You stretch your arms upwards as you slowly awaken, naturally floating up and out of the crushed grass beneath you as you slowly return to full awareness.
…well, that was a bit odd. You're not entirely sure you actually slept, so much as fell into a sort of waking trance, like a really intense meditation session. You don't think it was a mistake to do that, since you do feel a lot better than you did before, but actual sleep may indeed be out of your reach now.
You quickly take stock of yourself, noting without surprise that you are, in fact, still a witch. You didn't really think you'd wake up to find out it was all a dream, but, well, hope springs eternal. Arms, still present, head, still not present, magic…
Magic feels… a bit off, actually. Oh, great. Well, you already have a whole slew of outstanding issues to work out, what's one more?
You shake your neck back and forth as you take a brief peek outside, confirming that the sun has returned and that your barrier hasn't drifted anywhere overnight, before turning your attention inwards. Let's see, what's wrong with you now… hang on, what?
Determining how much magic you have on hand at a given moment is not, and never has been nearly as simple a task as you might like. As a magical girl, your soul gem provided an easy way to see it at a glance, but the constant movement of the colors within and the general vagueness of its "corruption" metric made it difficult to ever judge precisely how much you could afford to use at any one time. As a witch, you can actually "feel" your magic, presumably as it's now actually contained inside of you, but that doesn't seem to have made it much easier. It's sort of like trying to determine specifically how full your stomach is, or measure exactly how much oxygen your lungs are currently holding- reasonably guessable, but not what you'd call a particularly precise bit of science, to say the least.
…it's still pretty hard not to notice, however, that your maximum magic capacity appears to have almost doubled in size since yesterday.
For a moment, you're extremely confused, until you remember what your witch-mind was thinking while in the process of absorbing… ahem, "subsuming" Saar last night. Something about how the other witch and her magic are "part of you, now and forever", if you recall correctly? Apparently she meant it a tad more literally than you realized. Thinking back, you suppose it probably should have been more obvious to you at the time, since you did notice that your magic stores were refilling themselves with Saar's, and you hadn't used up nearly enough of your own to contain all of it… but with your minor mental crisis at what you'd done, and the magical girl showing up half a minute later, you admittedly never really had much chance to focus on that. You're going to go ahead and give yourself a pass on this one.
Huh. Well, all told this is a rather pleasant surprise, actually. You think you could probably even get off an extra illusion or two outside of the void of your inner barrier now… but, something is still strange. You feel nearly filled to the brim right now, which is great and all, but doesn't seem quite right for some reason…
You clap your two front ribbons together as it hits you. That tornado ability from yesterday- you used that after Saar was already subsumed, and while you're not sure of the exact amount, you're pretty certain that it took a fair bit of magic. Yet, you think you're pretty much topped off at the moment. How is that possible? You definitely didn't do anything that should have caused that; all you did after the battle was move your barrier up and immediately go to sleep. It's as if your magic…
…came back on its own…
It takes a minute for the thought to really sink in, as the idea goes contrary to all previous wisdom from your time as a magical girl, but it's the only thing you can think of that makes any sense. This… this could be big. The primary thing that limited you as a magical girl was the fact that magic could only be regained via grief seeds, and while you have less than no idea why witch magic would work any differently, if it does, that's a huge weight off your shoulders that you hadn't even really considered until now. The ability to not have to squeeze your magic for every drop of possible effectiveness would automatically make your life a hell of a lot less stressful.
...that being said, you can't help but feel somewhat suspicious. Not only did you get your arms free, not only did you get a new ability, but your magic is now twice it's former size AND is apparently self-replenishing? While you don't want to be pessimistic, almost every upside you ever discovered about being a magical girl turned out to have an equivalent downside, and the idea that that trend might have broken now that you're a witch seems almost laughable. Sure, that last one might just be a witch thing, but with all these benefits you've seemingly gotten from subsuming Saar, there has be a catch somewhere.
A few unpleasant ideas quickly jump to mind. Deciding to test them, you make a few shatterwords and toss them at a nearby road, while scrutinizing your thoughts for any signs of another's mind (be it your witch-mind or Saar's) having leaked in. Okay, your magic doesn't seem impeded or anything, and you don't think you're thinking any differently, so that's good. Could still be something physical though…
You move your arms over your body, patting yourself down and twisting around on yourself to try and make sure that you haven't somehow grown the witch equivalent of a tumor overnight. Nothing… well, nothing you can feel or see at least; who knows how something like that might potentially manifest given your lack of sensible, or in fact actual biology. Still, the absence of anything glaringly apparent is a good sign, you think.
You breathe a mental sigh of relief. Well, that rules out all your immediate suspicions at least. Whatever the catch is, it's clearly not all that obvious... maybe there really isn't one, beyond the actual act itself? If that's the extent of it, you suppose you can live with that- while you still feel kind of bad about "eating" Saar, after a night to sleep on it, the feeling is a lot more muted. Saar gave no indication of having retained her sapience, and since she'd already forced you to kill her in self-defense, it wasn't as if you had a reason not to make use of her remains. Besides, from absorbing her you got your arms back, grew stronger, and even gained a new bit of magic- if you had a skill like that back when you were still a magical girl, you'd have been ecstatic. The whole "witch mentality takeover" thing is still kind of concerning, but you managed to resist your desire to subsume top hat girl when she showed up immediately afterwards, so maybe it was just that powerful the first time because you didn't know that would happen?
You weigh that over for a moment as you look down on the city below you, watching as it seems to slowly come alive. Honestly, if some potential mental wrestling with yourself is the only real negative to this, that actually seems perfectly acceptable, given the positives involved. You're just not sure that's the case... but, for now you think you're going to move forward with the assumption that it is. Not just because you'd love to trust that something magic related and seemingly advantageous actually is for once, but also because you've spent way too much time on this subject doing nothing but float around aimlessly in the lower atmosphere. You have other things do, and are perfectly capable of multitasking, so if you're going to keep getting lost in thought you can at least do that while starting in on your plans for today.
…come to think of it, what ARE your plans for today anyways? Given some of the things you've recently learned, a small shifting of priorities might be in order…
[-] Survey the city from above, looking for magical girls. Since your information is clearly a bit out-of-date if uber girl isn't the only one around anymore, it might be prudent to try and scope out the area's actual magical girl population.
[-] Go looking for the "skull witch" top hat girl mentioned. While you have no idea where she was previously encountered or if she's still alive, the things that were insinuated about her make her a definite point of interest.
[-] Continue your random searching for other sapient witches. Saar may not have been one, but a single data point does not a conclusion make, and you've only been at this for less than a day.
[-] Make like the tourist you are at heart and go sightseeing. Mitakihara is an interesting city to say the least, and… well, why not?
[-] Write in.
). But the fact that she remembers seeing her soul gem witch out seems to put paid to that without some serious hoop jumping. Would've been a fun theory though
