"You sure they'll be passing through here?" Chloe asks for the umpteenth time. I nod again, pointing to the convergence tracker on my phone and the dark clouds roiling to our left. We're pretty much right at the edge of the evacuation zone, but today's convergence isn't likely to be very big. The Earth Guardians should be popping back out any minute now, gleaming and triumphant. By all accounts, it probably shouldn't have taken them even this long, but I bet they're taking today pretty slow. After all, it's the first day that Veritas and Aurora are back to work.

It's something I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, it's awful, because it means I'll probably have to fight children again. On the other hand, it means Eliza and her furry friend aren't the only two people handling incursions for the entire county. She's been doing everything in her power to run herself ragged, as usual. Chloe lives with the girl, and she's barely seen her outside of classes.

"Well they could exit from like, a different direction, or something? And we'd completely miss them," Chloe points out. And that's true, but that's why I chose this spot. There's no reason they'd exit the convergence on the far side of it—that just leads out of the city. So they're going to be popping out vaguely in this direction, and we have more than enough vision from where we're sitting to spot it even if it's off-course.

It's late September now, a week after the big fight and my first social media post about the Dark World. I've done daily updates since then, small chunks of information designed to catch attention, but there hasn't been a ton of response yet. This is expected, though. It'll probably take a while. Melpomene is paranoid that the Preservers are manipulating the internet to prevent the information from getting out, but I think that if they were good enough at understanding humans to manipulate public knowledge via the flow of information on the internet, they wouldn't have such dogshit PR in the first place.

"Calm down," I sign. "Worst case, we wait a bit and call them."

"Don't their phones like… stop existing when they're in supergirl form?"

"Castalia carries hers in her pocket. It's fine," I insist.

And I definitely wouldn't hesitate to call her, because there definitely hasn't been a ton of awkward unspoken tension between us all week after she definitely didn't catch me lying to her, poorly. It's fine, though. It's fine! There are so many leaps of logic between 'has a bad opinion of my ex who lives in another dimension' and 'is a robot slave created by a dead civilization in order to torture souls for revenge' that I don't have to act on my mistake as long as we both keep pretending it didn't happen. All I have to do is maintain this terrifying holding pattern. Forever.

And hey, Castalia is acting like it didn't happen, so why shouldn't I? She hasn't pressed me on it again, just treating me the same as she always does, but… still. I don't like it. There's nothing I can do about it, but I don't like it.

She even went on this mission with the kids, which isn't very 'retired' behavior. I'm worried about her, but what am I going to do? There are so many things to worry about right now. We haven't seen any response from the Preservers yet, but it's only a matter of time until people figure out I'm not just pulling information out of my butt.

[MeanBeanMachine]: Hey I got my flight info. Can you pick me up at 6pm on the 27th?

Oh my god? Oh my god oh my god oh my god!?

[LunaLightOTK]: Yo!? Bean real!?

[MeanBeanMachine]: Bean real!!! I am going to hug you.

[LunaLightOTK]: This is the best timeline.

[MeanBeanMachine]: It's also very short notice, so it's super cool if you're not free.

[LunaLightOTK]: Bean, you know I'll make time for you. Even if DIA is like two fucking hours away.

[MeanBeanMachine]: Oh shit, sorry. I'd offer to pay for gas, but I'm not sure I can actually do that.

[LunaLightOTK]: Wait, what do you mean?

[MeanBeanMachine]: Well, I mean that I may have sort of possibly lost my job. And I was already kind of living paycheck-to-paycheck, so I'm prooobably going to lose my apartment. And you know what's cheaper than one month's rent? A plane trip across the country! For some fucking reason.

[LunaLightOTK]: Woah, woah, woah! You never told me you'd be needing a place to stay long-term!

[MeanBeanMachine]: That's true! I didn't. And if that's a problem, that's okay. It was definitely never my intention to have to live with you long-term, and I can always find a hostel or something if needed. But I've been looking for an excuse to move to a different state for a while now, and Colorado is one of the better options.

