"Ikki?"

My sister's voice, clear and bright as a bell, yanked me back from the edge of a daydream.

"Ikki, you good? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Wha—?" I blinked, the world snapping back into focus. The scent of fragrant, amber-colored tea and sweet almonds filled the air. "Yeah. Sorry. Just... spaced out for a second."

I was sitting at a heavy oak dining table. Sunlight streamed through a large bay window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air like tiny, lazy stars.

"So! Let's talk about something fun!" Auntie Jenny chirped from the head of the table. She held a delicate porcelain teacup in a way that looked completely at odds with the boisterous energy rolling off her.

She leaned forward, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes sparkling with genuine, almost childish curiosity.

Su Yin sat across from me, her hands wrapped around a matching teacup. She'd calmed down since Izumi had bumped into her, the wild, frantic look in her eyes having softened into a quiet, watchful stillness. Her lavender gaze kept drifting to me, a silent question I couldn't begin to answer.

"So, Su Yin," Auntie Jenny began, her voice a cheerful trill that cut through the quiet hum of the house. "Where are you from?"

"Umm... Lu Song. That's in Ma-i. I suppose you would know it as Luzon here," she said quietly. "It's... it's not there anymore." She looked down at her lap, her fingers tightening on the hem of her drab gray jumpsuit.

Izumi, ever the tactician, chose that moment to shove an entire pistachio macaron into her mouth. "Mmmph! 'ish 'ood!" she declared, spraying a few green crumbs.

I glared at my sister. "You're a menace. A complete. And total. Menace."

Jenny just giggled, a light, airy sound that made the teacups on the table seem to chime in response. "Don't worry, sweetie. There's plenty more where that came from. Elio would have a fit if we ran out before he got home."

She turned her attention back to Su Yin, her expression softening with a warmth that felt effortless. "The Terran equivalent of Luzon, huh? I don't think I've ever been there. I hear it's beautiful."

A flicker of something crossed Su Yin's face, a shadow of memory that was gone as quickly as it appeared. "It was," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "It was the most beautiful place in the world when I was a child. The fields... they were always so green. And the seas were... were..." She trailed off, her gaze drifting towards the window, as if she could see the waves she was describing.

"Were?" a soft, tenor voice asked from the doorway.

We all turned. Standing there was a man who radiated a quiet, intellectual gravity. He was tall and wiry, with dark brown hair streaked with premature gray at the temples, and kind, hazel eyes framed by round spectacles. He had a slight limp, leaning just a little on a polished black cane, but it didn't diminish the aura of calm authority that clung to him.

"Hino—! Um..." Su Yin's head snapped up, her eyes wide.

"Elio!" Izumi shouted, scrambling to her feet. "You're home!"

"Uncle Elio," I corrected, a small smile touching my lips.

Elio Hinokawa smiled, a gentle, weary expression that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Of course I am. I see we have guests." He looked at Su Yin, his gaze not invasive, but sharp, analytical. He took in the oversized pink bathrobe Jenny had loaned to her, her posture, and the wary look in her eyes. A faint line of concern appeared between his brows.

Jenny bounced up from her chair, practically floating over to him and wrapping him in a hug. "Honey! You're just in time for tea! We have a new friend. This is Su Yin. Izumi and Ikki found her. Isn't that sweet?"

Elio hugged her back, one hand resting on the small of her back. He kissed the top of her head, then looked over her shoulder at Su Yin. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Su Yin. I'm Elio Hinokawa. This... formidable woman is my wife, Jenny."

Su Yin gave a small, stiff nod. She was sitting next to my left. "It is an honor, sir."

Elio's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. He took a step forward, pulling a dining chair and sitting at the table next to Su Yin's right, his gaze fixed on her with an unnerving intensity.

"You said Lu Song was beautiful," Elio said, his voice calm, conversational. "You speak of it in the past tense. I wasn't aware there was any issue in Ma-i."

Su Yin flinched, her hands clenching into fists in her lap. She stared down at the table, her shoulders hunching as if she were trying to make herself smaller.

