Lucia teleported Steph away right after the meeting. Abby transformed into green dust and dissolved. Sofia, having shit powers, had to walk her way out. The world wasn't fair, it just was.

Sofia was a melting ice cream. Her blood-covered shirt was completely drenched in sweat. Her shorts had a massive wet spot on it like she pissed herself.

She walked out the threshold with Chase, who was the slowest walker in all of existence. Sofia's life force drained away as Chase took little baby steps like she was kneading on clay.

So, Chase telepathied. What do you think about Lucia.

What the fuck was wrong with this girl. She lived together all day with Abby and never talked to her. Yet the moment she's alone with Sofia she's a huge chatterbox.

Sofia gauged Chase's body language. She seemed more occupied in walking than punching the shit out of her.

She's a, terrible person. I think. Sofia replied.

She doesn't actually have any leadership position in Pasa anymore. Chase said, Maia is the city head. But Maia loves her, so Lucia still basically runs this city. Lucia does insane shit to people. Hazel had no chance convincing anyone.

Maia, the city head. Mimi had said that too, but Lucia talked twice as much as she did.

How is Maia in charge, Sofia asked.

Maia showed up one day and demanded it. When Lucia said no she beat every single one of us working together.

What the hell. What's her power?

Maia knows everything. Chase said.

Everything? But she likes Lucia right? She knows about– whatever Lucia did?

There are limits, Chase said. I don't know what kind. In our fight there were no spectacular displays of unknown powers. She simply anticipated every plan, stopped every ambush, and knew exactly what every one of us was going to do at all times.

Maia, small and young as she may appear, was still evil. She had still taken Mimi's territory and allowed her to die.

In that fight Maia killed a girl. That girl was an insufferable crone, but if she lived this city wouldn't be as much of a shithole.

With that cheerful note Chase regressed to a shuffling mute. The sun grew tired of Sofia's patheticness and dipped below the horizon. The shadows elongated and the empty streets grew creepier.

They left the heat threshold. Chase unlocked her car. Abby had not been waiting for them like Sofia assumed.

Sofia moved to sit in the back, but Chase opened the door to the front seat instead. Sofia screamed silently (and hopefully expressionlessly) and acquiesced because she was a bitch.

Chase started the car and drove much faster than she was supposed to.

"Abby is currently tracing Lucia's movement." Chase said. "She and Steph are eating food in their car. They plan to kill some witches before returning home."

What the fuck, Chase just said that out loud. Sofia looked around, convinced she'd find some girl's face pressed on the car window or something.

"There's no one here," Chase said. "I can detect the positions of soul gems around me. There are none near enough to hear us."

"Oh."

They drove on. The sun was completely below the horizon now, and the streets submerged into primordial darkness.

"Look out the window," Chase said. "It's quite a parade."

Sofia reluctantly pulled her gaze off of Chase and looked out the window.

On the sidewalk bounced beach balls.

Each was colorful, bright splotches in the darkness. They bounced as if sentient, some in circles, some chasing each other in games of tag. One went higher and higher until it bounced atop a roof.

Chase pressed on the accelerator and sped away.

They passed by a couple wearing casual clothes, but their heads were smooth. Features– eyes, noses, hair– had been drawn on crudely what looked like ballpoint pen ink. One house was covered with holes of pure blinding whiteness like a slice of high contrast cheddar.

Familiars outside labyrinths, not in some specially controlled containment domes the psychopaths occasionally endeavored to build, but just outside. Roaming around a neighborhood that had been packed completely full of civilians. This was about ten times worse than anything in Los Angeles, if anyone left even a window open they would be kissed by seven different witches at the same time.

"We have to do something–" Sofia said automatically. "Stop the, stop the car, we have to–"

"If there's anyone who's stupid enough to get Kissed, they would have died by now." Chase said.

The car left the neighborhood, and Sofia could tell there was something different about this place. Instead of beaten storefronts and abandoned cars, there sprawled block-sized, multi-floor rectangular buildings, painted in various shades of white. Planters were lined within the sidewalks. Dying trees poked out the ground in regular, aesthetic intervals. Pasadena, a city built on a desert. With the people dead, everything else died too.