[LunaLightOTK]: Wow. Okay, well, I'll help how I can. Castalia has already given you the go-ahead for staying with us, but I'll need to let her know that it's a bit of an indeterminate-date thing. Do you need any help finding a job?

[MeanBeanMachine]: I should be okay. It's not like I need major qualifications to work at a fast-food restaurant. And once I have an income, I'll find random roommates on Craigslist or something and be out of your hair. That way you can go back to all your secret evil undercover ops shit without me snooping around.

[LunaLightOTK]: No! Bad Bean! No snooping around!

[MeanBeanMachine]: Yeah, yeah. Look, I'll probably be too busy to collapse your entire operation like a house of cards, so don't worry about it. Detective Bean is off the case.

[LunaLightOTK]: Good.

[MeanBeanMachine]: And forcing a detective off a case has famously never made them even more adamant about following it.

[LunaLightOTK]: Bean!

"Oh!" Chloe shouts, pointing out into the distance. "There they are!"

I glance up, composing an angry message to Bean in the back of my mind as I spot the full set of local Earth Guardians emerging from the boundaries of the liminal zone. To my surprise, they're all flying, even Aurora and Veritas. Have they figured out how, or is Castalia just levitating them? Oh gosh, is it like when you help kids learn to swim by holding them as they try floating for the first time? That's adorable!

Chloe stands up and starts waving with both arms, which Eliza—in her Minerva form—quickly notices. Her eyebrows raise in surprise. Soon, the whole team is flying over to say hello. All according to thoktaf. (Translator's note: 'thoktaf' means 'plan.')

"Luna? Chloe? What are you two doing so close to the convergence?" Tiny Eliza asks, the group stopping to hover slightly above our table.

"Waiting for you, dummy!" Chloe answers. "We wanted to celebrate the first mission back for the girls!"

And we definitely didn't just do this to make sure with our own two eyes that the ten-year-olds are okay and unharmed. They certainly seem to be, with no unconscious twitches or winces that might indicate a lingering pain they're trying to hide. Although… Aurora's incarnate form does have a large, nasty-looking scar on her forehead that covers pretty much the whole area that Nanaya caved in. Which, given how incarnate forms work, probably means that she's a little traumatized? Maybe not necessarily traumatized, but one way or another she can't get the wounds out of her own self-perception. So that's not super cool, but it is entirely expected. She nearly died, after all.

"Would you like to join us for lunch?" the text-to-speech program on my phone asks for me.

"Who are these people?" Amaterasu asks.

"Oh, uh, these are my… friends?" Eliza says. "This is Chloe, and that's Luna."

I sign quickly to Chloe so she can translate for me.

"Uh… Luna says that she is 'offended by the question mark she heard in your voice' and will 'enact terrible vengeance on you' if you don't let her buy food for your team."

"Okay, okay, geez," Minerva says placatingly. "How does lunch sound to everyone? I guess my friends want to meet you."

"Sounds fun!" Aurora says.

"…I guess so," Veritas grumbles. "But you have to stay our size!"

"Ooh, yeah!" Aurora agrees. "You have to stay our size!"

Aww, that's kinda cute. They don't wanna be left out at the big girl table. I can respect that.

"Sure, that's fine," Minerva agrees easily. "I'm probably going to change into some other clothes, though. Are you two okay with detransforming around these two?"

"It's fine if they're your friends, I think," Aurora says.

Veritas shrugs, and Amaterasu just lands on the ground and wordlessly reverts to her human form in a flash of light. She's noticeably shorter now, with cropped black hair and, of course, no wolf ears or tail. Based on her expression, though, I just know she'd be flicking one or the other in irritation if she did.

"You don't have to come," Minerva assures her.

"…It will be nice to have a meal outside the base," Amaterasu shrugs.

