---

As Rei laid into Roche about their summer vacation, the girl's bright expression dimmed back to the stoic, guarded scowl she was more known for. She took the words head on, not flinching from the accusations, especially not when Rei had waited till the entire summer vacation had passed to even bring it up to them.

"You're acting like we went out there just to hunt. It was meant to be a vacation, and things developed from there. Something that we may have had a handle on if you'd taken the least bit of interest in the goings-on around here." The Rule Keeper may have respected Rei's power and authority but she didn't have any for the absence of their leader, nor for her dismissal of the increasingly dangerous Ashbringer.

"When it went down, we did everything we could to protect the civilians, and if those idiots hadn't intervened they'd have never even come close to danger." Roche said, though a part of her questioned if that would have truly been so, as it was the arrival of Shuuko that really cemented an eventual victory over the Giga Miseria. But without Morganite harassing them and bludgeoning Suki like a drum, they'd have been far better off in the first place. "From what Suki and Tsubomi said, that pink shield girl was harassing them before we even got into the Giga Miseria matter, so we were marked just for leaving town."

Though for all she wanted to seethe over Rei's absence as a leader, the revelation that those Light Girls had invaded their turf and tried to abduct Detention Club members did make her blood run cold. It was hard to rouse the same outrage when she had to defend herself from further accusations, Rei as imperious and distant as an alcoholic father berating their child.

"If they are coming into our town, I'll beat them into the dirt myself and send them hurtling out of town lashed to the front car of the bullet train. Stop hurling blame when I've been the only one trying to keep the girls together instead of blowing apart under all this pressure. Did I make a mistake? Yes, but now that I know, I'll fix it like I always do."

The house rung from their voices. Shouting echoed between the walls, laughing at the idea that it may be stopped by Sylvia’s hands on her ears, reverberating inside her skull, rattling her mind. The words blended together and while it was not a cacophony, she felt their anger, no, their hatred for each other. Blame arrayed against blame. Fingers pointed at each other. Age-old arguments breaking out like a wildfire, spreading through the entirety of her home.

Could it even be called as such, though? The walls may have been warm, but the fire inside the hearth died a long time ago. Its flames burned like ice, painful snowflakes blossoming across her skin whenever she tried to reach for it, then seeped into her bones before it penetrated her to the core.

Steps. They were coming closer. Their shouting stopped. It could mean only one thing: both Grandfather and Grandmother agreed that the source of their woes could be no one but the girl they had locked inside a barren, barely-functional room. Somehow, somewhere, they came to the conclusion that they lost their daughter because of their granddaughter, that they were angels and that their only descendant was a demon.

Sylvia huddled closer, wishing she were anywhere but here. She thought she could protect Chiaki, but every time she did, it was just pain upon pain. Maybe that was all that she deserved. After all, was she not but an ugly, filthy spot on her Grandparents’ flawless lives? Was she not the sole source of their suffering? They were right, were they not? It was all her fault. Chiaki was innocent. Slyvia was the one who did all the bad things, so she deserved to be punished.

The door opened. Grandfather walked in with a belt. Grandmother had a wooden spoon in her hand. Slyvia did not care. She fixed her eyes on a spot on the wall, hoping that it would be over soon.

---

”... you to please stop, Hotaru! Sylvia’s terrified!”

Those words finally got through to the warrior, who took a look at Sylvia and froze. The protector sat in the very same position she used to whenever their so-called ‘family’ did the unthinkable. Indeed, Sylvia’s eyes lost all life, their normally oh-so-vibrant green becoming a dull, colourless puddle of mud. Even worse, fresh-looking bruises started to appear on her body.

”Shit…” Hotaru lost all of her fire as she beheld the fruits of her labour, her eyes widening at the sight. ”Look… I won’t say sorry to you, Ember, because I’m not. We’ll return to it when Sylvia’s all right.” As she spoke, the warrior approached Sylvia with careful steps, taking care to showcase her open, empty hands.

