A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER SUNDAY IN PASADENA

Time until Raid on Weather Witch: 6h 38m, Projected to happen on 12:00 PM (sharp)

Sofia woke up energized, like she could smash a wall to smithereens. Again she had the urge to brush her teeth. She got up, went inside the bathroom, had to duck under the doorframe for some reason (Weird! She didn't remember Ellen being that tall), and turned on the bathroom lights.

In the mirror there was a barely humanoid thing. Its facial features were hidden behind clusters of ever-shifting pixels. The visible skin on its face and neck was white, coarse like paper.

Sofia staggered backwards, and the monster did the same. Sofia raised a massive clawed hand, and it did as well.

Sofia collapsed into nothingness.

She opened her eyes and saw the ceiling. The energy and strength had all drained out of her, leaving her groggy and dead. Abby's guest room, now in full color instead of a shimmering infrared mess (How did she notice that?) was dark– outside the curtains no sun shone. The shadow that was all around her, the absence of light, it beckoned her, the gateway to another world which only she could go to.

Without even meaning to, Sofia sank into it. Her consciousness manifested itself in her construct's body, rejuvenated and alert, but it was easy to shut that out too. When she did, everything around her disappeared. She floated, weightless. Her fatigue disappeared. Just a consciousness, though that could disappear too if she willed it.

Sofia snapped herself back into reality. It was unpleasant to have limbs again, and a torso, like dragging an overstuffed suitcase of meat everywhere with her. It was unpleasant and stupid and absurd that she'd lived like this for eighteen years. She pulled the blankets over her head and wrapped herself into a burrito.

Kyubey. Sofia projected into the abyss.

The abyss did not project back into her.

Kyubey are you there? Say something, come on.

Kyubey wasn't there. And still Sofia was nowhere. She lived as a hostage in a city run by a psychopath who had convinced the other unstable magical girls in the city to execute her. A chain reaction of hopelessness propagated through her being.

Kyubey please, just say something, come on let me hear your voice. Just one time. I– I don't know what to do– I'm scared–

Without meaning to, Sofia melted into the darkness, her blankets collapsing with no one within them. Sofia could no longer cry. She had no tears or even tear ducts to produce them. Warmth spread through her like she'd just had a warm bowl of soup.

Sofia listened for Kyubey's reply. Nothing, of course, Kyubey didn't spontaneously begin existing in the seven second interval after the last time she'd asked. She was wasting her breath, allowing herself to wallow in self-pity and disgust instead of Killing Lucia.

Yes, kill Lucia. Correct her mistake. Get out of this stupid fuck town of psychopaths lunatics.

Sofia got up. Actually, no, Ellen's construct got up. Using her– its– (fuck it, this construct had all of her ego, it wasn't like Sofia thought of herself as Ellen as she possessed her body). Using Sofia's massive claws, she unlatched the window crank with surprising dexterity and stared at the world outside. In her new eyes the sky shimmered rainbow, as if a film of soap was superimposed over it.

Slowly, Sofia descended onto the ground. She made out Abby's red (gray in her vision) car, parked hideously across two spots. Sofia examined the back of the car. There really were no scratches there.

Sofia went out the lot. Across the road were dusty, abandoned storefronts that advertised dusty, abandoned wares. A nail salon, pink vanities still stocked with brushes and expired cosmetics. Some sort of cheap tourist gift shop. And–

Display windows stocked with books. Rows of dusty shelves and cubbies full of books. Tables that advertised brightly colored releases. Instead of walls, bookshelves defined the border of the room, packed with hardcovers and paperbacks and century old diaries of George Washington, extending into the second floor beyond what Sofia could see from the glass door. Written above the door in loopy red cursive was the name BOOK ALLEY.

It was a bookstore.

Sofia stared through the door and back in time. In the summers, while Maisie joined Chess Camp and Math Camp and Art Camp, Sofia ran to the nearest bookstore every morning and spent the entire day there, where she composed meals of words. After she contracted she traveled through California for bounties, but she couldn't tell you anything about San Francisco or Oakland or Bakersfield except where their Barnes & Noble was.

Yet in the last year she had grown out of them. Sofia's life have diverged too far from the normal humans that were the books' intended audience. The books described people who had friends, lovers, who aren't ostracized from everyone in their societies. Kyubey didn't like them, either. Eventually, maybe two, three months into Malibu, Sofia realized that if she read one more book, she would puke.

But she kept reading, because she hated herself. She could have taken bounties, seen the real world rather than these imaginary ones. She would've had more chances to talk to Kyubey too.

Sofia crushed the rusty padlock that held BOOK ALLEY's doors together and pushed herself in. The inside was dim and musty, properties amplified tenfold by Sofia's apparently increased sense of smell. Spiders crawled and vermin chittered. Mold molded moldily on the carpet.

Sofia went inside the cashier. Feeling very invisible, she ripped the cash register open, finding dust and a half empty roll of nickels. Whatever. She was after something else– the brochures stocked in little cubbies on the desk. One of them said VINTAGE PASADENA CITY MAP– SCENIC BROCHURE GUIDE!

Careful as to not destroy the shelf, Sofia removed the brochure from its display like a tweezer. She tucked her prize in her robes and regarded the store.