"Introduce us to everyone, Minerva!" Chloe says.

"Oh, right," Minerva says. "Um, so this is… actually, what names do you all want to go by?"

"Aurora or Isabela is fine," Aurora says, returning to her human form.

Which… huh! Isabela. That's a pretty name. She doesn't look all that different from her incarnate form, outside of having a different face and no forehead scar.

"I'm just Veritas," Veritas says, also returning to human form. "I don't really need the other name anymore."

God, that is a sentence that hurts to hear from someone so small. She's a bit more different from her incarnate form than Aurora, mostly in that her human form has long, curly hair while her incarnate form's hair is short and straight. But I've seen both of the kids transform a few times now, so none of this is a big surprise.

"Su-san," Amaterasu says. "Not 'Susan.'"

"Su-san, Veritas, and Isabela, got it," Chloe nods, and I definitely note the intentionality with which she chose Isabela over Aurora. Judging by the slight tightening of muscle around Aurora's eyes, I think she noticed, too. Perceptive, for a kid.

"You all want pizza, tacos, or burgers?" I ask with my phone, curating our choices mainly for the ten-year-olds in the audience.

"Pizza!" Aurora cheers.

"Why do you talk with your phone?" Veritas asks.

"She's mute, Veritas," Minerva answers. "She can't talk with her mouth."

"Oh," Veritas says.

"Not deaf?" Aurora asks.

"Nope," Minerva confirms.

"Huh."

Having my fake disability interrogated by children is a bit surreal, but hey, at least we have a solid vote for pizza. I get things back on track and confirm that yes, everyone can agree on that, so we head for Chloe's favorite pizza place. The magical girls chatter amongst themselves about magical things while Chloe and I awkwardly listen in.

"Maybe it's just because it's been a month, but I felt stronger than I was before. Do you think I was stronger than before, Minerva?" Aurora asks.

"You could be," Minerva nods. "Strength is generally a function of total power capacity and spell efficiency, and it's not impossible to have a breakthrough with either even without active practice. Less likely, of course, but it was a whole month."

"Not less likely," Castalia says. "Spell efficiency is just practice. But… I think resting can improve capacity directly?"

"Wait, what?" Minerva says, and I can't help but perk up a little, too.

"I'm… not good at explaining," Castalia says hesitantly. "You need… more colors? And that's hard to do. Because we have one color."

Amaterasu watches intently, frowning slightly as she and the rest of the girls try to parse that. Castalia picks up on their confusion and valiantly tries again.

"If your soul is… a balloon," she says, "and you fill the balloon, you need… you can't fill it with one color, or it won't grow right."

"…What?" Veritas says.

"You're saying we need to use multiple different emotions at once?" Aurora asks.

"No," Castalia says, shaking her head.

"Using multiple emotions is inefficient for battle, isn't it?" Amaterasu asks.

"It is," Castalia confirms. "Use the emotions that match your stone."

"Okay, I'm lost again," Aurora sighs.

Weirdly, I think I'm not. But should I… ugh. Fuck it. I start typing rapidly on my phone as Castalia flounders for words.

"If I get you right, then maybe instead of thinking of emotions as having colors, think of them as pushing in different directions?" my phone says.

"…Hmm," Castalia says, considering that as she floats by.

"Wait, did you understand that?" Minerva asks. "How?"

"I'm just interpreting the attempt at an analogy in the way I think makes the most sense," I type. "If your soul is a balloon and you want to make it bigger, you can't just grab one end and stretch it. You have to inflate it and let the air push the inside from every single direction at once."

"…If a desire goes unfulfilled for too long, it may get stronger," Amaterasu says, "but it just as easily may fade. Even if it never goes away, you… learn to live with it. Let it become… normal. But fear, anger, or joy can keep a desire alive."

I nod and point at her.

"That is true," Castalia agrees. "But not quite right. Maybe it is different for a yellow mage, but… there must be joy in sadness. There must be joy in fear. You lost, Aurora. You rested, knowing you lost. But did you stop finding reasons to be happy?"

