Sidestory 16 - The Pitiful Children
Amber Daly was fine, and anybody who insisted otherwise was a moron. She was completely, utterly fine and okay. Maybe a little upset, but that was normal! Who didn't get upset every once in a while? Honestly, it was impressive just how well she was handling it. Anybody else would probably be freaking out right now. Georgia was sort of freaking out, if you counted locking yourself in your house and not coming out outside of patrols for almost two weeks now freaking out. Which Amber did.
It was really starting to eat at Amber. She and Georgia weren't exactly the best friends on the team, not by a long shot, but they were still teammates. Teammates didn't just leave each other behind when they were in trouble.
Distracted, Amber's next jump fell slightly short of her target. Her shin slammed into the side of the roof she was leaping for, and her entire body seemed to fold over and she crashed hard onto her landing zone.
"God fucking damnit-!"
Nobody was there to hear the loud string of profanities that erupted from the diminutive girl. She was patrolling alone tonight. Still swearing violently, Amber examined her injuries. On finding that nothing was broken or sprained, she breathed a sigh of relief. Not a lot of magic left to spend healing. There was only one Grief Seed left between her and Georgia, the one they had received from the Cleric Witch, and it wasn't nearly enough to keep them both in the game.
Witches had gotten a lot more scarce lately. Only four had actually shown up over the past two weeks, and none of them were particularly powerful. She'd very reluctantly asked Kyubey about it, but the damn weasel had just said that Witches were being drawn somewhere else by something weird going on and that she should under no circumstances go looking for it. After a few months of picking apart the lying sack of shit's words to find the true meaning in them, Amber had gotten a pretty interesting impression from what he'd told her.
Whatever was going on? It scared him.
Gratifying as it was to see the creepy rat practically pissing himself, the lack of Witches in the area was still a problem. They'd used to have been able to just jump from place to place when Leonie was with them, but that ship sailed the same day Nadia got offed. At least they had been in Kerry at the time and hadn't gotten stranded off in Russia or Japan or something. Amber had very hesitantly suggested letting a few Familiars wander off so they would grow into proper Witches, but Georgia wasn't having it. Wasn't what Nadia would've done, she said.
Amber had felt dirty just suggesting it and worse getting turned down. So here she was, scouring the town in the dead of night in vain hopes of finding something she could use.
…Who was she kidding. This was a waste of time. There were no Witches out here. All she was doing was wasting magic, and they didn't have much of that to spare anymore.
Amber collapsed back against a vent and took a breath. What a mess. Everything's a mess now.
Maybe Leonie had the right idea. She fucked off to who knows where before she could see everything go to shit. At least she might be able to remember how nice things used to be without having to know how it all went wrong. Then again, things hadn't been looking good when she cut and ran. She hadn't come back yet, so she might've just thought they were all dead.
Amber's thoughts were interrupted by a smell floating through the air. Alcohol. A lot of alcohol.
Amber shot up, suddenly on alert. That smell was hardly ever this strong even if you were stuck in an enclosed area with somebody drinking heavily. For this to happen out in the open, in the middle of the night? Something was wrong.
"An abnormal creature has appeared nearby. You should be careful."
Amber, already on edge, pulled out her knives and nearly flung them towards the suddenly-appearing creature now sitting on the vent she had been leaning against. Kyubey didn't react to the near-lethal accident, its oversized tail flicking rhythmically back and forth like a clock's pendulum as it stared blankly at Amber.
"What the fuck are you doing here? And what the hell do you mean by Abnormality? Is this some kind of weird Witch?" Amber hissed at the fake mascot creature.
"This being is not a Witch. I don't know exactly what it is, but it's an anomaly to this world. As I said before, it could be dangerous."
"What does that even mean? 'An anomaly to this world?'"
"Previous examples indicate the entity here is an otherwise ordinary person exposed to some form of anomalous byproduct created by an alien life form. The process shares some similarities with a Contract to create a Magical Girl, but it's mostly just superficially."
"An alien?" Amber repeated, dumbstruck. Like, a thing from space? That kind of alien? It sounded unbelievable, but Kyubey couldn't actually straight-up lie…
A thought occurred to her. "Are you an alien too?"
"Yes, though I'm not the cause of this event. It would probably be safer for you to leave. We don't have a lot of information about these creatures or their abilities."
Amber was barely listening to what Kyubey was saying at this point. It wasn't a good idea, considering how careful you had to be when interpreting his words, but this was just too much. Kyubey was an alien. An actual, real alien from space. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. There was nothing else like him in the world that she could think of. Were Witches aliens too? They had to be, they were too bizarre to be anything natural. Had Kyubey brought them here on purpose, or were they unrelated to whatever his species was? How many different species were there in the universe? At least three, just that Amber knew about. Were they all like Kyubey? Did they care about human life? How long had they been on Earth? This new thing was something Kyubey didn't know about, so it must be pretty new. Would it be like all the other creatures from beyond Earth that she'd seen so far? And most importantly…
"You said there's a person over there. Are they okay?" Amber asked.
"Previous examples generally showed signs of severe physical or mental distress. This case is likely no different. However, approaching to render aid would be-"
Amber tuned out the rest of what Kyubey was saying. She hadn't gone through life expecting to be a Magical Girl, but she'd be damned if she was gonna fail to live up to that title. It was a dangerous life to live. She wasn't gonna let a little danger stop her from helping somebody who needed it.
———
The first thing Amber noticed before jumping down to the street below was the flooding. She had somehow missed it during her impromptu patrol earlier. The streets were completely covered by a dark liquid. The low moonlight filtered across the sea of dark, casting sparkling motes of shining light out across the path. It was impossible to see the color of the flood in the silvery light, but Amber could recognize it just by the smell.