Without even looking Sofia could tell there were a lot of familiars here. The air was musky, like an abandoned attic rather than of open air. It made Sofia paranoid and restless and crave for things to die.

There was also a sense that she'd seen this place before. A liminal space like the rest of Pasadena, Pretty buildings, pretty grass, tennis courts and water fountains.

Chase passed by a signpost and it said:

ANNENBERG CENTER -

- PAGE HOUSE MAILROOM

Mailrooms. "This is– a college campus?" Sofia said.

"This is the college campus," Chase said. "We're at Caltech."

Bam. Name drop. Sofia heard of Caltech, of course she had. One of the top ten best universities in the country. In these dorms was a collection of the smartest people in the world. The word CALTECH on their resumes promised them whatever future they desired.

Abby said: Half the people in Pasadena were dead. Killed by just one evil bitch. Now this campus reeked of death.

Chase parked in some parking lot, and they got out. The evening was hot and without wind. The abandoned musk grew stronger. Chase led her down an unfamiliar path. Here Sofia saw familiars– lollipops with a single red eye hopped along the tiled paths. Tentacles from unseen krakens poked out the concrete and writhed.

They reached Abby, sitting on a bench under a streetlight. In the lawn behind her was a massive floating cube of water. Mustachioed fish and shrimps with scribbled dots for eyes swam lazily inside.

"Hello besties," Abby said. "Sofia."

Sofia stared at Chase. In Abby's presence she no longer talked. "Is, Lucia in there?" Sofia said.

"Yeah. Caltech is a competitive area. People here are depressed, especially now since all their friends are dead."

"So now we wait."

"Waiting is good," Abby said. "The more we wait, the weaker Lucia and Steph get. Your gem's all clean?"

"Obviously," Sofia said.

"Okay. Just be vigilant, then."

Of course. Sofia transformed, which meant little aesthetically since civvies lacked costumes. She snatched her gun from midair and trained it at the labyrinth entrance.

And then, things went wrong.

Something invisible grabbed onto Sofia's gun and wrenched it out of her hand. A tremendous force smashed the gun into plastic splinters, revealing her gem.

The world slowed down.

This power. Ellen.

How the fuck did Ellen know her gem was in her gun.

Chase could detect soul gems. She did not detect Ellen.

Ellen had her gem.

The right half of Abby's body dissolved into glowing green dust which phased through Ellen's invisible monster, it enveloped the gem and reformed into a hand.

CRUNCH

Abby's dismembered hand burst into gore. She screamed, more in anger than in pain, and Sofia felt her gem blip off her proprioceptive radar, yet she did not die. Sofia realized Abby hammerspaced her gem before Ellen's ghost could crush it, holy shit, she'd just saved Sofia's life, Abby didn't even hesitate, if she'd did Sofia would have died by then–

Sofia's palms closed around an outline of her gun and it became real. Ellen's ability, Sofia knew about it. She'd even caught a glimpse of the construct it created before– a hulking figure wearing tattered gray robes and a pixelated face. There was no way Sofia could miss it.

Sofia conjured her gun and shot it. The kool-aid splattered against something invisible and sizzled, but there was no connection.

What.

Sofia processed this. Processed the invisible clawed talons possibly inches away from her face that there was no way she was fast enough to dodge. Sofia twisted her gun towards Chase.

There was the vague idea in her head that pressing the trigger would leave Glasses Guy a defenseless human against Ellen's invisible magic ghost. Ellen might not notice Sofia switching, or she'd notice and cut him up anyway.

Sofia pulled the trigger.

Her vision shifted– instead of Abby's particles and Chase she saw, Glasses Guy as an invisible force slammed into him and sent him flying into the darkness.

Sofia assessed the situation. Even if they beat this invisible monster Ellen could probably summon a new one. They need to find Ellen's actual body, but Chase's radar was not seeing her. Okay, sure. Sofia concentrated and analyzed Chase's magical girl cortex. Chase had a magical pigeon box. Her ability was to summon pigeons to do her bidding.