"Ambassador Hinokawa," she said, her voice a quiet, formal murmur.

"Ambassador?" Elio tilted his head. The word hung in the air.

Jenny's smile didn't fade, but a flicker of confusion crossed her face. "Honey? Did I miss a memo? I thought you were a consultant for the Nexus now."

"I am," Elio said, his eyes never leaving Su Yin as he set his cane aside and sat down. "How peculiar."

"Alright, I'll be the one to say it if the auntie doesn't. Su Yin here came outta nowhere and started blasting. Auntie Jenny stopped it by whipping out a heart-tipped magical girl wand straight out of a cliche Magical Girl anime, by the way. And then Su Yin said some really weird stuff about echoes before Auntie Jenny calmed her down with the promise of snacks," Izumi stated with a nonchalant yawn.

The room went silent.

Jenny froze mid-motion, a macaron halfway to her lips. Her bright, bubbly expression faltered for a fraction of a second, a micro-expression of pure, unadulterated panic that she smoothed over almost instantly.

"Izumi! Don't be silly!" she giggled, a little too loudly. "What a wild imagination! You must have hit your head harder than I thought!"

"Heart wand, hmm?" Elio mumbled, just giving her the most deadpan stare as he leaned back and looked at her. It wasn't an angry look. It wasn't even a surprised look. It was a look of profound, world-weary resignation.

"I haven't had to use it in years, honey. It's just for decoration!" she protested, her hands flying up in a gesture of mock-surrender. "It's... it's a back massager!"

Elio just smirked, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing on his lips. He looked at her, his eyes filled with a deep, unwavering love that seemed to transcend the chaotic absurdity of the moment.

"A back massager," he repeated, his voice a dry, deadpan monotone. "Of course it is. How could I have possibly forgotten?"

Su Yin, however, wasn't paying attention to their bizarre domestic performance. She turned to look at me, furrowing her brow.

"Weren't we.... weren't we just..."

"Huh?"

Su Yin held her head. "I... what happened in the last ten minutes?"

"What do you mean? We brought you in here and we've been talking," I answered her.

"She does look a little pale," Elio agreed. He leaned forward, picking up the teapot. "More tea, Su Yin?" he asked, his voice gentle, professional.

Su Yin stared at him, her lips slightly parted. "You... you were there. In Ma-i. During the Fall of Cebu. In my world."

Elio's hand, which had been reaching for the teapot, stopped in mid-air. He didn't look at Su Yin with shock, but with a sudden, intense focus, the kind a mathematician might have when presented with an impossible equation.

"The Fall of Cebu..." he repeated softly, his voice barely a whisper. "How curious. Well, I for one have never been to the Philippines, or Ma-i as you call it, in my life."

Izumi snorted, rolling her eyes. "Okay, this is getting way too weird. Su Yin, are you sure you didn't hit your head or something?"

"No, I'm not sure," Su Yin said, her voice trembling slightly. "I'm not sure of anything right now."

Elio slowly retracted his hand from the teapot, placing it flat on the table.

"So, in your world," he said, his tone shifting from gentle to something more clinical, more analytical, "Ma-i has been destroyed. And I was there. During the Fall of Cebu. A fascinating divergence point."

Jenny's smile was firmly back in place, but it was strained, a fragile mask over a sea of worry. "Honey, you're doing that thing again," she said, her voice a little too bright.

"Just walking through a hypothetical, dear," Elio said, giving her a reassuring pat on the hand before turning his full attention back to Su Yin. "Tell me more about this... Fall of Cebu."

Su Yin took a deep breath, her gaze distant, as if she were looking at a scene playing out only she could see. "It was six years ago. I was just a small child, then. The Aberrations came without warning. We fought back, but there were too many of them. The Sky-Fortress Manila... it fell. We lost so many people."

Her voice cracked, and she looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting the fabric of her bathrobe.

"Sir Hinokawa... he was there. With the Lustrous Valiants. He was... he was trying to get the survivors out. He was a hero." She looked up at him, her lavender eyes filled with a mixture of awe and confusion.

