Sidestory 22 - One More Cycle
Angela could do anything the Manager could do. Just from what she had seen over the course of the scenario, she had been sure of that. Managing the Abnormalities was a simple matter of memorization and multitasking, requirements which she was confident she could fulfill better than almost anyone in the City. Training agents was just correctly matching their abilities to the requirements for each Abnormality, making sure to not assign a work too difficult to complete but also to continue challenging them so as to train them for the later days. The Sephirot would have been a more complex challenge, but Angela knew that she could have at least kept them stable if it weren't for Ayin's script demanding that they keep suffering until he did something about it. She could have done it all herself.
"When's Mom coming back?"
Childcare, though, was clearly beyond her.
"I'm sure she will be back soon." Angela said before going back to staring at the small green-haired girl sitting opposite to her. She was still not exactly sure why X had chosen to take Yuma in. The other children made sense. They were either active combatants or otherwise people of interest, and making sure they were being taken care of only made sense. Yuma, though, was as far as Angela could tell an ordinary child. So why? What reason could X have had to not just leave her to the proper authorities? Childcare in the City was a mess according to Carmen's memories, but this new world was supposedly far kinder than the City was. It surely would have been fine not to shoulder another child on top of everything else.
And beyond that, it would have spared Angela the role of babysitting yet another orphan.
Yuma squirmed in her overly-plush chair, its cushions so soft that the small child was practically sinking into them, and stared down at her stomach with a sorrowful expression. Angela didn't think she was supposed to notice. As long as her attention was clearly on Yuma, the child barely moved. It would be much more convenient if she just said what she wanted.
Whatever. Angela could still deal with this. "We have food." she said flatly. "What would you like to eat?"
The small girl perked up immediately. Her distant stare was instead cast off into the distance in contemplation. As views went, the Library was a rather excellent one. The Outskirts beyond its walls were not very impressive in Angela's opinion, but her new excess of free time had given her the chance to appreciate the mysterious construct she now knew to be her EGO. Soft golden light glittered in the air, evenly illuminating towering bookshelves that twisted out like a forest around the wide clearing where Angela's desk was. Yuma was seated at a table conjured just nearby, which Angela had been coaxed into joining her at several hours ago.
"Yuma wants cake!" the little girl shouted, being rewarded with a pastry half as large as she was appearing on the table between her and Angela. The Library Director just sighed. How had she been reduced to this? At least the pink-haired girl's parents were self-sufficient. To say nothing of the dozens of Magical Girls that had been dumped on her, the oldest of which were only teenagers. Angela couldn't complain too much about them since they were more the Sephirot's responsibility than hers, but the point remained.
Angela watched with a faint scowl as the little girl devoured the treat set out in front of her. Carmen had a taste for sweets. Not pastries, but little things. Candies or drinks, most of the time. Angela doesn't know if she feels the same way. She's never tasted any of it herself. She remembers the flavor, the texture, but it's not the same. Her scowl deepens.
Yuma pauses in her decimation of what is less a slice and more a chunk of cake. The girl squirms under Angela's disapproving stare, not knowing it isn't directed at her. Angela doesn't care. Her thoughts are elsewhere.
For neither the first nor the last time, she curses Ayin for the inane decisions he made when designing her body. The Library Director watches Yuma in slow motion hesitantly turning her attention back to her food. Hadn't her body been meant for Carmen? Why was it missing so much? Would Ayin have subjected her to the same role that he gave Angela? Maybe he would have. As far as Angela was concerned, there was nothing that man wouldn't do.
It occurred only then that Angela could just ask X. They had Ayin's memories, so they would know what he had been thinking. Maybe she'll do that when they get back. Not immediately when they get back, Angela isn't going to bother them right after finishing a battle, but sometime soon. They did owe her quite a lot, after all.
At no point did it ever occur to Angela that she had not even questioned that her sibling would win.
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Three figures marched through the ruins of Kamihama City. Two girls, one in blue and one in gold, accompanied by a small white creature scampering around them with a permanent, painted smile. Dotting the land already travelled were bubbles of bright yellow magic, each one filled with sleeping people. Kyubey couldn't have this many humans learning about the existence of magic all at once, after all. Mami and Sayaka had agreed, with great reluctance, that it was probably better that the Emerald City's captives forgot what had happened. Getting kidnapped by an evil wizard monster wasn't the sort of experience you'd want to remember anyways.