The doors swung wide open. The brightly colored book covers glimmered invitingly in the rainbow aura of ambient air, screaming TAKE ME! TAKE ME! to any passing looter. Fuck! Sofia roamed the library, brainstorming ways to fashion a locking mechanism out of paper, before she went to the board game section and saw the dedicated lock aisle that advertised various locks of all shapes and sizes.

That was easy.

Sofia chose a particularly sturdy lock, wrapped it around the door handles, and pocketed the key. She passed the shell of Pasadena's commercial district, passed the parking lot that contained only Abby's car, and returned to her room two stories up.

Sofia emerged from her shadow and stared at her prize. A travel brochure and a shiny little key. She hammerspaced it.

Lucia's file, though redacted to all fuck and burnt to cinders in Sofia's mansion, contained her address. 3768 East Colorado Boulevard Apartment 303 Pasadena, CA 91107. Sofia spread the scenic vintage travel brochure on the carpet. Spiderweb streets labeled with bug splat letters sprawled. Pasadena wasn't a big city, there was barely anything here, but there were still thousands of streets nestled inside hundreds of city blocks, looking through this would take hours. Sofia buckled in, got herself comfortable on Abby's scruffy carpet, and–

It took her forty minutes to find the address. She went through the entire map, looked at literally every single street, and missed it. Sofia screamed (in her head), clawed on her scalp, accidentally tearing out a couple of strands of hair. She managed to calm herself down enough to look at the map again, and found it in two minutes.

EAST COLORADO STREET was right in the city's outskirts. In contrast, Abby's house, helpfully marked by a "YOU ARE HERE!" pin, was near the center. They were approximately three miles away. She could do that. In her shadow state she could move fast, yesterday Ellen had tailed a car.

Her stomach grumbled. The events of yesterday had severed her from her supply of potato chips and sandwich cookies, and her hunger could no longer be dispelled by replaying images of old ladies unhinging jaws to swallow burgers. Abby would likely feed her, but she was going to be asleep for god knows how much longer.

Sofia wandered outside. The warm maroon colors of the house were dulled by the dim gray light coming out the window. A clock on the wall read 5:52 AM.

Abby's room was locked. Faint snores filtered through the door. Chase didn't appear to have a room. Sofia didn't want to wake them up at six in the goddamn morning. Instead she wrote a note.

Dear Abby and Chase,

I am going to Lucia's house to kill her. I'll be back by 8am.

Yours Truly,

Sofia

Moving with Ellen's ability was annoying. As a shadow you had no sense of yourself or where you were going. You had to pop out into the real world and check every ten seconds.

Which sucked.

As a shadow you got into a high. Your brain no longer needed to handle 80% of its functions, which was relaxing, but often didn't remember to begin handling them again after Sofia got corporeal. Sofia's joints shook. Her heart hammered in her chest. Moving and swallowing and breathing was exhausting. She felt each one of her two hundred and five bones grinding inside her body.

What's worse, the sun was rising. As the shadows thinned, moving became harder, like she was running on a frozen lake with progressively thinner ice. Any wrong step and her shadow medium would collapse, thrusting Sofia into the cold, dark embrace of the real world.

Sofia passed by abandoned neighborhoods, plazas, and office buildings, but when she saw Lucia's apartment, she recognized it instantly. Was it fate? Well– no. All the windows on the building were open, revealing white walls and shrink-wrapped furniture. The only two closed windows had a lemon sticker stuck to it.

Sofia crawled up the shadows on the wall. With tremendous resolve, she steeled herself to exiting the warm embrace of darkness. She thrusted her hand into the real world, grabbed onto the windowsill, and pushed the rest of her parts out, level with the window.

She saw a bedroom. Inside was a lone mattress (no bed frame), faded blue blankets and sheets folded neatly on top. There was no other furniture in view. Or any Lucias, for that matter.

Sofia crawled across the wall, to the window to the left.

This one also belonged to an actual person. The walls were covered with movie posters. The Dark Knight. Captain America. Superhero shit. There was a computer on the table, a huge monitor connected to a huger box filled with glowing rainbow mechanisms. The TMNT blankets on the mattress were not folded, but there were no humans underneath them.

The room was not lit up. Sofia easily melted into the shadows and patrolled through the house as her construct. Through the rainbow distortions she made out bland dry walls, mismatched furniture arranged not quite parallel to the geometry of the room, and the fanciest kitchen Sofia had ever seen. Uncountable different pots, skillets, and metal instruments brimmed from dishwashers and pantries. There was a fucking pizza oven welded into the wall.

No humans.

Lucia and Steph had actually woken up at 5 AM in the fucking morning and immediately left to hunt witches. No, not that. Abby said Lucia was hunting witches but there was no way that was actually true. No, Lucia was out there, constructing doomsday laboratories or experimental human centipedes, earning her place on the Bounty board.

But it was still salvageable. Sofia did not need to hit a flesh puppet to possess people. Anything the Lucia enchanted was still fine. Yet as Sofia looked around, nothing radiated with the power of love and hope or even sparkled at all. If you were a magical girl you enchanted, you just did, you crease-proofed the corners of your books or made your plushies cuter. The only explanation was that Lucia predicted her clumsy ambush. She'd seen in her mind's eye this very moment. Sofia, exhausted from shadow traveling five miles, realizing that it had all been for nothing.

And so Sofia was outsmarted again. It was too late to stop the damage Lucia was going to do today. Except that was stupid and defeatist. Sofia had access to Lucia's house, surely, surely there was something she could do.