"You saved my life."

A heavy silence fell over the room, broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner. The warm, sunny afternoon seemed to have taken on a chill, a subtle, pervasive wrongness that settled in my bones.

Elio sat perfectly still, his expression unreadable behind his spectacles. He wasn't denying it. He wasn't dismissing it as a fantasy.

He was processing it.

"Huh?" Izumi said, looking from Su Yin to Elio, her brow furrowed in confusion. "What's she talking about, Unc?"

"It's a little complicated, Izumi," Elio said, his calm, steady voice a stark contrast to the chaos of the conflicting memories. "Sometimes, the world isn't as simple as we'd like it to be. Sometimes, things happen that we can't explain."

He looked at Su Yin, his gaze softening.

"You... you said you were there to investigate the Strangled Nightingale," she whispered.

The name struck the room like a physical blow. Elio's eyes narrowed, the analytical warmth replaced by a cold, sharp focus.

"The Strangled Nightingale," Elio repeated, his voice low and careful. "A term I have never heard in my life, but far too specific to be a coincidence." He paused, his gaze dropping for a fleeting second to the blue, nightingale-shaped necklace Jenny always wore.

Su Yin flinched at the reminder, her gaze flickering to Jenny's neck and away again as if the necklace burned her.

"I suppose you witnessed my outburst? I must apologize. I reacted emotionally, and it is clear the design is similar but not identical to the one associated with my greatest enemy," Su Yin recited, her words stilted, formal, as if reading from a report she'd long memorized.

Jenny and Elio shared a look.

"Now, what about this nightingale?" Elio continued, leaning forward slightly, his tone that of a gentle interrogator. "In your world, what was its significance?"

Su Yin's knuckles were white where she gripped the teacup. "It was a symbol of terror. The mark of what the Cult of the Strangled Nightingale called the Night Mother. They manifested soon after the Moro Liberation Front crossed over from Earth's Philippines to Terra's Ma-I. They... they were monsters. They marked their atrocities with a Nightingale, its wings broken, its neck twisted."

She looked up, her lavender eyes locking onto Elio's. "Your escorts... the Lustrous Valiants... you were investigating them. You believed you knew the identity of the Night Mother.

Elio's expression hardened, the genial academic vanishing completely, replaced by the cold, steely resolve of a man who had stared into the abyss and refused to blink. "And in your world," he asked, his voice dangerously quiet, "did you find her?"

Su Yin shook her head, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. "No. Your team took a loss and had to retreat. The Night Mother remained. The cult... it still controls swathes of Ma-i to this day."

"A cult? Controlling the swathes of the Filipino islands? That sounds far-fetched with Magical Girls!" Izumi scoffed, her bravado a thin shield against the palpable dread that had settled over the room. "They would've been taken out."

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Su Yin's head lifted, her eyes holding a chilling, vacant light.

"It's... not just a cult. The Night Mother... she doesn't just have mundane followers." She took a shuddering breath, her gaze fixed on the middle distance. "Major... losses we endured on Terra remained as they were the moment they died. Magitech soldiers, magical girls, combat mages. Their corpses left behind on the battlefield were twisted into... puppets."

Her gaze swept over us, and for a second, her lavender eyes flickered with a terrifying, otherworldly luminescence.

"I've seen them, you know. The corpses. Our fallen heroes, still in their beautiful, magical regalia, walking with empty eyes, fighting with the same skills they used to protect us. But now they serve the Night Mother. It's... a desecration. The ultimate desecration."

Elio leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table, his knuckles white. His face was a mask of cold fury, a storm gathering behind the calm facade of the scholar I knew him.

"That isn't even the worst part about her. She found a way to control certain Aberrations in limited scope, and to weaponize the Chaos Cores of the fallen as bombs," Su Yin finished, her voice a flat, dead monotone.

The room was silent. Even the ticking of the grandfather clock seemed to have stopped.

"Far, far too specific to be a coincidence," Elio muttered to himself, a low, dangerous growl rumbling in his chest.

