost healed, the charred cells on her face were growing back.

That was weird.

Sofia had thought that Hazmat chick's attacks were simply way too intense for Sofia to dampen. But was that really what was happening? Perhaps she was instead impairing Sofia's ability to dampen pain..

Sofia thought back to the fight in the hallway. Hazmat chick's first attack, when she grabbed onto Sofia's wrist, had barely hurt; it was only after that burns mysteriously started to hurt. There was a pattern here, and Sofia thought she knew what it was.

Her soul gem.

The start of the fight, and now– both were times where her gems were uncorrupted. Was that the pattern? The more corrupted a gem was, the harder it was to block pain? Another ability that only worked with despair fit Hazmat chick's general theme. And if that was really the case, Sofia had an idea.

Sofia's gem melted into goo again, which squirmed until it surrounded the grief seed completely like an exoskeleton. As the grief seed was constantly in contact with her gem, any stray bit of despair will be sucked out instantly, and she wouldn't have to worry about the pain dampening ability.

That was one of Hazmat chick's abilities dealt with. But, perhaps, the more dangerous aspects of Hazmat chick was her water-evaporating fire and her ability to overpower Sofia in hand-to-hand combat. How was Sofia supposed to get around them?

Well, what would Kyubey do in this situation?

Well, through the previous scuffle and a bit of deduction, Sofia had pretty much eliminated all the unknowns from the equation. She had a good idea of Hazmat chick's powers, knew how to navigate the battlefield, and had a vague idea of her psychological profile. If Sofia was Kyubey, with a snap of her fingers she could prepare all the facts into a delicious plan of flawless flawlessness with no uncertainties and enough backup plans to use up all the letters of the alphabet.

So she thought.

And she thought.

And she thought.

And her head remained empty.

Every single second she wasted was a second that Hazmat chick was getting away. She needed to think of something NOW, or she was going to live the rest of her life as a hideous monster inside a collage.

And she thought.

And her head remained empty.

Fuck it, fuck it. Fuck making a plan, Sofia was going to wing it. She was going to lose, but it was going to be better than just sitting here and dying.

Sofia sprinted to her front door and shoved it open. Like all mountain houses in Malibu, the mansion was located atop the crest of a steep hill, a narrow strip of pavement in the midst of an overgrown lawn leading from the front door to a steel gate at the hill's base. And she could see Hazmat chick, walking down the road, her footprints turning asphalt into molten tar.

Last chance.

Sofia conjured a pearl and lobbed it at Hazmat chick's general position. She landed right in front of her.

A normal person might've been startled by someone randomly appearing in front of them. Hazmat chick did not care. She simply stopped moving, her hands hanging awkwardly on the sides of her pants like a confused toy soldier. Sofia should have been close enough to hear air respire through her mask, but her ears picked up nothing. Any bystander could've mistaken her for a clothing rack.

Sofia had intended for Hazmat chick to make a move first, but she just stood there like a fucking statue. Was she stalling for time for her curse to sap Sofia's gem? Or an intimidation tactic? Ah, who gives a shit.

Sofia threw a punch at Hazmat chick's midsection.

The reaction was instant. Hazmat chick maneuvered her hands to combat readiness faster than Sofia's eyes could process and snatched her wrist mid-punch. Sofia's flesh sizzled and blackened at the contact.

The touch fucking hurt. But it had hurt much less than it had back in the mansion. Maybe it was because she'd just purified her gem. Enough that she swallowed her screams of pain, wrenched her arm out of Hazmat chick's grip and managed to maintain enough critical thinking skills to process Hazmat chick's counterattack–

A kick.

Sofia conjured Lucia's shield and blocked, but the impact knocked it right out of her hands. Hazmat chick recovered immediately and threw a punch at Sofia's midsection–

A lightbulb lit up in Sofia's head.

Hazmat chick's fist struck Sofia's abdomen with a sickening crunch. Then, with her other hand, Hazmat chick pressed Sofia's face into the fabric of her costume. That was inconvenient, it had taken Sofia a lot of energy to heal the wound on her face. But inconvenient– that was all it was. The pain was minor. No more than a paper cut. It no longer jumbled Sofia's nerves. Hazmat chick's block on pain dampening was gone.

That means the plan was a go.

Sofia shoved Hazmat chick off of herself– she was surprisingly light– but she shrugged it off, readjusted her footwork and prepared to strike again..

Now. According to her plan, Sofia needed to trap one of Hazmat chick's arms. It was very difficult to trap Hazmat chick's arms if she chose to do a kick instead. Everything rode on how Hazmat chick launched her next attack.

In the corner of her eyes, Sofia saw Hazmat chick's right arm start to move.

Sofia swallowed her excitement. She hadn't won yet, Hazmat chick had proven to be consistently faster than her and outmaneuvered her at every turn. Sofia entered ultra concentration mode. The scenery disappeared around her. Nothing in the world but Hazmat chick and the potential energy in her fist, moving through the air like a bullet. And Sofia knew all about bullets. She had a ranged magical weapon, projectile motion came as naturally to her as breathing.

Sofia saw Hazmat chick's biceps flex rhythmically, saw the light summer breeze, and the miniscule shake in her muscles. All the factors were considered, their consequences on the fist's acceleration calculated and reduced to force vectors acting on a freebody diagram. And then the trajectory lit up, a section inside three-dimensional space that stood out amongst the rest that grabbed her attention like the trail of a shooting star.

That was it.

Sofia drove her arms towards where she knew Hazmat chick's arms would be–

And her hands clasped upon nothing.