Sofia went into Lucia's room and turned on the light. With Steph's multicolored posters burnt into her retinas it was even sadder. There were three pieces of furniture in total: Mattress, from before. Wooden drawer. Wooden table. A guitar case was propped up against the wall.

On the table there was a tower of three-ring binders and a laptop, which was password protected. Lucia's birth date didn't work, and nor did "0123456789". The binders were filled with sheafs of hole-punched printer paper covered in trigonometry notes, all neat and color coded in aesthetic rainbow vomit.

Sofia flipped a page. More notes, surrounding a single line printed in Arial:

YOU ARE AN EVIL SNAKE. DROWN IN SHIT WITH THE REST OF YOUR DEGENERATE CITY.

The back of the next page said WHAT YOU HAVE DONE WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED. It was crossed out with a red line with the comment NO YOU :P

Sofia flipped through more binders. More notes on papers, each with an ominous threat printed on the back. They were mixed in with hole punched school assignments, as well as a flyer that advertised the FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH NEW YEAR POTLUCK happening on March 3rd. No crazed manifestoes detailing unhinged machinations to summon dark gods.

Having learnt nothing, Sofia moved to the drawer, which had a bowl of granola bars and trail mix on top. Sofia avoided them in case Lucia created them from the livers of children. By that there was a copy of the bible. The actual bible.

Sofia flipped to the first page. In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Every page was creased and worn, some puffed up with water damage. It had not been enchanted. The First United Methodist Church? Sofia remembered seeing it on her vintage travel brochure. It was in the middle of the city, a couple of blocks from where Abby lived. Was that Lucia's church? Was Lucia going to be there after she did whatever heinous deed that was probably against everything God stood for? Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe she was burning magical girls on stakes because they were false deities or something.

Sofia went back to the dresser and found a roll of pictures– the ones that you get from those fancy photo booths in malls. In it were two people– Lucia and Abby.

Huh.

Lucia, looking happy but grainy, wore an eye patch. In one of the pictures she slid it off to reveal an empty bloody socket underneath, while doing a scary zombie face. Abby laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Sofia hadn't gone to a mall in three years. And here Lucia was, having fun with a friend, joking, laughing, being happy. She was the last person to deserve any of that.

But then again, the photo was dated four months ago. Lucia's then friend was now telling Sofia to kill her. Plus, Sofia had Kyubey, and that was enough. Satisfied, Sofia threw the photo roll into the drawer and she replaced all the papers she had dug out.

The bottom drawer was heavy. Not just normal heavy– heavy enough she wouldn't have been able to move it without magical strength. Fleetingly, her brain, made complacent by how easy everything had been so far, broke out of the inertia to expose every hidden surface in Lucia's room, and suggested that this was maybe some kind of sign that she shouldn't open it.

Her pulling overcame the dresser's static friction and the drawer slid open. Within was two neat stacks of blank printer paper.

Well, not blank. Both had one line printed on it.

YOUR CITY WILL FAIL AND YOU WILL BURN AND DIE, said the left stack, one line in neat Arial.

THE PEOPLE YOU KILLED WAIT IN HELL, said the right stack.

On cue, the stacks began jittering like an angry wasp, causing the entire dresser to begin shaking too. Sofia narrowed her eyes.

And then the paper began to multiply.

The towers wriggled like worms. New paper manifested into existence, poking out from the stacks, which grew taller and taller until paper overflowed the drawer and scattered all over the floor. Sofia, with all the strength that her magical girl had, pushed the drawer closed, but the paper on the floor was multiplying too. They slid everywhere, pushed by unseen magical forces, and soon tiled every exposed square inch on the ground–

And then it stopped.

The papers still squirmed, tickling Sofia's feet like a school of bizarre swimming stingrays, but they stopped multiplying. Sofia picked up a limp piece from the ground, which said something about Lucia's city being pathetic, or whatever. What was this? Hate mail? Self-replicating, magical hate mail that Lucia cultivated into an infinite paper generator? Lucia spends her time in school staring at messages from people whose lives she'd ruined. She probably gets off from it. Probably the only thing making school worth going to. That was the person she'd spared just yesterday, multiple times, nice fucking job Sofia you worthless piece of shit–

No. Not worthless. Sofia replayed Abby's words yesterday. Don't be so hard on yourself. Your plan was amazing. You took three square roots inside your head?

Yeah. Three square roots inside her head. But the plan only required one, which was root 31.36, exactly equal to 5.6. She knew because 56^2 = 3136 exactly– the triangle Ellen's range had constructed was an exact pythagorean triple. But that didn't change the fact that it was impressive! Sofia was not worthless.

Sofia the Not Worthless picked up some papers and read the sentences. Nothing but vague threats, no hints about Lucia's pagan rituals. Didn't even mention Lucia by name, always just YOUR CITY this YOUR CITY that. The sender didn't seem to have a grudge on Lucia as they had on Pasadena.

That made sense. A huge city like Los Angeles had twenty, thirty girls, while Pasadena had ten or something. By the contrapositive of the pigeonhole principle, some of the Los Angeles girls were not able keep killing the witches that had been displaced from their city. That seemed like a pretty good reason to have a grudge. Especially for modern magical girls who held grudges if you looked at them the wrong way, or the right way, or if you didn't look at them at all.