That didn't seem right at all. There was no mention of any gem detection abilities, yet the ring on Sofia's hand exuded a red nebula and smelled faintly of strawberries. Whatever! Sofia transformed into some superhero getup and conjured the box, which was a flashy yellow-blue action figure box which advertised cool posing pigeons instead of a superhero.

Sofia let Chase's muscle memory do the work. PIGEONS– ATTACK!

The blue lid burst with a flock of pigeons, much more than any box should have contained. Their gray plumes shimmered under the nonexistent light. They completely ignored Sofia and flew in random directions, which was adequate because she could divine the outline of Ellen's ghost based on the locations of birds being randomly flattened midair.

Don't freak out, said Abby. I'm going to go inside of you, for a bit.

Radioactive green Abby particles floated over to Sofia and streamed into her nose and mouth and ears, but it felt like nothing until–

It was like going from a human to a magical girl again. Except she had already been a magical girl, so she entered some higher state of being instead. She surged with power, feeling quite like she could punch a hole in solid steel. Like she could defeat Ellen's ghost with a single strike. So Sofia bent her knees, cocked her fist, and struck.

Sofia's fist met the ghost's invisible one and tore through it like a bullet. She pierced the rubber-like skin and into the spongy ectoplasm. Snapped bones splintered against her knuckles and invisible ichor poured down her arm. With a shriek, projected directly into her brain like telepathy, the the pigeon covered shape fled and crumpled into nothingness, leaving a nothing but pigeon carcasses plummeting into the ground like bullets.

Ellen did not like to exist.

The monks and psychologists agreed with her. Meditating, tea, yoga, it was all just people trying to get themselves as close to nonexistence as they possibly could. But no matter how wide your third eye opened and how calm you got, you still breathed air, your heart still beat, and you still digested food.

But Ellen could stop existing.

Shadows didn't breathe, didn't circulate blood, didn't think. They remembered nothing and had no regrets. Shine a light on them and you revealed their true nature: an ontological illusion. Absence rather than presence. Nonexistence itself.

Sofia Robinson forced her to exist.

Ellen had thought she would never see that chain again. It deafened each of the senses she thought she no longer had. Memories of camaraderie and regret flooded into her nothingness. Lucia had said it, Sofia had killed her little sister. Her Juana. Juana, her tormentor, one of those who bound her to a life where she saw all the evil and disgusting parts of the incubator's world.

Ellen must kill Sofia. For her friends, for the ability to become nothing again. But she had failed, after getting Sofia's gem in her hand. Why couldn't Sofia just die? This was the thing that she never wanted to ever again, she had sacrificed her entire life so she didn't have to. The moment the rest came to this city Sofia was dead anyway. The chain, visible in full color in the infrared haze of her shadow's vision, taunted her.

Ellen melded into the shadows again. She opened her eyes, and the world sharpened into infrared. Her right arm had been completely split apart, but it would do. From the distance she spied Sofia in Chase's body, those damned chains hanging off her neck. Vaguely Ellen knew time was of the essence– after Lucia and Steph defeated their witch, they would surely aid them.

Ellen quashed her exhaustion and thought of Juana. Baking terrible lasagna for her, sewing that sweater that she refused to take off, that time she called Ellen "mama" in broken Spanglish and got so embarrassed afterwards. When nonexistence got lonely Ellen dreamed of going back and to see how the rest were doing, but she had been too late. She'd never see Juana again.

Ellen screamed, silent, but this time in rage instead. She allowed her body to become massless, kicked off the air. In Chase's body Sofia must have sensed something. Pigeons clustered upon Ellen's form, but that was weak, negligible. She raked her claws across Sofia's abdomen. Sharp keratin knives punctured her body like a plastic bag, spraying out blood and entrails, outlining Ellen's invisible body in red.

Sofia pressed and squeezed and Ellen felt bones fracturing, breaking through skin and leaking ectoplasm. But Ellen was beyond pain. She screamed it out, howled her throat hoarse, an unearthly screech that ruptured her own eardrums. With her nail still embedded inside Sofia, Ellen jumped and flew skyward.