He looked at Su Yin, his eyes blazing with an intensity that was almost terrifying.

"The cult... the Night Mother... did you ever see her face?" he asked, his voice a low, urgent whisper. "Did you ever hear her real name?"

Su Yin nodded, narrowing her eyes. "I've never seen her face, but you gave me a name. And I repeated it to your wife when we were outside. Vivian Blackwood. That's the name your team believed belonged to the Night Mother. Vivian Blackwood."

The macaron in Jenny's hand crumbled into dust between her fingers. The perky, ditzy persona I always associated with her vanished, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated fury. It was a cold, controlled rage that was far more terrifying than any outburst would have been.

She didn't say anything.

She didn't have to.

Her eyes said it all.

Elio let out a long, shuddering sigh, a sound of profound, soul-crushing weariness. He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment.

"Now, I do have another question. So, admittedly I was eavesdropping on your little scuffle, and there is something I have to ask."

Su Yin's head snapped up at the word 'scuffle.' Her gaze darted to Jenny, then back to Elio, a flicker of the old terror returning.

"Before... before we came inside," he continued, his tone careful, measured. "I heard you say something. You said this was a 'beautiful, perfect lie that could not be.' What did you mean by that?"

The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

Su Yin looked down at her hands, her fingers tracing the patterns on the porcelain teacup. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke, her voice was a quiet, trembling whisper.

"It's all... too perfect," she said, her gaze distant. "The sun. The grass. The way the light hits the windows. It's like a painting. A beautiful, perfect painting. But it's not real. And neither are you."

Elio's expression was unreadable. He looked at Su Yin, a flicker of something like recognition in his eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared.

"I'm sorry," Su Yin said, her voice barely a whisper. "I shouldn't have said that."

"What do you mean it's not real?" Jenny asked, her voice a little too bright. "Of course it's real, sweetie. We're right here."

"Fascinating. Ah, a fine dose of existential horror to go with my tea," Elio said, a faint, wry smile on his face. He was trying to lighten the mood, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he gripped his cane.

"Elio? Are you okay?" Jenny asked, her brow furrowed with concern.

"Fine, my dear," Elio said, giving her a reassuring smile.

"You aren't really going to humor this, are you?" Jenny asked, her brow furrowed in confusion. "She's clearly just... confused."

"Darling," Elio said, his tone gentle but firm. "It may very well be the case. But... where are the kids? Stella? Sienna? Sirius? Shouldn't they be here by now?"

Jenny blinked, her expression shifting from confusion to concern. "They're probably just running late, honey. You know how teenagers are."

"Are they?" Elio asked, a strange, knowing look in his eyes.

I felt a knot form in my stomach.

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

"What's going on, Uncle Elio?" Izumi asked, her voice a little unsteady.

"I'm not sure, Izumi," Elio said, his gaze still fixed on Su Yin. "But I think our new friend here might be able to shed some light on the subject." He gestured towards her with an open, expectant palm. "Please. Continue."

Su Yin took a shaky breath, the teacup rattling in its saucer. "They aren't coming because they don't exist. Not here. Not in this place."

"That's enough," Jenny said, her voice losing its ditziness and taking on a sharp, protective edge. She moved to stand, but Elio put a calming hand on her arm.

"No, Jenny. Let her speak."

Su Yin looked at each of us in turn, her lavender eyes filled with a strange, weary pity. "I... my team learned of things that live in the cracks between worlds. Lady Escathos calls them Gossamer Echoes. Fragments of reality, remnants of realities that have been... erased. Subsumed."

She paused, struggling for words. "Imagine a world dying. All its memories, all its hope and joy, all its love... they don't just vanish. They coalesce. Sometimes they become nightmares, twisted reflections of what was lost. But other times... if the memories are strong enough, if they're held together by a powerful enough anchor... they become this. An ideal. It's not just the world's past, too. It's its most probable immediate futures and regretful, tangential could-have-beens as well."