The protector did not respond. Only the faint movement of her chest betrayed the fact she lived, as it seemed like she refused to see how Hotaru moved her hand in front of Sylvia’s eyes or how the warrior snapped her fingers beside the ears. The world was as dead to Sylvia as she was dead to it, for nothing mattered in the face of the inevitable. Bad children got their punishment after all, did they not?

Hotaru muttered some sort of curse beneath her breath before she reached for Sylvia, but she stopped short before her fingers could brush against skin. It would not help at all, she realised. If anything, it might take their dear protector further away from them, into a land she would never be returning from. Having run out of ideas, the warrior looked back at the schemer, who seemed to be occupied with something else.

”Ember! Get your ass over here!”

“‘Ru.” The red-haired woman looked at her. ”Since when could we talk to each other like this?”

”It’s always been like this! Now stop your thinking and do something!” Hotaru’s outburst struck like a hammer, causing Sylvia to flinch. In response, the warrior looked back at the protector and-

Realised what Ember meant as her eyes took in her body.

”What the…”

”Exactly. You have never seen me like this. I have never seen you like this. The same fact stands for Sylvia.” Ember’s blue eyes swept the mental space around them, looking for more details. A hazy fog descended on the mental scape, obscuring details, however, her cold gaze picked up on details hidden within the distance. Walls. Faint outlines of furniture. A floor. A ceiling.

It all wavered when she stepped forward, yet it lingered. It felt ephemeral like a dream, yet it could be felt. They could now perceive each other not only as voices, but as though they were people sharing a room.

”I do not know what Kana-san did, or if this has anything to do with her… but I believe this change can not be reversed.”

---

”Are you absolutely sure you will be all right, Sylvi?

Slyvia nodded in their mental space even as she braced herself for the meeting today. So far, she begged off the days or even the moments where she would have to face Tsubomi. Or more accurately, she left very little choice to her comrades who… she did not know anymore. Both of them tried their best to prop her up, but did that make up for what they did? For bringing that memory to the surface?

Shuuko’s body shivered as Sylvia lived through the experience. It seemed just as vivid as the day it happened. Like no time passed at all. Yet as Ember often said, if people did not face their fears, then they would become beasts. Even more importantly, she could not protect anyone if she could not overcome this trial, which in turn meant she would no longer be useful. And as much as Ember or Hotaru smiled at her, they would not hesitate to throw her away.

If they were like her Grandparents, a hopeful voice noted in the back of her head. She dismissed it right away, refusing to show it to her so-called comrades as she approached the Detention Club’s entrance. Her gait, once steady, slowed down as she came before the door. Her legs trembled. Her fingers shook. Not even measured breaths helped as she reached for the door, almost stumbling through the room’s threshold.

Before Suki could do more than energetically wave and say a pathetically desperate-sounding “Hi!”, another club member entered the room. Nyxia couldn’t really be bothered to remember crimson-eyed girl’s name, but the Neon Tempest was vaguely aware that she was the one who controlled all the disgusting eye monsters the club used for surveillance purposes. Thus, when the new arrival quipped that no member of the club would stoop so low as to forcibly drag someone to see a play, Nyxia couldn’t hep but roll her eyes. After all, what would an edgy voyeur know about standards? The next thing she knew, Suki had gotten over her momentary shock and had begun rambling about how she’d gotten apathy incarnate to go along with her, before moving on to mentioning a body pillow that she used to bring to public places (shudder), and concluding with an inquiry about fairy tales.

Now, if she was being honest, while Nyxia had never really given much thought to fairy tales, from what little she knew of Rapunzel, the story actually shared some similarities with her own confined and isolated life, at least before she’d become a magical girl. That said, there was no way she was going to share that information, especially not with these particular two girls, even if tall dark and mysterious’s comment about Rapunzel’s shitty parents did manage to elicit a muttered “Yeah…” from the Neon Tempest, her mind briefly reflecting on how hated and unloved she herself felt at home before savagely casting such thoughts aside. However, when the conversation shifted to the possibility of summoning a Giga Miseria in the heart of Hibusa Town, Nyxia finally spoke up.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to fuck one of those things up again,” she began. “But summoning one in the middle of the city is a really fucking stupid idea,” the Neon Tempest added, her mouth contorting into an annoyed scowl, while she fixed an intense glare upon Kiyo.