Ellen noticed whenever she flew them up people stopped functioning. Sofia's face went completely blank.

But her range was still twenty meters. To fly any distance at all, she moved her nonexistence nearer to the battlefield. She noticed Sofia's grip on the wraith's working arm weaken– A stream of green particles streamed forth from her mouth, coagulating the torso and head of Abby.

Abby's ghost punched Ellen in the face and decapitated her, which was useless. They'd hit it– the highest Ellen could go. The sprawling rectangular buildings seemed like tiny molehills here. Survive this, Sofia. Just TRY to survive this.

Abby clasped her hands around Ellen's neck and crushed, trying to choke something that had already been decapitated. Ellen noticed Sofia held her gun. Selfish coward. Yes, shoot a civilian, leave Abby and Chase here to fall to their deaths. A ticking bomb, rushing headfirst into a crowd to take as many people with her as possible–

Sofia shot her gun. One, two, three, four times. With one swift push Ellen wrenched her claw out of Sofia's body, sending intestines and blood everywhere as Sofia fell into the abyss below like a rag doll.

Sofia heard her heartbeat echo in her temple. Thump, thump, thump. A magical girl of Chase's caliber probably had a heartbeat under duress of 70 beats per minute, which sounded right– a bit slower than her mental conception of a second.

From her pocket she grabbed her soul gem. It was muddy and chaotic with the sum grief of her and Chase, but that wasn't a problem. Gingerly she released the most precious object she had ever owned and allowed it to fall an indeterminate distance towards the ground.

Sofia counted her heartbeat.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump–

After four and a half beats her soul hit the concrete. It felt like Sofia had hit her funny bone, but her funny bone was her entire body and she tingled, numb and electric. Simple division told her that 3.85 seconds had elapsed.

Before Sofia had become a magical girl, she had been a Sophomore in high school. She took Physics. She found it mildly interesting– the ability to describe the world by numbers instead of intuition. She remembered one formula most of all.

Δy = 1/2 at2

Where Δy was distance traveled (quantity of vertical displacement y), a was acceleration, and t was the time. If you plugged in earth's gravitational acceleration (10 m/s), the time elapsed (1.45 s), you derive that Sofia was approximately 19.2 meters off the ground.

Now, imagine a right triangle. Point A was Sofia, suspended midair. Point B was a point directly underneath her, and in point C was Ellen. Ellen's range of twenty meters (she grew up in Canada) was the length of the hypotenuse. Sofia had just calculated the length of side AB, her height. Therefore, using the Pythagorean Theorem, Ellen's distance from Sofia was the square root of 202 - 19.22, or 5.2 meters.

Sofia conjured her gun. There was an entire circle of points 5.2 meters away from her. But Chase had sensed Ellen's gem in the parking lot. And the direction towards the parking lot was–

Sofia aimed her gun to the left, and fired four equidistant shots within an approximate arc.

With a surge of white hot pain Ellen wrenched her nail from Sofia's stomach, and she fell.

Sofia collapsed into an infinitely flat shadow, which was eerily similar to McBride's room and sent migraines up her head. Without Ellen's magic, the nonexistence rejected her and she emerged into the real world.

It worked. Sofia checked her grief seed. It wasn't red anymore. She laid down on the barren soil where Ellen had hid herself as more migraines toiled in her head.

She followed her gem-sense and found it, blistering magenta sloshing around in a black fog like charred flesh. She also sensed Ellen's gem, buried in a shallow hole. The signature was faint and far away. Farther than Chase could detect, but still close enough to connect to her body.

Next to it was Chase. It seemed that she had rearranged herself midair to fall on her legs, which looked like they had been crushed under by a hydraulic press. Her bones curved in multiple new joints, sticking clean through skin that was more bruise than flesh. Her feet resembled ground beef more than any human appendage. Chase herself was passed out, cold.

Abby particles emerged from Chase's body into some kind of fighting stance. Her left hand was not there.

"Fuck. Abby it's me, me, it's Sofia." she conjured her water gun and waved it.