She gestured vaguely at the sun-drenched room, at the perfectly manicured lawn visible through the window. "A bubble of perfect, beautiful moments, stitched together from the best parts of a life. A shelter for the soul."

Her gaze finally settled on me, and the last of my certainty crumbled into dust.

"Whoever, or whatever, did this," she whispered, "it took all the brightest moments of your life. All the warmth, all the safety, all the love you've ever known... and built you a cage. A beautiful, perfect cage to hide you away from what's outside."

Silence. The ticking of the clock was the only sound, each tick a hammer blow against the fragile reality of the room.

"That's the craziest thing I've ever heard," Izumi breathed, but her voice lacked its usual conviction. She was looking at me, her own certainty wavering.

Elio just stared at Su Yin, his face a mask of grim understanding. He didn't look surprised. He looked like a man who had just been handed the missing piece to a puzzle he'd been staring at for decades.

My memories came flooding back, not as a warm, comforting blanket, but as a series of disconnected, brilliant stills.

My father's laugh. The smell of pancakes. The weight of Izumi's hand in mine. They were real. And they were also not real.

"Ikki?" Jenny's voice was soft, hesitant. "Are you alright?"

I looked at her. At 'Auntie Jenny.'

"I... I don't know you," I said, the words feeling strange and alien on my tongue. "Do I?"

Jenny's bright, bubbly facade finally shattered, replaced by a look of profound, heart-stopping sadness. A single tear traced a path down her cheek.

"You do, sweetie," she whispered. "You just don't remember it the right way."

My head throbbed. The image of her with a heart-tipped wand flickered in my mind, a bizarre, impossible image that nonetheless felt true. And a memory of a beast that looked like it came straight out of hell, of running, of a girl's hand grabbing onto mine...

"I've been trapped. For weeks. Years, perhaps, navigating between these echoes. Searching for them. Hana. Tara," Su Yin said, her voice filled with a desperate, aching longing. "But I've never seen an echo this... stable. This complete."

She looked at me.

"Hana..." I repeated, mind racing.

Dior.

Her connection with Dior had to be the reason why Su Yin found her way to me.

I furrowed my brows, facing Jenny. "But how could your memories, knowledge, and abilities exist here if I have no knowledge of these worlds? This can't be just my own memories, but yours as well."

My eyes flicked between Izumi and Elio. "And you two as well."

"You're the anchor, Ikki," Elio said quietly. "But you're not the architect. You may have an image of Elio Hinokawa, but the 'real' Elio Hinokawa has decades of experience with temporal paradoxes and cross-dimensional anomalies that you, as a fifteen-year-old boy from Earth, could not possibly possess. The Echo is drawing from the knowledge of the... real participants... who have been woven into your ideal."

He stood, leaning on his cane.

"So long as my memories are accurate and true on some level - I think it's fair to say that the 'real' Jenny is also a veteran Magical Girl. And that the real 'me' was once her protector. And that the real 'me' is the one who lost his wife. And from the sound of it, both of them instead of just one. And I suspect," Elio added, his gaze drifting towards the empty seats at the table, "they are also not my children. But they are children I have lost all the same."

The weight of Elio's words settled in the room like dust after a demolition. My ideal, my perfect world, was a collage. I was the canvas, but the paint, the brushes, the vision... they belonged to ghosts.

"So... why would she be here?" I said hollowly.

The woman flinched as if I'd struck her. "I..." she said, looking at the floor. "I... was supposed to be a different person. I have the essence of someone else. The real one. But my memory is fragmented. I think the Echo is being powered by her memories as well, not mine."

"The essence of...?" I started, but Elio cut in, his gaze intense, focused.

"Let's not get lost in the weeds," Elio said, holding up a hand. "The fundamental question remains: Who would build this prison? And why?"

A cold dread washed over me. It wasn't just a random act of cosmic cruelty. It was deliberate. A cage built with a purpose.

"To protect you," Su Yin whispered, her eyes wide with a sudden, horrifying realization. "From someone... or something."