---

Tsubomi once more sat at her desk, waiting for the school day to end. Her blank mind and stare being left unnoticed by the rest of the classroom. The going bet on her consciousness had been shifting its balance lately, with more and more money placed on her staying awake. When the bell rung, she was, as usual, the last to stand up and the last to get her things together. In truth, she was rather tired from having been kept awake the previous night, though not in the sense that she had trouble sleeping like the last time she'd used up her reserves. Instead...

Acid Drop plopped herself into the seat next to Tsubomi's. "Man, you have to sit in these for hours? How do you do it?"

The annoyance that plagued Tsubomi's mind had began appearing outside of it, shortly after the day the Light Girls had attacked her, after the day of the play with Suki. And her jumping on the bed all night had forced Tsubomi to sleep in her tattered beanbag, an uncomfortable place to sit let alone spend the night. And so she awoke, tired and with joint pain all over her body. She had decided to stay home, but her other half, despite being invisible to all others and presumably of her imagination, dragged the apathetic girl out of her home and to the school. At that point, it was better to just go along with it, she decided.

"Hey now," the rainbow girl said as she stood up and stretched a few seconds after sitting down in the first place, "You're gonna be late to the club if you don't get going."

And so Tsubomi began her walk to the clubroom as Acid Drop disappeared into nothingness. When she arrived, she waved at each of the other girls there and sat in one of the room's chairs, not knowing or caring what the conversation had been that she had missed most of.

Roche chose to talk back to the most powerful dark magical girl she had ever seen. One so powerful that even a demon like Ashbringer turned tail and ran at the mere sound of her bounding across rooftops. A dark magical girl with so much power that she could hold, if only barely, an entire club of dark magical girls together without killing each other. A dark magical girl that authored the rules that the rule keeper herself tattooed onto her heart like the ink on her skin. Such insubordination could lead to an "attitude adjustment" at best, and excommunication at worst. Was it her position in the club or being fed up with Rei that made the stoic rule keeper feel so rebellious?

The air around the taller, more athletic looking woman felt cold.

“You've forgotten your place, Roche.” Rei's tone was reminiscent of a parent who didn't have the heart to scold their child.“You misunderstand my concern. Why you left does not matter. Light girls wander into Hibusa town from time to time. They spout their annoying platitudes and we show them the door. This is a cycle that will never stop so long as we operate here.” She slid a hand into her pocket. “When you venture out of Hibusa town and destroy property, even if it's not your fault, you make them angry. They build resentment and find common ground with one another. We are a small club but we always outnumber the light girls because they are unable to organize against us. Destroying that beach might have been the linchpin the Gems needed to rally against us. Is something so basic beyond your understanding?”

Rei placed her hands around Roche's neck. Her touch was like the northern winds, or that of a corpse. But all she did was straighten out Roche's shirt before slipping her hands into her pockets.

“But you are right. You are going to fix this. And you're also going to make sure nothing like that happens again. No more vacations that happen to involve such widespread destruction.” Rei was about to walk away when she stopped in her tracks. She looked back at Roche, hesitated, and finally spoke. “I had thought that you could hunt miseria without my supervision, but very well. Perhaps I can make time to hunt with you tomorrow.”

It wasn't as if Rei ever did more than perch on some elevated platform while her underlings laid waste, but it was going to be essential now, wasn't it? These weren't normal light girls, they had managed to tick off the Gems. That meant that they'd likely need Schrade to avoid getting totally bodied by the opposition. It was a hassle, but it was also a little interesting too, wasn't it?