Abby sighed in relief. Her entire body, save her head, dissolved into dust and went back into Chase's slightly open mouth.

Sofia had done that to Chase. Was Abby mad at her? And Lucia, Steph. The aquarium labyrinth still stood– Lucia and Steph were still in there. They had to recreate the ambush, or Lucia was going to get away again–

Sofia found her grief seed in her pocket. It was almost fully saturated, well over the 80% threshold Hazel blabbed about in the meeting, but it might make a difference–

Give the seed to me, said Abby's voice.

Sofia froze, stared at Chase's unconscious almost-corpse in shock.

Give it to me right now, or I swear, Abby said.

"Okay. Okay okay."

Sofia threw it over. Particles streamed out of Chase's body, formed into a hand, and caught it, and it disappeared out of sight. Chase's wounds began to bubble. What was Sofia supposed to do? Had Abby completely forgotten about their goal? Should she say something?

Time passed. No one said a word. Then, a reedy, annoying voice broke the silence. "The hell is going on here?"

Sofia's eyes darted to the origin– Steph. Her costume– a medical gown– was soaking wet, but she still had all four limbs and no gaping holes on essential body parts.

"Uh–" Sofia said. "I– Uh–"

Some green particles streamed outside Chase's mouth, reformed into the top of half of her body, still incorporeal and bright green. Impeccable timing as usual bestie, Abby said. I would execute a nice, slow golf clap for you, but, ah… she nodded at her stump.

Lucia burst from the bushes around them. A grin formed on her face when she saw them. "Hey guys what's up!" She looked in Sofia's direction and a momentary look of disgust crossed her face, like she had just looked at a particularly revolting pile of puke.

"Drop dead," Sofia said.

Reign it in, Abby said, absently. Hey bestie. We were just talking about how if you got here, five seconds earlier, maybe Chase would have been fine right now.

"What?" Lucia looked surprised. "Chase is–"

She fell from really fucking tall. Abby said. She's unconscious. I'm– this is probably fine. But–

Lucia and Steph and Sofia pushed Chase up and coiled her one working arm around Abby's neck. "Okay I'm sorry about Chase. I am! Let Steph know if there's anything we can do, she'll answer her calls now. Right Steph?"

"Chase looks fine. I've survived worse." Steph said. "Don't worry you guys."

"Yeah! I am incredibly happy to see you here." Lucia said.

Sofia noticed that Lucia was. Or at least, Lucia wanted to look incredibly happy. Her eyes sparkled, like she'd just found an injured woodland animal that she could just do so many experiments on. She looked ready to burst into song.

I am incredibly neutral about seeing you personally, Abby said coolly. Given the fact that you are in my territory.
"Neutral? I knew it, you're a big softie after all–" Lucia piped out.

Abby did not speak.

"Okay." Lucia found a grief seed from her pocket, still pristine and unused, and threw it at Abby, who caught it with another manifested hand. "I apologize for intruding on your territory. Here is the full unused seed."

Sofia's poker face failed her. She gaped. Steph, looking similarly bewildered, said, "Uh, half of that is mine–"

"I'll pay you back. Abby, let me be honest, I have been hunting in Caltech for the past two months. Me and Steph come here twice a week. I have never seen you here– I understand that you prefer to hunt in small fry areas like in Lamanda Park or Hastings Ranch." Then, quieter, and very fast, "I cannot speculate on the reasons that motivate you to derelict these prime hunting grounds, especially given the quantity of civilian lives at stake here– but– whatever. I'm just happy that you're finally here, doing what you are supposed to–"

Abby scrunched her incorporeal green eyebrows, eyeing the seed like one would a live grenade. Sofia's heart was beating out of her chest. If Abby gave the seed to Sofia and she used it to cleanse her gem, she would be able to use her gun again–

But Abby pocketed the seed. "Do I have a choice really," Abby said. "With Maia's decree today."