But why did so many girls have to leave? Sofia remembered the meeting yesterday. The Pasadena girls looked at a witch that was microwaving an area around it into desert mush, the strongest fucking witch Sofia had ever seen in her entire life, and looked bored. Pasadena perhaps gave witches a power-up as they went into the city, which filtered out your average metropolitan riffraff. Left people like Ellen, with infinite invincible shadow travel.

But even with invincible shadow travel– how the hell would Sofia clean this up.

The papers only twitched now. Sofia bent down, and began collecting them into a pile. Sofia wished she had Hazmat chick's flamethrower, then she could just sling it around and burn them into a crisp. Perhaps maybe Lucia's binders too, her computer, and the rest of her room, she couldn't kill Lucia but she could fuck her life up–

Sofia threw her accumulated pile of paper. It hit the wall and scattered, flying everywhere.

This was pitable. Sofia, champion of justice and the incubator, was scurrying all over the place, tidying up room of her bounty like some fucking maid, so they could live their comfortable life murdering half a city's worth of people and counting. What happened in Mimi's labyrinth, happening all over again. No more hiding, no more cowering.

Blood pulsed behind Sofia's ears like marching drums, and some evil satisfaction welled up inside her. Lucia had seemed so untouchable before. She'd bent a city to her will and humiliated Sofia so many times. But this room. Lucia's binders, her computers, her pictures, all of it was Lucia, and it was all so, so fragile.

Sofia picked up Lucia's guitar. Using every ounce of magical strength she had, Sofia swung it against the doorframe.

* LUCIA *

Lucia dreamed of Pasadena set ablaze. Smoke blotted out the sky, shrouding the world in perpetual night. Dark clouds reflected orange embers that consumed everything.

She saw Steph with thick black chains hanging around her neck. No, not Steph Lucia saw through its disguise. This was the malevolent wraith summoned by the evil in her city. The all destroying fire incarnated into human form. Steph-thing begged for mercy but Lucia did not listen. With hands, trembling but sure, she swung her shield and crushed its brain into mush–

Lucia awoke with a start. She bolted up from the hardwood pew she rested on and looked up. Instead of a roof she saw darkness stretched out infinitely above her. Blood pounded behind her ears so hard she thought her brain might explode. Memories flooded into her brain– Pasadena was fine. The fire wasn't real. Steph was fine, not possessed, those horrid chains nowhere on her. Yet Lucia had killed her anyway.

Lucia could no longer remember how, or why, only that she had done it with her own hands. No. No. No. Lucia couldn't breathe, there wasn't enough air. Space sprawled all around her yet she was trapped, encased in a coffin, air depleting around her, suffocating her. Steph was dead. Lucia stalked about a space she did not recognize, her hands digging deep into her scalp, whimpering nonsense under her breath.

Lucia's knees bumped into something wooden and hard. The covers of her coffin. It hurt, hurt enough that–

"Ahh– Lu– Wha– what, what happened?"

Steph's voice, muffled. It came from behind her.

Lucia closed around the plastic band on her head and realized she was wearing earmuffs, the ones Steph had grabbed for her before they left the apartment. She slid them off.

"Lucia–"

Lucia looked back. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. From the dim moonlight filtering through mullioned windows she saw Steph. There were no chains around her neck.
It was a dream. Steph was fine. Duh.

"Nothing." Lucia said. Her voice shook. She shook. "Go back to sleep."

"Why are you up and about,"

"I had a nightmare is all." Lucia's heart kept pounding. The coffin suffocating her had vanished. Was never there to begin with. "Steph, go back to sleep. Don't worry about me."

Steph clicked her lips in annoyance. "Come sleep with me."

"What? What?"

"Come sleep. With me." Steph tapped the spot next to her pew. "C'mon. Come come come."

Lucia looked up. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She saw a gray concrete ceiling with unlit fluorescent panels. The space around her was filled with rows of pews.

They were in the city hall. The holy core of Pasadena, the last bastion of the hope against the infinite evil sprawled around them. In it no magic worked. Magical garments melted off your skin as you crossed its gate. Weapons could not be fired, reduced to their base material components. Maia usually held meetings here, and for the past three months no one had been able to start anything worse than a fistfight. That didn't mean it was safe, of course– In the infinite variance within human souls, there must be something that the incubator could shape into an ability capable of circumventing magic-preventing barriers. But it should deter body snatcher magi fine.

Steph didn't look at her weird when Lucia suggested sleeping here, just shrugged and said, "Okay." Because she understood. When there's a magical girl after you, you give yourself all the advantages you could. Steph valued Lucia's life beyond a night sleeping on an uncomfortable wooden pew.

Steph fingered for her prescription bottle of restoril, dumped several into her mouth and glugged a mouthful of water. "Want some?"

"Sure," Lucia said for the first time in her life.

Steph dropped eight white pills into Lucia's hands, which was probably enough to give a civvie three separate overdoses. Lucia shrugged, chugged them down with her own water bottle.

Lucia crawled next to her, fluffed her sleeperies, and laid down. The darkness closed in. The night was shrouded in deathly quiet that amplified the chittering rodents and squirrels tenfold. Every noise sounded like body snatcher magi. Lucia put Steph's earmuffs back on and slept.

Time Until Raid On Weather Witch: 3h 40m

She was woken much later by daylight streaming onto her face. It was much too bright.