"Yea... Some parents...” Suki's eyes glazed over. She remained as stiff as a board until Kiyo tried to shift the focus back on to Rapunzel herself. "Yea, I really don't get the whole parent thing.” A bitter grin crossed her face when she looked back at the page. "Like, all the mom does is just complain all the time. Like she gets pregnant and just refuses to eat anything but one plant? I kind of picture her as this bloated tick that sits in a cave, existing only to suck the happiness out of the people around her. She's too big to leave the cave and just sort of exists to be a drain on everyone else. And the dad...” Suki laughed. "What a piece of crap! I mea what's he even doing this for? He can't love his wife. He's willing to decide what happens to their child without their consent, so you know that's going to divide them. But the entire reason why she's suffering right now is so that she can deliver a baby. So by giving up the baby it's almost like he's saying what she's gone through isn't even worth considering. I can't imagine they lived a happy life after that. I think Rapunzel's better off having never known her parents.” She pointed at Rapunzel's hair. "But what the hell is with her scalp? If I had hair that long you know I'd be able to tell the difference between an old witch and a big burly prince was crawling up my braid. Provided I didn't get yanked out of the tower. Rapunzel had to be a magical girl.”

And then came the idea of summoning a giga miseria in town. Like, what? It might have been an idea worth entertaining if the last one hadn't leveled a beach when it died. At the same time, Suki couldn't totally dismiss it. "Uh, maybe if it was a really small one? And we fought it on the mountain somewhere? But I think that would be a little dangerous with the light girls around. I mean, were'nt you-”

Tsubomi and Shuuko came through the door.

"Hey Guys!” Suki gave the newly arrived her traditional flamboyant wave and smile. "Roach is still MIA, so we're talking about how Rapunzel might have been a magical girl and giga miseria” After a pause, she clarified. "That's two different topics. Rapunzel is not a giga miseria.”

---

Kiyo met Nyxia's glare with lazily half-open eyes. "Oh, of course. How could I forget our most sacred duty as Kurai girls to protect the innocent. We'll just have to leave Hibusa Town and... oh. We can't, because Hibusa Town is surrounded by light fuckos," she said, idly tapping her lips with a finger as though she'd just thought of that fact herself. "Guess we'll die then," she concluded, deadpan. Her attention shifted to Suki, but her question was interrupted when the other girls arrived.

"Good day. You didn't miss much—I was just getting to the good part, about how beyond fucked we are." Her eyes regarded each of the other girls in turn, finally landing on Nyxia. "Look, I get it, you don't shit where you sleep—but they appear only when a group of people are experiencing the same intense emotion in a confined space. There's no safe way to do it. Doing it outside of Hibusa Town will just piss off more light girls, so our options are to do it here or not at all. What we need is a way to summon them on demand, at our convenience—preferably in multiple places at once, so the light girls are too preoccupied with their own problems to harass us." She looked at each of them one more time before slouching even deeper into her chair and burying her face in a newspaper. "Or one of us goes and files a workplace safety complaint to our dear leader, the Queen of Darkness. Any takers?" she asked, her voice dripping with casual sarcasm.

She expected the others to blame her for this. After all, she was the one who somehow ended up in the one place Rei told them to never go, and now girls from the City of Light were stalking Hibusa Town's alleys like they owned the place. Why wouldn't they? It was easier than pointing the finger at themselves for blowing up a beach—with, to be fair, zero casualties. Even she had to admit that was pretty impressive. Yet, it was short sighted, but she did not blame them. Rei was the one who'd never told them about giga misera—and she wouldn't let her say she didn't know. She was the one who slowly fed them worthless scraps: the hordes that came at night. She was the one who'd allowed them to get comfortable in Hibusa Town, almost devoid of light girls. At times, it was possible to forget they even existed. Why would they worry about some light girls crashing their beach vacation? No matter how she looked at it, Rei's poor leadership was to blame. Was she out of line for thinking so? Was she simply jealous of her power, fantasizing as she did of how she'd put it to better use?