"Oh," Aurora says. "No, I guess not."

"That is strength," Castalia nods.

Aurora turns a little pink at the words of affirmation from the strongest, while the other magical girls look thoughtful, doing their best to try and decipher how anything Castalia just said is different from what they all already do. But like, with dramatically less healthy emotions.

"Does anyone else think it's weird that there are so many negative emotions and just a few positive ones?" I type out, my phone asking the question in an amusingly artificial tone.

"Yeah, I do!" Aurora chirps. "There's one, maybe two good ones, and six or seven bad ones! That's not fair."

"What? There are three good ones," Amaterasu says. "Desire, joy, and pride."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Isn't pride a sin?" Aurora asks.

"Only according to people who get mad when you have fun," I quickly type out, which gets an amused snort out of Chloe.

"Oh, like my mom," Aurora says, wrinkling her nose. "Okay. But desire is only sometimes good. Sometimes, people want to do bad things, or they want something they can't have, right?"

"So it's two and a half good ones," Veritas says, sounding secretly smug that she used an entire fraction correctly. "Still not a lot."

The others think on that while I quickly type out a longer message.

"I used to think it was for social reasons," I say. "Like, if someone is angry with you, you're in a completely different situation than if someone is afraid of you. They're the emotions most recognizable by other people, so they're the ones that get named. Whereas if someone is happy, they're just happy. There's not much difference looking in from the outside. But apparently, magic is a universal constant, and therefore emotion is like, baked into the physics of the universe? So what the heck is up with that?"

Nobody seems to have an answer for me at first, but Amaterasu is the first to speak up, her eyes carefully on me.

"Seeking one kind of happiness is hard enough," she says. "Maybe we're lucky we don't have to chase after five or six."

Oh. Huh.

"You might be onto something with that," Chloe laughs, though it's the laugh she uses when she wants to lighten the mood rather than because she thinks something is actually funny. I'm not sure how effective the ruse is against six different empaths, but hey. At least Bean will be here soon to help round out the normal people for Chloe to hang out with.

We make it to the pizza place without anyone delving into more magical theory, chatting about school projects and one of the games Veritas likes to play when she's alone (which is, I imagine, quite a lot of the time, but no one presses that point too hard). It's nice getting to eat with everyone even if I can't taste anything, and while we only keep the kids for about an hour before Aurora walks Veritas back to the Preserver base, we have a pretty good time.

It's very cute watching mini-Eliza interact with the kids. She's still very obviously Eliza, despite looking completely different, and she doesn't act all that much like a ten-year-old, but she still enjoys the company of her team, treating them like equals no matter how childlike they happen to be acting. When everyone finishes lunch, I carefully watch where all the Earth Guardians go as they split up, citing some errands I have to run before heading toward the liminal zone.

I've needed to visit the Dark World a lot more often lately, to gather material for the website and social media accounts I'm using. Plus, I have some groceries I bought this morning that I need to drop off. Sneaking in isn't hard when I already know anyone who might be interested in watching me is off doing something in a completely different direction, so I slip into the castle without issue.

"Hey, Anath," I greet her as I walk into the main room. "You ready?"

"Oh! Luna!" Anath perks up, pausing whatever game she was playing. It looks like… wait, I know that music. Kirby!? "Yeah I'm good to go whenever! It's about time the world learned of my greatness."

Ah, bit of a manic mood, then. Hopefully not too much of a manic mood. It can be a fine line with her.

"Alright, come over and sit down when you hit a stopping point," I say, dropping stuff out of my magical storage and putting it away throughout the kitchen. It doesn't take long for Anath to finish up what she was doing and plop down on a stool at the dinner table, her tail sticking straight up behind her and twitching as she idly glances around.