"Yes, Maia's decree– this does mean that . And I know that Chase needs to rest. But tomorrow– please come back here, fight the witches here. Every single blow you are saving them." Lucia gestured to the white rectangular buildings. The Caltech dorms. "You'll feel it in your heart, I know you will. You are a good magical girl. You've been one when we first met, and you've been one ever since–"

"If there's anyone who's stupid enough to get Kissed, they would have died by now," she said.

"It helps, Abby. You know it helps. That grief seed I gave you– it's yours, but I do have a request. Use it tomorrow, here. And only here. You understand?"

There was a pause. Then Abby spoke. "Chase needs medical attention now," she said. "I can't afford to do that."

"Oh you're so right actually," Lucia grinned. "Yeah yeah yeah my bad. But will you be here tomorrow?"

I'll be much too tired then. After we kill that huge witch you found.

"Fair, I suppose that warrants a break. But the day after tomorrow. You'll be here."

There was a pause. Okay, Abby said.

"Good. That's all I want. See you tomorrow, hopefully. But if you're not using your territory, can we stay and kill another witch?"

Sure.

After a smiling nod Lucia walked off with a spring in her steps. Steph said a quick Alright Abby see you later! And trotted after Lucia. They went to the direction of the dorms, where gaggles of candy cane familiars thumped at barricaded windows.

So they hadn't lost the element of surprise yet! They could easily recreate the ambush. And because of the grief seed Lucia gave them, Sofia could cleanse her gem to full–

Abby had placed that seed next to Chase's murky indigo gem. Copious amount of mist streamed out, but the gem did not lighten.

Chase isn't in mortal danger anymore, Abby said, sounding relieved and exhausted. Green mist poured out of Chase's mouth and reformed into Abby's frail form, now about as tall as Sofia was. Abby brought Chase's knees to her mouth and bit down on the remaining connective tissue stringing her thighs to her crushed lower limb, tearing it in two. No wound formed. Chase's knees ended in smooth domes of flesh.

Sofia checked. Abby had disappeared. "Abby you don't need, the rest of that seed, right– I can cleanse my gem– we can take Lucia–"

"We need to go home," Abby said. "I need to pull an all-nighter to heal her. That grief seed might last us only until we get home."

"You guys don't have, like, another grief seed. Saved in your car, glove compartment, I dunno–"

"I thought the one you carried would have been enough," Abby said. "And then you made a fool of yourself at the meeting."

Abby might well have punched her in the face. Sofia contemplated gouging her eyes out so she could think about pain rather than the fact that her brain was capable of that magnitude of stupidity.

"Sorry for bringing that up," Abby said. "You made up for it by saving us from Ellen. Now let's go."

"We won't get this opportunity again–"

"We will get this opportunity every single fucking day," Abby said. "It might not even matter. Tomorrow we fight the witch making everything hot. I'll try to sabotage her, or something. Let's fucking go."

They went. Sofia pushed Chase, kneeless and bloody and not nearly as pretty as she had been in the meeting, onto Abby's back. They walked silently towards the parking lot.

"I'm curious," Abby interrupted her train of thought. "How did you know where Ellen was before you shot? I was trying to find her the entire time."

"Oh, that. Yeah. I uh, I didn't see her either."

"Of course you didn't," Abby said. "I didn't survive as a magi this long by missing stuff like that. So how did you do it? You got an ability I don't know about?"

"Well I used, uh, math," Sofia said.

"Math."

"Well. I, uh, know Ellen's range is twenty meters. And I knew that she was at uh, edge of her range. By the pythagorean theorem, if I knew how high I was– then I could figure out where she was."

"The pythagorean theorem," Abby said. "A squared plus B squared equals C squared. That theorem."

"That theorem. And to figure out high was off the ground–" Sofia explained how she'd dropped her gem.

Abby was silent.

"It's not perfect, obviously." Sofia said. "Like I could have dropped more than one thing to eliminate outliers, I should have done something to soften Chase's fall–"

"Sofia." Abby said.

"Yeah."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Abby said. "Your plan was amazing."

Sofia blinked.

"You took three square roots inside your head? With enough accuracy to actually hit something?"