The air grew cold. The perfect sunlight streaming through the window seemed to dim, casting long, menacing shadows across the room.

"It's not a prison," Jenny said, her voice a choked sob. "It's a shield."

"We have to go!" Elio snapped, pushing himself up, his knuckles white on the handle of his cane.

"Go? Go where? If what we know is true, there is nowhere to go," Su Yin said, a tremor of pure fear running through her.

"There's always somewhere," Elio countered, but before he could say another word, Jenny stood up.

"I'm so sorry, Ikki," she whispered, her tears falling freely now. "I tried to give you a little more time. A little more peace."

Her sadness shifted, curdling into a core of pure, unadulterated resolve. She turned, looking up at nowhere and everywhere.

"I know you're there. I know you're watching. I know you're me. And I damned know I just interrupted your heart to heart with Sienna. It's time to tag you in. You owe us this much. And you owe her that much," she said.

"Jenny! What are you doing?!" Elio shouted, a note of panic in his voice.

She didn't answer him. Instead, she reached up to her neck and unclasped the blue, nightingale-shaped locket.

"This is a promise," she said, her voice a soft, clear melody that cut through the rising tension. "A promise I made a long, long time ago. To protect the innocent. To fight for the lost. To be a beacon in the darkness."

She held the locket in her palm, her thumb stroking the smooth, cool surface of the sapphire.

"Even if it means breaking my own heart."

And then, the world shattered.

The scent of strawberries and sugar filled the air, so thick, so overwhelming it was like drowning in a memory. A wave of pure, unadulterated power erupted from her, a shockwave of pink light that sent the teacups rattling on their saucers and made the air hum with a vibrant, electric energy.

The woman in the pink hoodie and bunny slippers was gone.

In her place stood a warrior. A goddess. A living, breathing embodiment of hope. White ruffles and frills cascaded down her form, shimmering with a soft, internal light. She wore a flowing, ethereal gown of pristine pink silk, trimmed with delicate white lace. Her dark ponytail was now a cascade of brilliant, shimmering pink, flowing freely down to her back. Her eyes glowed with a warm, fierce light, a gentle rose pink that seemed to hold the sky up.

Her aura was a palpable force, a warm, comforting blanket of love and defiance that pushed back against the encroaching darkness. It was the feeling of a mother's hug, the safety of a childhood home, the unwavering belief that everything was going to be okay.

It was the magic I'd felt in my dreams.

Izumi sighed. "Guess the cat's out of the bag then. Sheesh. Didja really have to hit me with these memories? They suck!"

Then, my twelve-year-old sister, who, as far as I knew, thought trigonometry was a form of medieval torture, did the impossible.

She stood up, brushing crumbs from her jeans. A soft, orange light, the color of a dying ember, enveloped her. It wasn't a brilliant, flashy transformation like Jenny's. It was quiet, subtle, a shadow given form.

Her clothes melted away, replaced by a sleek, form-fitting suit of dark, pitch black fabric that seemed to drink the light. A hood, trimmed with dark fur, rose to frame her face, casting her features into a mysterious silhouette. A long, tattered scarf, the color of dried blood, unfurled from her shoulders, pooling on the floor around her.

"Heh. Maybe I'm split from your Izumi. Maybe it's another possibility. It doesn't matter. We promised him we'd keep him safe. You promised me I wouldn't have to do this again."

Her silhouette flickered, the outline of a fox-eared hood and a long, deadly polearm appearing for a fleeting second before vanishing back into the darkness.

She looked at the newly transformed Jenny, a wry, almost cynical smile playing on her lips, a smile that didn't belong on my sister's face. She was older - seemingly in her late teens, and she was absolutely not the same girl who I'd walked over here with. All I could make out were her lips, which were curled in an infuriatingly smug smirk.

"Geez, Star Bunbun," she said, her voice a low, husky whisper that was still undeniably Izumi's, but layered with a world weariness that no twelve-year-old should ever possess. "You didn't have to go and spoil the whole plot in the first act."