Alcohol.
She landed on a car, keeping her feet above the ocean of liquor. Just having to walk through this much alcohol would be unpleasant, but whatever was going on here apparently had similar principles to Witches. She couldn't count on this stuff not actually being acid or poison or lava or something like that.
Leaping between cars and lampposts, Amber made her way towards the center of the anomaly. There was a slow current to the alcohol covering the streets, so she knew it was coming from somewhere. That, or it was appearing at the boundaries of the affected area and flowing in towards the source. Magic was weird like that sometimes. But for now, she'd follow common sense and see where it led.
"Hey there, little lady. Care fer a drink?"
A tremendous voice, deep and booming and horribly slurred, suddenly filled the night's streets. Amber looked around in a near panic, searching for the source. Her eyes finally landed on a towering shape, nearly the height of the buildings to either side. It was easy to see how she had missed it; the creature was covered entirely in a long, pitch-black coat of shaggy hair that hung down all the way to the ground. It was humanoid, definitely, but there was no way Amber could see a single human feature on its body. The thing was kneeling, bent over and sifting through the dull lake surrounding it with both hands. Its neck looked longer than it should, and it was hard to tell where the neck ended and the head began.
"Well? 'Ow about it?" the creature repeated in its thunderous baritone, dragging a massive unlabeled glass bottle out from the sea of liquor around it and holding it up. Strangely, the creature's hunched posture remained even as it held up the bottle in offering.
"N-no thank you. I'm not old enough." Amber stammered out, still taken off-guard. This was…
"Ah? Sssorry 'bout that, then. Think my eyes'r finally going. Everythin's so blurry. I can barely see straight sometimes." the creature slurred, lifting the half filled bottle towards itself. Amber watched in confusion and horror as the creature turned its head up, revealing a massive, cavernous hole where its face should be. It messily poured the bottle's contents in, spilling all across the ground. The empty bottle was discarded, sinking into the liquor despite its size.
"When yer older," the beats continued, oblivious or uncaring to Amber's disconcertion. "Yer body stops workin' th'way yah want it to. Yah gotta get all the ssstuff yah care about when you're still young. Don't wanna get old with all her dreams still dreams."
"That… that won't be much of a problem for me." Amber said shakily. It's not like she was gonna just lay down and die, but she knew the average lifespan of a Magical Girl. Georgia had filled them all in on what was probably going to happen when they'd met. Nadia and Leonie had been defiant about it, but Amber knew better. She knew better than to think she was an exception.
The looming creature seemed to notice the bitterness in her voice. "Ah, I see 'ow it is. No need yah worry 'bout th'things hurtin' yah. No, no, I know juuuust what tah do fer alllll o' life's sorrows."
The towering being reached into the drink below, pulling out another bottle. "Just Gotta drown 'em all 'till yah can't feel the hurt. How 'bout it? If ya've only got so much time left, yah might as well!"
—————————
"Are you alright? You were just standing in the hallway and staring at nothing."
"Oh!" Minou said, broken from her thoughts by Lapin's sudden greeting. The pink-haired girl, still wearing her simple white dress and rabbit mask, had apparently snuck up behind Minou while she was thinking. "I am sorry, Lapin. I was just lost in thought for a moment."
"What were you thinking about?" Lapin asked, voice echoing through the gloomy emerald hallways. They were supposedly so large so that the Wizard had room, but it also made them seem oppressive and empty no matter how many people were there. Minou hated the feeling. "You seem pretty out of it."
"It's simply strange to see you and Corbeau as adults." Minou admitted with a sigh. "When I saw you both last, you were still young. I'm afraid I still remember you the way you once were."
"Well, we couldn't let you be older than us, could we? That'd be really strange, wouldn't it?" Lapin said with a giggle. That, at least, hadn't changed. Her sisters might have grown older, to ages they had never lived to see, but they were still the people Minou had loved.
And Lapin, for as childish as she still looked and acted, remained much sharper than people expected.
"But that's not really what you're thinking about, is it?"
Minou turned away. "I don't want to speak about that. There's no point to it. All that we need to do is carry out the tasks mother has set for us. That hasn't changed."
"We need to work together for that to happen. And so you and Corbeau need to talk things out." Lapin said, her voice lacking its usual jubilance.
"She's right, you know. There are very few things you could say that would be worse than nothing."
"You know why I can't." Minou replied to the voice in her head. That was certainly a strange sentence to think. When she'd first heard it, she had thought she was going mad. Maybe it was a punishment for her sins. Her failures, to her mother and her sisters. But what the voice had told her…
Maybe she was mad. But it was a delusion worth believing.
Even so, what the voice and Lapin were suggesting simply wasn't possible.
"It's more complicated than that. I-" Minou's protests were immediately cut off.
"It's only gonna get more complicated if you leave things be. We're family, alright? So we have to stick together."
Minou had nothing to say.
"Just think about it Minou. And quit standing around like that! We've got work to do securing our wing of the city."
"Right. I'll be on my way now." Minou said, pulling herself together. It was unbecoming of somebody of her stature to be so taken aback. Quietly, she added "and we'll all talk about this later."
"Would your older sister not be able to answer our earlier question?" the voice chimed in as the two sisters began to part ways. Minou paused. "Keep in mind that we are being watched. Be careful how you ask this question."
Lapin, having heard her sister's footsteps stop, turned to look and Minou. "Is there something else you wanna talk about?"
"Lapin," Minou began, careful to still the trembling of her voice, "do you remember how mother was when we were young?"