"Steph– Steph?"

Steph was fast asleep. Lucia picked up her phone which laid on the floor, and checked the time. Nine.

Lucia usually went to church on Sunday. She would read the bible and pray. But there would be no time for that today. Three hours left until they were meeting up to fight the snowflake witch. Or heat wave witch. Was a good thing they decided against six the night before.

Lucia shook Steph awake.

"What– what– what happened–"

Steph's breath stank. Lucia pulled back. "It's nine," she hissed. "We gotta get outta here."

"Lemme sleep," Steph mumbled. She batted Lucia's hand away.

"Nine," Lucia said. "Witch in three hours."

"Mmmm," Steph's arms elongated and covered her ears.

"Come on." Lucia said. " I shouldn't be the one waking you up all the time. That's not fair."

Silence.

"Come on, man," Lucia said. "Sun's out, you can see it in your eyes when you close it, it's way too light, you're not even sleepy anymore, just wake upppppp–"

"Goaway," Steph mumbled.

"I gotta fight the witch today. You get to fight small fry–"

With a thwip, Steph's sluglike arms returned to their normal length and rigidity, unobstructing her sensory organs. Her eyes were open. They looked red. "Fine," she said.

Steph got up. Checked under the pew. "You moved my phone."

"I checked the time. I don't know your password!"

"Mmm," Steph found her phone, unlocked it, and browsed through her Magicord. "Got a request. To join Pasa."

Lucia lit up. "No shot! This is the first application in what, what? Like a month?"

"Odessa got here a week ago."

"I don't consider Odessa as a person. Or Ellen." Lucia said. "Before that it was Jacinta. She got here a month ago."

A month ago. Lucia remembered when Pasadena had gotten started, back when it was an actual city instead of hell. When they mattered, when they got portfolios from girls across the country, when they got a new girl every other day.

"They don't make the magical girls that they used to," Steph muttered. "Pasadena witches aren't even that bad! I fought worse in Oregon. There's this one time I–"

"I'm sure," Lucia cut her off. "Who's the new girl?"

"Oh. Uh. Rachel Ken from Arcata California. Mmm."

Lucia had never heard of Arcata before. A far cry from the San Diego and Las Vegas girls they used to get.

"Arcata is super far north," Steph explained. "Almost Oregon. Rachel held the city alone, which was very impressive. Very competitive region. Ahhh, she got ousted by neighbors."

"Ousted. Huh. Why?" Lucia sat down next to her.

"Her weed was too good."

"What? She said that? On her application?"

"No. How do you not know this? Arcata? Arcata? That's where all the horticulturalist girls gather to grow weed."

Lucia gaped.

"Lucia you live in California. There's at least one ziploc bag of green leaves hidden under a loose floorboard in this room."

"In the city hall?"

"Since it's a government institution it's probably way worse. Meth, cocaine, fenty, I dunno."

Lucia ignored her. "What about Rachel? Getting ousted? Let me see her application–"

"It's not on her application," Steph said. "If people get ousted from that city that's usually what happens. Your shit is too fire, you're choking the market, so everyone teams up and kicks you out."

"I don't care about weed politics, man. And they sell it for… money?"

"Grief seeds." Steph said.

"Grief seeds? And the incubator's just fine with it? They don't get CKs?"

Steph shrugged. "People who do weed are happy. Happy people last longer before they turn into witches. If the incubator shuts them down, the weed goes underground, and girls nationwide witch out from withdrawal. That's the way I see it, but I'm a stupid bitch, for all I know Kyubey just really likes smoking the good stuff."

Messed up. So messed up. "And our new, uh, applicant, is involved in this. She sells weed. Grows, grows weed."

"I dunno. Not exactly the sort of stuff you put on your portfolio!" Steph lit up. "Maybe the Humboldt County weed cartel kicked her out because she hates drugs like you, then you guys can be besties and make out while DARE ads play in the background–"

"Okay man. What else is Hazel saying?"

"Oh my god Lucia. You literally have a phone. Just check Magicord on your own?"

"I lost it yesterday," Lucia said.

"Oh. Fuck. You're right. Crap. I'm a terrible person." Steph scrolled. "Mmm. Okay, Hazel is out, on a business trip, blah blah blah. Okay, so she says since we're going to fight the uberwitch–"

"We? We're going? So you're going too?"

Steph's face darkened. "No, I'm not. And you shouldn't go either, even if you didn't get fucking kidnapped yesterday."

Lucia waved her off. "What does Hazel want to do?"

Steph's expression turned sad. Like pity.

"What does Hazel want to do?" Lucia repeated.

"Hazel says that we shouldn't do the normal tryout thing where you and Abby try to beat Rachel to death. You should take Rachel to fight the witch instead, and that can be her tryout."

"Hazel has no respect for tradition."

"Well, you can go respect tradition after you die. She wants to meet at the convenience store at eleven. So we better get going if we want to be presentable."

Steph, being lazy and terrible, did not begin to get going. Lucia didn't either. She needed a moment to take all this in.

"People noticed the incubator's gone," Steph said. "My feed is destroyed."

"That's good."

"Things are going to your evil plan."

"It's not an evil plan."

"You lied," Steph said. "That whole schtick about grief seeds randomly going critical if they're saturated enough. I've seen that happen like. Once. In the past two years."