Alright. Here goes. I sit across from her, unzipping my skinsuit enough to let my head free and positioning it so that the footage I get from my eyes is believably from a camera. With my voice modulated enough to be obscured, I start the interview.

"Okay, and here we are with the final member of the Dark Rebellion—"

"Woah! Why's your voice all weird, Luna?" Anath asks, and I resist the urge to facepalm.

"It's… to hide my identity, Anath," I sigh. This is one of the many reasons I'm not doing anything live. "Please don't use my name during the interview."

"Oh! Okay, got it, mysterious anonymous voice," Anath nods seriously.

"Right. Okay! Here we are with the final member of the Dark Rebellion—"

"Final how?" she asks. "Final as in most recent? I guess that's true. If we discount you, obviously."

I'll just edit that last part out.

"I just meant you're the last person I've interviewed," I clarify. "Could you introduce yourself?"

"Oh yeah, sure! I'm Rhapsodic Beast Consummate Anath, but most people just call me Anath. Rolls off the tongue a bit easier, hehe."

"And would you mind talking about how and why you joined the Dark Rebellion?" I ask.

Immediately, Anath's happy expression falls a bit.

"Oh, uh…" she says. "Sure, I guess."

"You don't have to if you don't want to," I assure her.

"No, it's fine. It's not a secret or anything, it's just… well, I mean the short answer is that my team… died. And I got stranded in the Dark World for a bit. And Nanaya saved me. And, um… yeah."

"So like the others, you're a former Earth Guardian?" I clarify.

"Oh, yep," Anath confirms. "I was part of a team in Colorado Springs. Joined when I was eight. Back then I was called… uh, Uplifting Vanguard Joyful Hariti? That's a Buddhist goddess, I think. One of my teammates' parents were Buddhists, so her name ended up with a Buddhist goddess, and teams tend to follow a theme, so… yep! Most Guardians don't change names when they class change, but I did because, uh. Well, I did! And now I'm Anath."

Hmm, interesting.

"Vanguard means you were a frontliner, right?" I ask.

"Well yeah, duh I was a frontliner," Anath laughs. "It's the, uh, bog standard tank class, I guess? I mean, it's not… magical girls don't actually have classes like a video game or whatever, they're just names. But the name describes the person. Vanguards are frontliners with no particular specialization one way or another. Older and more experienced girls get less common names as they kinda figure themselves out, I guess."

"Can I ask who your other teammates were, if that's alright?"

"Oh," Anath says, her face falling further. "Yeah, of course. Guanyin was our healer, Tara was our backline and leader. We were best friends. They were the only people who could put up with me, haha. Them and Uma'mama."

"You're talking about Uma'tama, the Preserver overseeing Colorado?" I clarify for the interview.

"Oh, yep," Anath nods. "My parents got killed by monsters, so she was kinda my mom for several years. She… tries her best. When she's around. She means well, anyway."

"Do you love her?" I ask.

The question surprises her, but she manages a smile.

"I… yeah, I do," she confirms. "Don't tell Mel or Nana, haha."

"My lips are sealed," I assure her wryly, which causes her to snort with amusement. Most people watching the interview will interpret the joke as a reference to the fact that this is a publicized interview, and therefore I am telling literally everyone. But Anath gets the real joke. My lips are indeed sealed. So sealed I don't even have a mouth.

"I hear that's pretty common," I continue. "Earth Guardians whose parents have been killed by monsters."

"Oh yeah, usually at least one per team," Anath nods. "The Preservers don't recruit more Guardians if they don't absolutely have to, but the way they determine if they absolutely have to is, uh, if convergences don't get sealed, y'know? And that often means people have died. I guess it's two birds with one stone to pick up any orphaned kids, right? They're cleaning up their own mess. The mess in this case being me!"

Yeah, this is definitely not a major manic episode if Anath can be that self-deprecating. But I guess the topic would depress almost anyone. Unfortunately, part of the point of these interviews is to be a little depressing. Sorry, Anath!