"Well- it's not really that hard– it's kind of just intuition really–"

"The moment Ellen took us up I completely froze, I was like a deer in headlights. But like– you were coherent enough to–" Abby fluttered her hand, seemingly at a loss of words. "And, and, and you dropped your gem?"

"With my gem I can feel when the, when it landed on the ground," Sofia said. She realized that there was a massive grin on her face.

"That's still insane though. Put me in that situation, I wouldn't consider that for a million years. I froze," Abby said again. "I could barely move. And here you were, conducting a goddamn physics experiment."

Every one of her muscles ached. Sofia's gem was swirled with strange colors. Yet she felt warm. Like she had a cup of Maisie's mom's hot chocolate for Christmas, god she hadn't thought about Maisie for so long. Abby thought she was insane. Sofia came up with a plan and Abby thought it was– amazing. It was so fucking pathetic. In so little time Abby had Sofia wagging her tail like a fucking dog. What was wrong with her?

"You, you you– you were pretty insane too," Sofia said. She could barely speak. "You– you saved my life. When Ellen– when she grabbed, my gem–"

"I owe you that much." Abby said. "But how do you know so much about Ellen's range, anyway? Magical girls don't give out that kind of information."

Sofia felt some sense of loss, wanted Abby to lick her ego more. But it was good that she'd stopped, this entire thing was really starting to get into her head.

"Oh– uh, I worked with her. Before. There's only so many CKs active in the area. We're bound to cross paths, eventually. You knew that Ellen was a CK, right?"

Abby apparently didn't. Her left eye twitched.

"Last year some psychopath tried to destroy the world," Sofia said. "Buried herself in, like, an alien Mayan temple. Starved people to death. Kyubey cobbled together uh, every CK in the area. Which included me, and Ellen, along with her, her friends–"

Abby suddenly seemed interested. "Every CK in the area."

"Yeah uh when I say, all the CK from the area, I literally just mean me and Ellen's friends, heh, yeah there's not much CKs really. Just the six of us. I worked with Ellen–"

"How big of an area."

"Uh, SoCal, Nevada. Nevada CK was an absolute coward. Refused to go in– I had to do a little, uh, persuasion. And by that I mean I possessed her."

Abby scrunched her eyebrows together, thinking about something. "Okay. Continue."

"Yeah! Yeah. Uh, yeah. I worked with Ellen and I ended up learning her range. So uh, that happened."

"The person who you killed in Malibu," Abby said. "Do you think that was maybe one of Ellen's friends?"

"Nope," Sofia said. "Hazmat chick is uh, very distinctive. Made an impression. I would have remembered if I've seen her."

"Okay," Abby said. And that was that.

They found Ellen's gem buried in one of the oak planters, not too far from where they'd parked their cars. She had likely followed them all the way there.

"Do you know how to drive." Abby said.

Sofia's heart dropped. "Uh. No."

"Come on. You're what, nineteen? Twenty?"

Sofia was not either of those ages, but she had taken driving lessons two years ago. She hated it with all her might. She should say no– assert herself. Reclaim her spine. But for some reason she couldn't find the word.

"So you have some experience. Excellent! I can't drive."

"I am a garbage driver. I drove twice before this." Sofia said. "I am literally going to total your car. I'm not joking, I'm going to hit a fucking curb, bust the, the tire, crash into a tree–"

"Last time I drove, I got so worked up I fainted. Chase had to stop the car from the passenger's seat. Do you want to do that?"

Sofia gaped.

"I'm not joking." Abby said. "You will drive us back. Chase cannot afford to wait for us walking for two hours."

Abby must have some grudge against Sofia for getting Chase like this, even though she claimed she didn't. Sofia was still sane enough to remember that, despite Abby's dubiously sincere ass-kissery that wormed all the way inside her head. Driving, however much she hated it, was the least she could do. Without objection she helped Abby set Chase's mangled body in the backseats. With blood thumping in her ears and every muscle fiber flexed to full alertness, they went out. They left the dead campus onto the dead roads.

"Why're you going thirty five," Abby said. "Go faster."

"Cuz that's the speed– you're supposed– to go?"

"What, are the familiars going to give you a speeding ticket?"