"I didn't want to have to go this route," Lucia said. "If I could have done this without lying, I would have."

"Okay."

"I made Abby go to Caltech. We've increased the quota without increasing the quota. It's perfect!"

"Yay. Yippee. Great job. I'm happy for you."

Lucia scoffed. She stood up, went to the nonfunctional city hall bathroom to freshen up. Only when she finished did Steph grab her toothbrushes, somehow taking fifteen minutes to brush her teeth while Lucia folded both their blankets into neat piles.

"You didn't have to do that," was all Steph said about it.

Lucia shrugged. They left.

Car ride. Lucia drove. Steph looked down and twiddled her thumb. A microcosm of Lucia and the contemporary state of her city.

"Lucia," Steph suddenly said. "What do you want for breakfast. Make it fancy, might be your last meal you know."

"We have leftovers."

"I'll make you whatever you want. Oh, we can pick up meat. Like a juicy steak, pan seared, butter, garlic. Thyme. How long has it been since you had steak? Like two months? You miss it right? The feeling of grinding meat with your teeth. The oil."

"I'm going to throw up."

"Okay. Fine. Leftovers. Leftovers."
Quiet again for one glorious minute.

Steph snapped her fingers. "I've thought of something that you should do instead of killing that ice hail witch."

"What," Lucia said.

"Go to Caltech. Kill like five normal witches. Extra strong ones if you want. That's it, you get to kill witches except you don't fucking die right after. Isn't that cool? Everyone wins."

It was all a farce. Oh, the Magical Girl System was so cruel. So many innocent girls die for nothing. So called veterans post that stuff all the time, how the new rookie girl died a month after they contracted because the system was stacked against them, it was all unfair, whatever– Yet Steph existed, the most blind, tone-deaf unicellular amoeba that internalized nothing except objects she touched with the fine, hairlike flagella in her rectum. And she lived for two years.

Lucia slammed the brakes to stop in front of a stop sign. It was the first stop sign she'd ever stopped at in a month. "I was the one who found the witch and organized the raid," Lucia turned to Steph and explained, calling upon every ounce of her self-discipline to keep her voice level. " If I do not go, I will lose every ounce of credibility I've built up over the past two months. Do you understand?"

Steph turned quiet.

"I dunno if I've talked about this with you yet," Steph said. "Do you remember Daisy? She ran Medford with me."

That name came up while Lucia did background checks for Steph, some months back. She was registered in Medford but was listed on the Multnomah County ObitBot as Daisy Michelin (Portland). She died on Leap Day as did thousands of girls throughout the world.

"Daisy. She was so powerful. On the same level as Maia. She takes contracts to kill witches that are too powerful for locals to deal with. She was a part of the Portland crusade. You know, to kill Amaterasu."

"Seriously?"

Amaterasu. A towering colossus with a hundred arms and heads, veins of magma from the earth's mantle flowed on its skin. On leap days throughout the world the earth cracked, exposing the entrance to its labyrinth, demonic caverns of fire and brimstone. Its familiars, giants of lava and stone, poured into surface world, where they ate magical girls, humans, and calendars.

"Seriously," Steph said. "She was that good. But you know what happened."

"Daisy didn't make it." said Lucia.

"I hate Daisy's job. It's the worst fucking job of all fucking time, and I had a half a year to talk her out of it. I didn't, and she died."

"Well, at least she died doing something worthwhile," Lucia said. "I'm sure she doesn't have any regrets."

"What about me," Steph said. "Does she regret me? She was the most important person in the world to me. We had a house, we had food, we had income, We had a city that could sustain us. We finally found our way out of Kyubey's shitty system. When she died, I lost all of that. Do you think she had no regrets?"

Lucia didn't speak.

"I remember having this exact same conversation with her," Steph whispered. "We were in a car, right before she left. I couldn't convince her. No, I'll convince you."

"You're worried that I'll die."

Your life. The last thing that a magical girl, who had given everything else in their contract, had left to spend. Just as the karmic destiny of a human was tied to their ability to spend their assets or use others they controlled, the karmic destiny of a magical girl was tied to their ability to risk their life, again and again, for their goals. Until the day Lucia resolved to trade her life for what she believed in, she had not truly become a magical girl.

"You're not going," Steph said. "I've decided, I don't care what you do. No more, no more people killing themselves for no reason. I can't take it anymore. "

It was a temper tantrum. A child crying and begging and stomping their feet until they got what they wanted. Lucia stared at the stop sign. She'd stopped for a minute now.

"Two months ago, you came here." Lucia said. "You said you had my vision of Pasadena. To create a place free from the evils of the rest of the world." Lucia said. "You're a veteran, so I thought you understood the world we lived in, the sacrifices required to actualize a dream of that magnitude. And yet you flinch from this."

"La la I'm not listening," Steph sang. "You're not going to go–"

"I was wrong," Lucia said. "You're a coward, through and through, and no amount of experience can change that. If a person with any amount of spine was in your position, they would have done something, anything to help Daisy–"

Steph dropped the voice. "You don't know that," she snarled. "I tried, so hard, to convince her–"

"That's all you did," Lucia said. "You convinced, talked, all just empty words. I know you Steph, what you're like. If I was you I would have charged with her inside every labyrinth, I would have taken on Amaterasu with her, we would have survived. But you wouldn't do that. You don't think Daisy's life is worth risking your own for. So, you cope by blaming Daisy for her own death. You dismiss the sacrifices she made and convince yourself you know better than everyone else."