Star Bunbun? I stared, my mind a complete and utter blank. The name was so absurd, so ridiculously out of place, that it almost broke the tension. Almost.

Jenny let out a soft, theatrical sigh, the kind a mother gives when her teenager says something particularly exasperating. "Izumi, if you keep revealing the dramatic secrets before the second act, no one will buy tickets for the finale." Her pink aura shimmered, a wave of warmth that washed over the room, pushing back the encroaching monochrome.

My brain was short-circuiting. My sister. My sister. She... turned into a Magical Girl. A cynical, world-weary, snarky Magical Girl who apparently had a history with my not-really-aunt's magical alter ego.

"Hey, Ikki," Izumi said, turning to me. The hooded silhouette tilted its head. "Don't look at me like that. Like the rookie here said. I'm an Izumi whose dumb shit of big brother kicked the bucket and she had to take the mantle of saving the world after. My Ikki is dead. But I'm not going to let that happen to you."

To my surprise, she suddenly rushed in, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her face in my chest.

"I'm sorry. For everything," she whispered, her voice cracking. "If I hadn't been so stubborn, if I'd just listened, you wouldn't be in this mess."

I froze, my arms hovering awkwardly in the air. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know who to hug. The little girl I knew, or the mysterious warrior who had taken her place. But my arms closed around her instinctively, holding her tight.

"It's okay," I whispered, my voice a choked, unsteady murmur. "Everything will turn out alright."

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I felt a strange, aching tenderness for this strange, shadowy girl who wore my sister's face, who spoke with my sister's voice. But deeper than that, I knew.

I knew my sister was alive on Earth. And I knew this wasn't her. This was someone else.

But on some level, it was still her.

"Always fibbing to make me feel better. It... it was nice to cherish the old times again. Even as a ghost."

I looked over her shoulder at Elio. He just looked... exhausted. Resigned.

"She's your sister, Ikki," he said, his voice a quiet, weary sigh. "But she's not your sister. She's an echo of a path not taken. And a promise to protect you."

The Izumi in my arms pulled away, her hooded form a stark silhouette against the pink glow of Jenny's aura.

"The plot's about to get messy," she said, her voice a low, dangerous whisper.

And then, the world started to shake.

"Follow me, Ikki. Su Yin. I... I just remembered my purpose for being here," Elio said, opening a door to the backyard. "We must move."

The backyard was a perfect, idyllic slice of suburbia. A manicured lawn, a swing set with brightly colored plastic seats, a flower bed brimming with roses that were just beginning to bloom. It was the kind of place you saw in magazines, a flawless illusion of domestic peace. And it was all wrong.

The roses were starting to blacken at the edges, their petals curling as if burned by an invisible frost. The blades of grass were stiff, brittle, like plastic. The vibrant green was fading, leached away by a creeping, encroaching grayness that emanated from the house next door.

"I had a feeling. A memory," Elio said as the three of us stepped out, his gaze fixed on the house next door. It was identical to Jenny's, a mirror image of suburban perfection.

But it felt...

An explosion behind us threw me forward, knocking me and Su Yin to the perfectly manicured lawn. I scrambled up, turning to see a wave of pure, unadulterated chaos energy slam into a shimmering pink barrier that had erupted around the Hinokawa's home. The pink magical girl stood at the center of the storm, her form a beacon of defiance against the encroaching blue.

"Come, this will not hold for long. I didn't think it'd be this powerful. I didn't think it would notice we were breaking its narrative," Elio grunted, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the identical house next door. "This is the locus. It must be."

I followed, my mind a whirlwind of confusion and fear. I looked back at the yard we were leaving behind, at the shadowy figure of my sister, who stood her ground, a naginata held at the ready.

She turned to give me one-last, utterly Izumi-like, cheeky wave. I saw the smile, a fleeting, bright spark in the encroaching darkness.

"Go, you big dummy!" she shouted, her voice a mixture of exasperation and affection. "We'll hold 'em off! Just... don't make me have to bury another version of you!"

And then, she was gone, an explosion of flames left in her wake as she launched herself into the fight.

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