---

Roche had overstepped her bounds and Rei wasn't reluctant in the least to let her know. That cold feeling that one intrinsically knew was death itself draped itself around her neck, carried close by the vice of Rei's hand. It was easy to forget the position she held was one borne purely from Rei's desire to not bother meeting out the punishment's herself till Roche was staring down what constituted as a subtle reminder from the Club Leader herself.

Her rage was doused by the ice of Cocytus, and she'd found herself only breathing once more when Rei's hand was well away from her skin. She looked upon Rei with naked fear, the anger doused for the moment. But such feelings couldn't vanish forever, and as she took in a fraction of Rei's terrible presence she felt bile in her throat and the first flickers of sincere hatred for the girl fester.

"It won't happen again, Rei. And if those Gems want to come into our city, I'll make sure they won't be leaving of their own power." Roche said with a stiff, steely composure and funneled that vile antipathy towards the Light Girls. It wasn't a hard shift, even if it served as another reminder that the only threat Rei seemed the least bit bothered by was more Light Girl's trampling on her territory.

Her fists clenched at her sides, trembling from skin pulled taut over bone before she exhaled gustily and shook them loose. Rei had one last parting barb for her that Roche needed to acknowledge lest the strongest Magical Girl take further offense. "The others will be happy to have you there. Till then."

Turning on her heel she walked briskly to the club room, the pressure of yet another enemy weighing heavy upon her. Feeling herself backslide she hurried to the club room, hurling it open and finding many already waiting for her.

"Good afternoon." For all the tension winding around her she found presence of the girl's she'd thought she been growing closer to become disconcerting. She resented Rei's iron fist threatening her after months of neglect, but could she then deny she'd created this mess? If she hadn't pushed for the beach they'd have encountered a Giga Miseria, the Light Girls now attacking them, or Sink Queen.

The tanned girl's expression sank and as she closed the door behind her she settled boneless at the nearest desk, mind working over Rei's cutting words without the capacity for much else.

Nyxia clenched her teeth as Kiyo began to mock her in that infuriatingly flippant manner of hers, sarcastically rattling off all the ways they were doomed to fail at any other course of action than the one she’d come up with. “Do you always have to be such a fucking drama queen?” the Neon Tempest snapped back. This is why I hate interacting with you shit stains… However, to Nyxia’s considerable surprise, Suki, of all people, then spoke up to actually agree with her opinion on how idiotic it would be to summon a Giga Miseria in the heart of Hibusa Town, even going so far as to offer what the Neon Tempest had to admit were some rather sensible alternatives. The girl may have been horny as fuck, but at least she wasn’t a complete moron.

Speaking of, the next thing Nyxia knew, Apathy Incarnate entered the room, followed by Drama Queen’s strange, yet still rather forgettable partner. Now only Roche was missing. The club did have other members, of course, like that snooty girl with the giant chess pieces and her stage magic-obsessed partner, but, like Rei, they were often absent, doing “important tasks” the Neon Tempest couldn’t really have cared less about. She may have developed a stronger bond with Roche, but she still held the rest of her club mates in fairy obvious disdain, and, based on the current conversation, that opinion didn’t seem likely to change any time soon…

“Look, the whole reason we’re trying to get stronger is to fuck over that Ashbringer bitch,” Nyxia shot back after Kiyo had finished giving her summary of why they had no choice but to risk the safety of Hibusa Town’s populace. “And the reason I wanna do that is cuz she trashed an innocent flower shop just for the fuck of it! What good would fighting a Giga Miseria do if we wreck the entire fucking city in the process?!” She exhaled in annoyance. “We seriously need to come up with a better plan than just ‘make a few show up and then try to deal with them’!”

However, before anything further could be said, Roche finally arrived. Just one look at the track captain told Nyxia that something was wrong. Ignoring any potential rebuttals Kiyo might spew, the Neon Tempest strode over to where her partner had taken a seat and looked down at the athletic girl with a visage filled with concern. “Everything okay?” she inquired.