Steph stared at Lucia with wild eyes. Her mouth hung slightly ajar in shock or disgust. She did not speak.

Lucia shrugged. "I was planning on trying to convince you to come to the labyrinth with me, but I'd rather you didn't at this point. I'll be fine."

Lucia floored the accelerator. The car drove in silence.

They passed by abandoned stores. A group of civs carrying shotguns and fire extinguishers scurried around, ducking behind buildings like some sort of stealth mission. Finally, Lucia's apartment came into view. Lucia could make out the lemon sticker on her window.

Lucia parked her car at the curb.

"Go on ahead," Steph said. "I'm gonna go for a walk."

Steph undid her seatbelt and went out the car with stiff, rigid movements. Reaching out with her hand, she grabbed onto the lip of a building and zipped away.

Lucia went out of the car, too. The strange heat bore down on her. She grabbed only her blankets from the back seat (Steph was grabbing her own, especially after today). Grabbed the keys from the cup holder, and looked around.

Her apartment was right there, surrounded by blocks of grocery stores, restaurants, dispensaries of food which were raided and destroyed by looters. Even in the day shadows were everywhere, how easily body snatcher magi could hide within the darkness behind the shattered windows.

But obviously she wasn't there. She wasn't at the city hall, so she wouldn't be here either.

Lucia crossed the road, walked to the dusty wooden door that led within their apartment,the same door she had opened countless times before, and opened it.

An infinite hallway of pure darkness greeted her. Shadows rose from the floor, writhing, transforming into grotesque silhouettes with clawing hands and grasping tentacles and metastasizing growths–

Lucia blinked the evil from her eyes. Gingerly she stepped inside the building, closing the door behind her. She called the elevator down, but the doors didn't open immediately– the LED display informed her the elevator was on the third floor. That never happened, Lucia and Steph were the only ones who used this elevator, it went to the third floor as they returned and to the first floor when they left. Again the shadows rose around her. Ill, shadowy premonitions flew through her mind. Did something happen? Was body snatcher magi in her home?

DING!

Lucia jumped. Slowly the door opened. There was nothing except wornflyers posted over each other. The elevator shaft was fully lit. No shadow could hide inside. Shakily Lucia picked up her now dirty blankets and entered. Pressed the third floor button.

1, blinked the LED. 2. 3.

The door opened to reveal another hallway. Lucia was prepared this time. The shadows did not amalgamate.

She stepped out of the elevator. It was idiotic, unbecoming of her, to be afraid of the dark, to be worried about body snatcher magi, with Abby keeping her hostage. Knowing this objectively true fact brought no such relief to her body, though, as it continued insisting that she was going to die, at the next moment she was going to lose consciousness. With a shaking hand she unlocked the door.

Home. Everything was as it was. Steph's massive kitchen. Lucia threw off her shoes, put on slippers, and walked to her room.

Which was in ruin.

Her binders and the notes within them, the paper ripped to shreds. Her mattress and clothes had been slashed to rags, sponge and fabric scattered everywhere. Her guitar had been smashed into the constituent wooden plates. On her desk, her laptop, a laptop that had stayed with her for almost two years of high school, was snapped in half. The keyboard was snapped in half, exposing multicolored wires and intricate computer parts that could only look intricate, now.

Lucia's heart stopped.

Body snatcher magi was here. She knew where Lucia lived, how– was she still here?

Lucia transformed. She conjured her unfinished pearl, which could mutilate her if dropped, and clutched it into her palm. It would fall if she was possessed, and Ellen's body would rescue her.

Steph, Lucia telepathied. Steph where are you, body snatcher magi, she's in our house–

No response. Lucia ran to the bathroom. Lock the door– nope door lock broken– what– she slammed every switch on. Light seared from above, cleansing the room of shadows. Ventilation whirred but the cascade of blood rushing under Lucia's temple drowned it out. She electrified her shield, dropped it on her own shadow– no connection. Body snatcher magi wasn't in the bathroom. Lucia stood, her back to the wall, rolled herself inwards to cover her entire body behind her shield, electrified.

Lucia was ready. She had no blind spots. Body snatcher magi couldn't sneak into this room as a shadow. Her golem couldn't breach Lucia's shield without becoming paralyzed and revealing its location. Possessing Lucia with her gun would kill her. She was ready.

The door swung open. It revealed a girl, slouched, black eyes staring dully behind gold-wired spectacles–

Not body snatcher magi. Abby!

"Abby," Lucia said. "Thank–"

The relief transformed into terror. Abby, who was supposed to keep body snatcher magi prisoner. The day before Sofia had helped Abby fight off Ellen. And now body snatcher magi was free. There was no one here. Steph was gone. No witness–

"Are you here to finish me off," Lucia whispered.

Abby looked at her in befuddlement.

"Uh, no. I'm not Sofia!" She gestured at her lack of a chain necklace. "Chase doesn't detect any extra gems in the area. Sofia's not here."

"What."

"Uh, I'm– I'm so sorry. I fucked up."

"What."

"I– I– I'm sorry." Abby looked down. "Uh. Sofia is missing. She escaped. I tried to warn, called Steph, she didn't pick up, called Hazel, she's in Irvine but Maia will be here– I came as soon as I could. What happened?"