As they went, Sayaka kept shooting glares at Kyubey. He was helping, sure, but she hadn't forgotten what he'd done to them. Homura had been out for the creepy little mascot from day one, and she'd been right the whole time. Sayaka still didn't know exactly what had gone down between the former Magical Girl and the alien, but it must have been something awful. Knowing what she knew… well, Sayaka didn't want to think about the possibilities. She just kept glaring at Kyubey. Stupid little thing, smiling like he hadn't done anything wrong…
Mami couldn't meet the Incubator's gaze. Not right now. The motions were too familiar, the procedure too routine. If you took away the ruined cityscape and set aside the memories of what had happened today, this was just another patrol. Just another day of keeping the world safe, even if nobody knew about it. She thought back to the Fossil Witch, Sayaka's first real mission, where they had had to expel Familiars from the bodies of captured civilians. Mami had come to expect far worse than that from the Emerald City by now, but ever since Madoka had… well, since the Abnormality's defeat, everything had become so subdued. They scoured the ruins of the city in a simple modification of a travel plan Mami had made to efficiently cover ground as quickly as possible, picking out groups of captives as they went. From there Sayaka would heal them, Kyubey wiped their memories, and Mami secured them in place with a simple field. It would have become boring if it weren't for the tension still hanging in the air. The battle had ended, they had won, and then… what now? Would everything just go back to the way it had been?
Neither of them spoke as they worked. It just didn't feel right.
Before Mami could dwell on the question, Sayaka suddenly started running. Wordlessly, Mami summoned a rifle and followed her. What had she seen? Were they in danger? Mami had two spare Grief Seeds with her now, a number which would have been an absurd excess once but now somehow felt like too little. Sayaka was calling out her EGO gear in flickers, trying to stretch what little energy she had left as far as possible. If it was something too dangerous for them to handle…
"Sayaka, hold on!" Mami started to call before she saw exactly what her junior was running towards. A man and a woman, both lying unconscious in a heap of rubble. They were only two of many who had been stored in what must have been a building at some point, but stand out thanks to an unmistakably familiar shade of blue hair.
"Mom? Dad? Are you okay?"
Sayaka frantically checked them over as Mami trailed behind, azure light pouring from her body and washing over the surroundings. All around her, the civilians began to stir. The Mikis were the first to rise.
The one who must have been Sayaka's father, a somewhat rough-looking man in a plain white shirt, got up before his wife. Sayaka stepped away, taking measures breaths as he pushes off the ground. The moment he saw who is in front of him, any trace of tiredness vanished.
"Sayaka! What are you doing here? Are you alright? What-" he sputtered, glancing down to see his wife open her eyes. Panic seized her immediately and sent her shooting to her feet before immediately zeroing in on her daughter.
Before either of the two could properly take stock of the situation, Sayaka leapt forward and wrapped her arms around them. Any confusion or fear that might have held were pushed down as the two parents shared in their daughter's relief.
Mami stared at the scene for longer than she should have, watching Sayaka's parents move from relief to concern and Sayaka herself frantically try and fail to explain what was going on. It was an amusing sight, even if Mami knew she should step in soon. Explaining these things was one of her duties as a senior magical girl, after all.
"Are you hurt?"
"What are you wearing"
"What's wrong with your neck? Do we need to call a doctor?"
…yes, she really should step in before things become too confused.
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Elsewhere, there was a place in ruins. It was no more than that. Defined only by its state of decay, rotted and worn and broken down in every manner. In one moment, a flooded and burnt-out library filled with books scorched black or soaked through. In another, a network of steel-plated halls so caked with gore and rot that you could no longer see past the piles filth. In each moment, each flitting thought, there was only devastation.
At the center of it all was a thing. A thing which could barely be called a thing at all, for it was unlike any other that existed. No image, no state of being, could express its existence. There was only the fact that it was there, and even the idea of presence was woefully inadequate to represent what it meant for it to have laid its being upon a space.
The thing slithered through the hollow landscape. Its attention drifted from place to place, settling only briefly on the things it called its children. Each one was the product of a failed union, a fusion of that which is and that which is not. They wandered aimlessly through the crumbling architecture surrounding them. Perhaps sometime soon the thing would call them up behind it. But for now, there was nothing to march towards. Only the husk of a place built for the sole purpose of becoming a husk.
There was, of course, the offer. Spoken without words, only the shapes of ideas and possibilities. An outside. A somewhere else, waiting to see and be seen. To tear apart and devour. To make whole. To join with in beautiful unity and drag to the deepest reaches. To make like this place.
That would not come so soon, though. There were other ideas more worthy of focus for the thing. It crawled across another shattered structure, the building's bones splayed open like a rib cage, and nestled in the center. As good a place as any for contemplation.
Some time ago, after the first offer had been made, there came a second proposition. A space for an idea, the shell of a concept which could be slipped into. And the thing had slipped into it, occupying that space much as air rushes to fill a vacuum. To take such a solid form was unfamiliar, if not entirely unpleasant. That shape was no longer here, but the creases and folds it had once imposed remained marked along the thing's form. With them lingered ideas worth investigating. Worth picking apart with teeth and hands and claws. Worth seeking out.
But for now, the thing would wait. Sooner or later, another chance would arise.
It was only a matter of time.