Sofia imagined the smooth geometries of Abby's stolen car deformed into metallic splinters that exposed a tangled mass of black machinery within, the satisfying crunch of her head flattening against the windshield. She could not go faster.

Abby had returned inside Chase's body, groaning telepathically when Sofia used turn signals and obeyed stop signs. After the longest fifteen minutes of Sofia's life, she turned right into a familiar neighborhood.

This place was actually dark. Streetlamps didn't work, and the familiars avoided it like the plague. The moon's tiny white crescent illuminated nothing. Sofia found the turn barely through the absence of a sidewalk. Inside it, the parking lot was a darker void.

How's your night vision, Abby said.

"Never practiced."

This'll be fun then. Forward, Abby directed. Forward. No don't turn the goddamn steering wheel bestie, forward– Okay now back up, wheel all the way left, back up yeah yeah yeah bestie you're doing it, okay stop, stop, stop, I said STOP–

CRASH

A sudden force shook Sofia. Her rib cage rattled, pumping ice into her heart. She threw her feet off the brake pedal like a hot coal, and realized it wasn't the brake pedal and she'd floored the gas because she was fucking stupid–

Green particles streamed towards the back of the car, out of sight.

"What, what'd I hit," Sofia said. Even though it was impossible, images of mangled bodies danced through her head, bloody bones sticking out of crushed rib cage like Chase's–

"Dumpster," Abby said. "Forward, just a little."

Sofia, still shaking, went forward just a little. There was a bright, momentary flash of a phone camera.

"Can't notice anything," Abby said. "You didn't even tip the dumpster over. We're fine."

"You– you sure?" Was she lying to make Sofia feel better? Sofia imagined Abby nonchalantly kicking a disembodied head into the darkness. "Let me see the photo."

Abby's face, looking more ghostlike than usual above the white light of her phone screen, pressed into Sofia's window. Abby had one of those fancy Apple phones that Sofia always wanted. It showed a picture that was just smooth red.

"You didn't even flake the paint off," Abby said. "It's completely fine. Come on, let's go home."

Sofia promised herself that she was going to never drive a car as long as she lived. Following the sound of Abby's voice, Sofia found her way inside the apartment complex. A rectangular frame of light seeped through the cracks of a door that Sofia could not be sure existed, along with the faint sound of classical music.

"Who lives in there,"

"Hazel." Abby said.

Huh. They made their way up– the elevator worked at least. Abby unlocked the door in complete darkness, and the warmth of Abby's home decor washed over her.

Abby showed Sofia to the guest's room. The maroon wallpaper and the orange chandelier made the room five, six degrees warmer. The lone piece of furniture, a twin bed that took up half the room, was fluffed with numerous layers of blankets that made it appear twice its actual size. Like the rest of the house, there was not a speck of dust out of place.

"Shower," Abby gestured towards the attached bathroom. "There's a grief seed in the drawer." She pointed at a wicker colored thing"I must heal Chase. If you think you need me, you don't. Sleep well."

Abby slammed the door in Sofia's face.

Sofia threw herself onto her guest bed. Her grimey body clung to the well-pressed sheets. Inside her soul despair howled in an apocalyptic vortex. She had just crashed her car. But then she thought of Abby.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Your plan was amazing.

I could barely move. And here you were, conducting a goddamn physics experiment.

Word for word, she remembered everything word for word, and every time she played it back in her head she grinned stupidly like had won the lottery. For the first time since she could remember, she thought she was worthy to be Kyubey's friend. Sofia saw in herself what he had seen in her. Lucia's survival was trivial, inconsequential. Sofia was fucking invincible.

Sofia closed the lights, eased herself into the blankets, and thought of something strange. In Chase's body, she never smelled Abby's gem. Only hers and Chase's, and Lucia's and Steph's faint signatures in the parallel spaces within the aquarium labyrinth.

Abby didn't have a soul gem.

It didn't matter. If Abby turned out to be some evil magical girl abomination construct or whatever, Sofia could beat her with ease. There was nothing to it.

Sofia closed her eyes and replayed that same conversation until she fell asleep.