What.

Sofia rechecked her calculations, but the numbers became nonsense vectors folded in onto themselves.

Hazmat chick had stopped the punch in midair, millimeters away from the coordinates that Sofia had predicted.

What had happened? Did Hazmat chick figure out Sofia's plan? Read Sofia's body language and realized that she was way too obsessed with trapping her fist? As Sofia's brain cells struggled to comprehend this new development, she heard a metallic shing echo.

The next moment, Sofia felt a sharp object pushing itself inside her throat.

Blood spurted out of the wound like someone had turned on a water fountain inside of her head, covering a two foot radius around her in thick crimson and staining Hazmat chick's otherwise pristine Hazmat suit. Hazmat chick wriggled the knife crosswise, doing as much damage to the internal structures inside Sofia's neck as she could, destroying so much flesh that Sofia's head drooped to one side involuntarily.

Somewhere at the back of her head, she noticed her gem had started accumulating despair. The seed she'd coated her gem around must've been fully saturated now. The wound on her neck had already become a dull throb, and probably enroute to get worse very, very, soon. Sofia needed to think, needed to come up with some kind of idea before the knife subsumed all of her rational thought–

Sofia felt the knife moving around inside her throat. Hazmat chick was maneuvering it around still, stopping her flesh from regenerating. That meant those arms were definitely within Sofia's reach. For the purposes of Sofia's plan, the situation was not much different as to if she had trapped her arms.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Did Hazmat chick miscalculate? Did she not know as much of the plan as Sofia thought?

With a wild grab, Sofia clasped her hands onto the Hazmat chick's sleeves from both sides, and pulled as hard as she could. With a sound like tearing plastic, the sleeve split into two halves, one in each of Sofia's hands. The cloth was, as she expected, just as fucking hot as the glove had been when Hazmat chick grabbed onto her face earlier. Hazmat chick's curse was working exponentially to it had been before, and the pain was really, really starting to kick in now. It felt like she'd dipped her hand into a vat of boiling water.

Sofia dropped the cloth in her left hand off and started to conjure a pearl. Meanwhile, Hazmat chick noticed what she was doing, probably realized what her plan was. But it had to be too late. She had approximately one and a half seconds to react to the situation before Sofia's Pearl charged. If Sofia could managed to suppress her reflexes and hold on to these bits of Hazmat chick's costume enough for her pearl to work–

Hazmat chick made a wild grab for Sofia's charging pearl.

Shit.

Back at the mansion, the Pearl Sofia fired that took out a huge chunk out of Sofia's leg had almost been finished. If Hazmat chick managed to disrupt the pearl at this stage, it would probably cut her cleanly in half.

Shit.

Sofia was out of moves. She couldn't conjure Lucia's shield without throwing away the piece of cloth in her other hand. She watched, helplessly, as Hazmat chick's glove inched closer and closer towards her Pearl.

There was nothing Sofia could do. Hazmat chick was going to grab onto it.

Fuck that, then.

Sofia gritted her teeth, threw the half-cooked Pearl, and prepared for death.

Then the scenery changed. Hazmat chick was now a couple of steps downhill. There were several chunks the size of oranges cut out of her midsection. She was no organologist, but she'd say that half of her liver and heart was probably toast.

In other words, nothing vital.

It didn't even hurt her at all. She was having no difficulty breathing. Sofia couldn't feel the left side of her body, though. Her left hand was completely paralyzed.

But Sofia's right hand was fine. She wiggled her fingers to prove it.

And she was still alive.

It was over.

The combatants simultaneously conjured their respective weapons. Hazmat chick's flamethrower was aimed at Sofia. Sofia's gun was aimed at the piece of cloth in her hand.

She had won.

A magical girl's costume was synonymous with the magical girl herself. Even if she wasn't wearing it.

And that was the exact moment Hazmat chick realized she was screwed. However, she betrayed no extra body language. Instead, she had simply returned to being an inanimate object.

Sofia had won. There was absolutely no doubt about it.

Hey, hey, idea. It would be insane if she could blackmail Hazmat chick into surrendering and leaving her alone without actually possessing her. That would mean that she wouldn't have to un-possess Lucia at all! Right?

That was a good idea. Let's do that.

Sofia pressed her gun deeper into the piece of cloth. Despite seeming to have completely lost the sensation of touch in the left side of her body, through Hazmat chick's voodoo magic the cloth still burnt in her hands. "YOU SEEM TO KNOW WHAT MY POWER DOES," Sofia said. "AND IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO–"

Hazmat chick did not give a shit.

She fired the flamethrower. The machine roared into life and the final fireball Hazmat chick would ever fire raced towards her.

But why? Sofia had literally established that she wanted to negotiate. Hazmat chick was literally forcing Sofia to possess her for no reason.

Sofia pulled her trigger. Kool-aid colored water squirted out, and was sucked into the piece of cloth like it was a sponge. On cue, the flames disappeared from the air. Hazmat chick collapsed onto the ground like a marionette with the strings cut off– or, in this case, rerouted.

And in the next instant, Sofia was Hazmat chick.

Being Hazmat chick felt so much better. The numerous wounds that she'd suffered had stopped hurting, and she could move the left side of her body again. Sofia wanted to lie there forever, with the smell of charred dirt fresh in her nostrils.

But of course not. There was no rest for the magical girl.

Sofia had possessed Hazmat chick, which meant that she had definitely left Lucia Mount's body. Which meant–

It was time to deal with Lucia, now.