"So you were orphaned at eight years old, at which point you joined the Earth Guardians. Was your team about your age?"

"Yeah," Anath nods. "Tara was almost a year older than me, but we were in the same grade, back when I went to school."

"You stopped going to school?" I ask, and Anath shrugs.

"Nobody really liked me at school, and Uma'tama didn't make me go, so… I stopped," she says. "I think when I was twelve? I was in middle school, anyway. Then a couple years later, Guanyin died. It was my fault, but Tara thought it was hers. She pushed herself really hard after that, way too hard, and ultimately became a teal mage. And I just… I didn't get it. I didn't get it until it was way too late."

Any trace of mania is long since gone from her posture, her whole body sagging with the weight of the memories.

"Do you need to take a break?" I ask.

"No," she says, shaking her head.

"Okay. Is it alright if you explain what a teal mage is?" I press gently.

"Oh," Anath says. "Right. People don't… they wouldn't know that, huh? Um, so… emotions have colors. Er… no. Magical energy has colors? Um, do I need to explain how magic comes from emotion?"

"We covered that in a prior interview," I say. "You cast with emotions, which means you don't feel those emotions as strongly because the power is going into the magic rather than your head."

"Yeah, something like that," Anath says. "I mean, I cast with joy, and I'm still pretty darn happy in a fight, right? You don't want to use up all of your primary emotion. Your primary emotion is something that the fight itself should make you feel, or something that comes so easily and naturally to you that stress can't wipe it away."

She brings her feet up onto her chair, hugging her knees.

"…But hopelessness is different," she says. "It's bad. It's really bad, and I just didn't know. I didn't know what it really meant."

"What does it mean?" I press.

Anath shudders, glancing up and past me.

"…Nana?" she asks, pleadingly. Nanaya nods, stepping into my range of vision and kneeling down next to Anath before turning to me.

"I'll field this question, if that's alright?" she says.

"Of course," I allow. "Sorry, Anath."

"It's okay," she says softly. "I'm just not good with words."

"Emotions guide the living," Nanaya says. "They have purpose. Emotions and magic may exist independently of humanity, but our brains still evolved to take advantage of their existence to drive cognition. The positive emotions are used to reward us. The negative emotions are used to drive us to respond to wrongness. Every emotion has purpose, even ones normally vilified. You can be disgusted or angry at evil. You can fear genuine dangers. You can grieve over lost people and opportunities to learn that which you should not squander. Emotions teach. They inform sapience. They create the bedrock of 'should' and 'should not' that logic relies on to determine 'how' and 'why.' But hopelessness does not seem to adhere to this pattern. Hopelessness is not an emotion that ever arises in a healthy mind."

"From the name, it sounds more like the absence of an emotion than an emotion itself," I say, though I already know where this is going.

"It's not," Nanaya says. "It is a presence and a power like any other. Hopelessness, despair, whatever you wish to call it… it is the emotion that drives men and women to die. To take their own lives, or to throw their lives haphazardly away. So imagine what happens when a child is placed on a battlefield and told to fight their enemies with that."

"No," Anath says softly. "Don't imagine. Tara was… she… she kept getting worse, after Guanyin died. We still had to protect the city without her, you know? We couldn't just stop, the only other girls were even younger. And I… I like fighting a lot, so it's what I wanted to do anyway. It was the best way to take my mind off of it. But it was so much harder without Guanyin, and Tara started talking about how it wouldn't be long until we followed her. We didn't have a healer anymore, the monsters weren't getting any weaker. We were due, she said. But when she became a teal mage, all of that stopped. She was laughing again. She was fighting three times as hard, enough to make up for Guanyin and more. And I thought it was a good thing."

Her fur stands on end, and she hugs herself, rubbing her arms to try and smooth it down.