Lucia kicked off the bathtub and bashed Abby with her shield. It connected with a spark. Abby fell like a rag doll.

"I deserved that," Abby said. "Haha. Heh."

"You're not– you're not here to–"

The door clicked open. It was Maia. She looked aghast. "Miss Lucia, what are you doing! Miss Abby was coming to help you!"

Lucia stared numbly. She dismissed her shield and stood up. "Sorry," she said.

"I deserve this," Abby said again. "Where's Steph?"

"Steph's– fine. She went out for a walk. We're fine."

"Steph isn't in Chase's radar. We don't know where she is!"

"She's fine."

"Okay. Well– I– listen. I–"

"What happened. How did she escape."

"I don't know! I woke up, Sofia's gone. Her gems, I literally went out and buried them at Garfield Heights– that's like a mile away from our house–"

"You got both gems. Sofia's gem and Ellen's gem."

"Yes. I'm not fucking stupid."

"They're gone."

"We didn't check, but yeah." Abby said. " Sofia is a shrewd one. Ellen attacked us last night, that's why Sofia had her body– and how Chase was uh, injured. Ellen had Sofia high up, and Sofia dropped her fucking gem to figure out how high up she was, and used that to tell where Ellen was based on her range–"

"Okay?" Lucia said. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"It's possible that there were no accomplices involved, and Sofia got out of it herself. The incubator can't send anyone new if he's disappeared–"

"Why would the incubator send anyone. I'm not– get it through your head. That girl is not a CK. I do not have a bounty on me!"

"Okay. Yeah, sorry. You're right."

"Out of everyone, why are you the one who doesn't believe me? You've seen me. Everything I've done is for the good of the city. How can you entertain the thought for even a moment?"

"Yeah."

"Meanwhile you, you do nothing. You don't kill witches. The incubator had to disappear to get you to actually do your job to save a goddamn SCHOOL. And now you defend, defend that girl, you can't even do the one single job you had, like– I can't– I can't–"

"Shut up."

Lucia looked up. Momentarily her tongue failed her. "Wha– wha– What did you just say? What?"

"I said shut up–"

"You do not get to tell me to shut up. Are you serious? Do you realize that Sofia wants to kill me? By the way. She came here. She knew where I lived, like, if I didn't sleep at the city hall yesterday I would be dead too."

"I KNOW," Abby cut her off, clawing at her scalp. "Listen. I fucking know. I'm the stupidest bitch who's ever bitched, I need to be fucking shot. But we are in a time crunch here, yeah? We have a psychopath on the loose in your city bestie, that city that everything you did was for the good of, so maybe we should stop wasting time and catch her?"

While Abby soliloquized excuses, the logical part of Lucia's brain took over. Abby did just Challenge Her Authority, but she was wearing the most desperate, guilty expression on her face. Like a dog that had broken something. Momentarily Lucia felt some sliver of excitement. God had thrusted another advantageous situation in Lucia's face. A way to secure Abby's loyalty.

"Fine," Lucia said.

"Fine?"

"I don't want you making excuses after this," Lucia said. "You go to Caltech every week. Take care of your territory. Show you care about this city."

Silence. "Okay. Okay. Sure, yeah, alright. If we live through this, yeah."

Abby doesn't lie. "We will," Lucia said.

Maia stood there awkwardly, a cutey maid smile plastered on her face. "Yay!" she said. "Okay. I do think we should sort this out now, like what Miss Abby said. Uh, about Sofia… do you think we'll even find her? Wouldn't she be long gone by now?"

Abby frowned. "No. Sofia has to be still in the city. She hates you Lucia, loathes you, froths at the mouth when I mention your name. She won't leave this city until she kills you and then maybe flays you and pisses on your grave. Maia, I'm going to ask you to do something. Okay? You should live with Lucia. For a while."

Puzzlement. "What, why?" Maia said.

"To protect her," Abby said.

"Ohh!" Maia beamed. "That's a really good idea actually. There's no way Sofia would be able to sneak up on me!"

Instinctively Lucia had wanted to object. Something inside her screamed that Abby had some kind of ulterior motive, but the plan was sound. With Maia helping her, a cherub of omniscience on their side– there was no way things could go wrong.

"Can you find her right now?" Lucia asked Maia. "Do you know, uh, when she'll attack?"

"Oh, not quite. I can't see the future. That's not how my power works. But if she's around I'll definitely realize!"

"Do you know where she is right now? Do we end up catching her?"

"What is your power," Abby said.

"No," Maia snapped. "Miss Lucia, I don't know everything everything. But I know enough to stop Sofia. And Miss Abby, I do know enough to know that if you continue that line of questioning, you'll end up as a little smudge on the ground."

"Okay. Okay." Lucia said diplomatically. "Yeah. You're up for this though? Living with us and all? My room is– a bit of a, a mess–"

"Sure," Maia grinned.

"And uh," Abby said. "Take care of her in a less lethal way if you can avoid it–"

"No." Lucia said. "Kill her. That girl is scum. She survives off parasitizing other people's lives. She is no different from a witch."

Maia nodded solemnly. Abby stuck out her tongue but did not object.

"We'll come back from this," Lucia said. "and we'll be stronger than we've ever been."

That wasn't a lie, Lucia realized. She really did believe it.

Time Until Raid On Weather Witch: 2h 10m