"What I didn't know then," she continues, "and what I know now, is that just because you don't feel the emotions doesn't mean they aren't there. Just burning it all away doesn't change anything. It might help in the moment. It might stop you from spiraling, from having the pain compound on itself until it's the only thing you can think about, but it's like taking painkillers when you're injured. The wound doesn't go away, and the pain always comes back. Always."

"…Unless you heal the wound?" I ask, trying to finish the metaphor.

"I don't know," Anath shrugs helplessly. "Maybe. Never met a teal mage that lived long enough to find out."

Oh.

"What happened?"

"Nothing happened," Anath shrugs. "Nothing special. She was smiling, but she didn't care about her life, and she didn't care about mine. She led me into a fight too deep in the Dark World, got us surrounded, and died. I must have gotten the rest of the monsters, because I passed out, and by the time I woke up, I was stuck. And now I have a cute tail and a new family."

Nanaya reaches out and gives Anath an awkward side-hug, which she gratefully accepts, squeezing Nanaya hard enough to make her grunt.

"…We investigated the fragment after learning two Earth Guardians had been lost there," Nanaya explains. "We didn't expect to find a survivor, but Anath did not seem at all inclined to return to the Earth Guardians, if they would have even allowed her to, so we took her in."

"They didn't rescue me," Anath sniffs. "You did."

"It was in a different way from me," Nanaya says, "but Anath also lost everything due to the callousness of the Preservers. Her parents were killed by their negligence, her team was killed by their heedlessness, and her life was almost lost due to their indifference. Her entire history has been a series of avoidable tragedies, caused by nothing but the apathy of those more powerful. It is exactly this sort of injustice that the Dark Rebellion exists to address, because no one else can, and no one else will."

"I see. Thank you both. I think we can move toward lighter topics now."

"YES PLEASE," Anath blurts.

Nanaya nods and breaks away, giving Anath one last pat before she leaves. I sign 'thank you' to her as best I can without letting it get caught on camera before remembering she probably doesn't know sign language. Oh well. She nods, so I think she picks up the gist.

"What's life like for you in the Dark World?" I ask. "What do you do for the Dark Rebellion?"

"Oh, uh… I don't do a lot, honestly," Anath admits, wiping her eyes a bit. "I feel kinda bad about it, but I'm not smart like Thea or clever like Nana or focused like Mel. I just fight stuff. So I do that sometimes when they need it. Distract the Earth Guardians a bit. Sometimes I just go out and fight because I like it, though, and then I get in trouble."

"You fight the Earth Guardians?" I press.

"Oh yeah, totally!" she nods, perking up. "Not like, to the death or anything, I'm not that much of a monster. But I like fighting, and most Earth Guardians get something or another out of it. Though the degree to which I'm doing it for their sake, uh, varies."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Uh… bluh. People are gonna see this, right?" Anath asks. "Like, are the Earth Guardians going to see this?"

"They might," I confirm.

"Well then, um, Fulgora, if you're listening? I'm sorry," Anath says. "I really like fighting you. But I shouldn't be a jerk about it. Or scare your brother. That probably made it less fun for you."

"Is 'Fulgora' an Earth Guardian you know?" I clarify for the interview.

"Oh! Yeah! She's great. I hear she almost beat Nana the other day, which… wow! Nana's super strong! I really need to fight you again soon! Which, um… well, okay. So I really like fighting. A lot of Earth Guardians like fighting. Because it's what we're supposed to do, right? It's what we're… for. We're allowed to be proud of, y'know, saving the world and stuff. Everyone pretty much universally agrees that saving the world is a good thing. So for a lot of us, it's our favorite thing. It's definitely my favorite! And Fulgora's like me, she just… doesn't let herself enjoy it, I guess? Honestly, she doesn't really let herself enjoy anything."

True that.

"Why do you think that is?" I press.

"Well like I said," Anath answers. "She's like me. Half the time, anyway. Or… I guess a quarter of the time? A half and a half is a quarter, right?"

"What do you mean?" I ask. "Half of what?"

"Oh, uh, well she's only Fulgora half the time, right?" Anath says. "And I only hate myself half the time. The rest of the time my mood disorder makes me too loopy to think about it, haha."

Anath… god. These girls are all so fucked.

"You have a mood disorder?" I press.

"Yeah! Well, probably," Anath backpedals a bit. "I mean, it's not like we can get a doctor out here in the Dark World to diagnose me, right? But I've definitely got something up with me. Thea thinks it's some kind of severe cyclothymia, but I don't know if she's even pronouncing the word correctly, let alone if she's right."

"She's right. It's 'sai-kluh-theye-mee-uh,'" I say, referencing the dictionary I made sure to download after Nanaya made fun of me that one time.

"Oh huh. Maybe that then," Anath shrugs. "I dunno, we all have something wrong with us. I'm not sure it entirely matters what."

"What do you mean by 'you all have something wrong with you?'" I ask.

"I guess I just think that the danger of the job isn't the only reason we tend to not live very long," Anath answers, and I don't think I could end the interview on a better stinger than that.

I wrap things up there, thanking Anath and giving her an apologetic hug. I really didn't mean to go interrogator mode on her, but… I mean, she gets it. This is exactly the kind of stuff we need to tell the world in order to get them to act. People have gotten numb to the necessity of magical girls, and to get the issue back into the spotlight we need to be big, loud, and brutal.

I start editing the video in my head as I walk back to Earth, and by the time I make it, I already have the post drafted and ready to upload. I wasn't expecting Anath's interview to be the best one, but it definitely is. Thea is too awkward on camera, Melpomene is too broody around me, and Nanaya's history isn't something we can emphasize much if we want to garner sympathy, but even then Anath knocked it out of the park. I'll have to bring back extra treats for her next time I drop by.

With the video up and online, I don't have anything else to do but head home and settle in for the evening. Maybe I'll make some food for Castalia, but I did buy her lunch today, so maybe not. Ooh, I know, we should pick a show to watch together instead of a movie. Something we can spend a solid week on. Maybe set up a routine? She'd like that. I just have to pick a show.

I make it back to campus, head upstairs in my dorm building, and open the door to our apartment, waving hello at Castalia, who is curled up with her knees to her chest on the couch, her phone levitating in front of her face. She doesn't look at me. I wonder what she's—

"And what have you been doing for the past six years?" my voice asks from her phone. The modulated voice, the one I just used with Anath.

"Surviving, mostly," Melpomene's recording answers. "Dark World fragments tend to get thicker with miasma over time, which makes them unsafe to live in. Thea and I were on the run and hopping between newer fragments for a full year before she got the idea to create a safe bubble within a dangerous zone. I've no idea how she managed to build such a device, but she's always been brilliant. Even at that age."

"And then, when you had somewhere to stay?" I had asked. Am asking. Right now. On Castalia's phone.

"It was an improvement, but the anchor didn't come until much later. We ended up getting taken all over the country by the fragments we stayed in as they moved, scavenging for food and water on Earth when we had the opportunity. It wasn't until Nanaya joined us that we had much time to explore fragments in earnest, and we've only had a truly stable living situation in the past year or two."

Castalia pauses the video, closes her eyes, and lets out a long, shaky breath. Then, for the first time since I walked in, she looks up at me.

"I need help going to bed," she says.

"Okay," I agree.

We head to her room, and only once she's asleep do I investigate further into the accounts, not wanting to give any more out-of-place reactions. Hopefully she missed the shock and recognition from before. She was definitely pretty out of it.

I log in, and… yes. Wow. We've definitely hit critical mass. There's even an online news article about the channel now.

[MeanBeanMachine]: Hey, have you seen this?

They send me a link to the interview I just posted.

[LunaLightOTK]: No.

[MeanBeanMachine]: You fucking liar.

I don't respond to that, heading to my room, setting an alarm, and shutting my brain off for bed.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.