[13] DO NOT CONTRACT
You send Ryouko urgent instructions.
Get out of the shower quickly. Secure the ribbon. Go through the grief cubes and pick out the overloaded ones and the full ones. Put them in a pocket. Put the other grief items in another pocket. Be very certain you know which pocket is which. And then. Please. Get this creature. Away from me.
The message arrives in a packet all at once, and Ryouko is confused for a moment. She's still annoyed at Kyuubey from earlier, but … he's not acutely dangerous, is he?
My soul is in peril, you add.
What? She's really confused now. Wait, how can you even see — Oh. Oh!!!
She's quite happy at this news, very excited. Under other circumstances, this disconnect between your feelings and hers would not quite faze you; right this moment, however, it's incredibly frustrating. You will try to remain calm, however.
Kyuubey leaps up from the floor to take a perch on the mirror. "But the contracts can wait, until we have resolved the matter of the cubes," he says.
[4] Make a contract with me, and become a magical girl!!
Your heart lurches. You'd decided not to, you're definitely not going to, but, somehow, it still feels like he just took away all your hopes and dreams away, and they're crying out against it and against you and your better judgement for not making a wish...
[1] … is there a time limit?
"I'm… surprised you're willing to put that off," you manage to say, out loud this time.
"The issue of these cubes is many orders of magnitude more important than a single girl's lost potential," says Kyuubey, "even in your case! Proliferation would be a disaster of cosmic proportions. Our analyses indicate that with even low levels of contamination in your ecosystem, entropic yields could be reduced by as much as two percent worldwide."
Wait what? That's… a lot less than you were expecting.
"… at least … two percent?" you repeat.
"And possibly more!" exclaims the creature, plopping down onto the top of the bureau, between you and the mirror. "So any assistance that you can provide in locating—"
"TWO PERCENT?"
the mirror cracks from the impact.
"Please don't—" begins Kyuubey, in a muffled voice.
[3] Kill QB to death
You hit him again, and the mirror breaks behind him this time, but the lumpy mass is still twitching. You smash his head against the bureau with your fist. You smash his HEAD against the bureau with your FIST. You smash his HEAD with your FIST. You SMASH his HEAD. Your fist smashes his center of mass. Again. To be sure. You SMAsh his tail with your FIST. the little RAT doesn't FEEL doesn't CARE about ANYTHING or anyONEhe just wwants to get his TWO PER%ENT GRI#F Y!ELDd and it doesn't MATTER what that MEANS to the rest of you he'd gladly throw Ryouko, and Kyouko, and Madoka, and you, and EVERYONE into AGONY and DESPAIR EVERLASTING for a CHANCE to make it HAPpen and he can just Die!!!
There's been a sound behind you.
"Clarisse?!" asks the princess.
You grab a pair of socks from one of the drawers that has slid open with all the pounding and you wrap them around a shard of glass from the broken mirror and you stab him and you stab him and you stab him and you stab him and it makes a squiirrp squiiiirrp sqeep splort and it is g̙̺̥͉̘͔͉̞̲͕̱̖̬ͭ͗̀̉̈̌̇̂̑̍̿ͨ̋͑̚ḻ̮͙̳̱͍͉̭͈̻̪͂̆̋͌ͣ̉̔̉ͫ̚ô̰̙̜̞̅̑ͩ͌͒́̓̍̔̉ͭ̾ͭͪ̆ͤr̹̰̥̼̞̹͉̼̜̙̣͈̫͇͆̍͗ͫ̔ͮͅi̠̮̞̻̘͍̘̬̅͋͊͋̀̈́̂̐ͮ͌ͯ̽̊̌ͭͯ͛o̯̥͎̞͚̮̙̮̯̩̗̪̖͎ͩ̂̈́ͮͥ̂̅̐͋ͣ̿̇u͚̺͎̫̓ͥ̓̓̀ͥͭṡ̼͎͈̑̇ͧ̇̒̄ͅ and beautiful sound you could make a bloody symphony in the key of Incubator guts you could launch your career as a pop duo with Ryouko and mutilate them on stage together it's just a pity the blood doesn't really flow that well or the two of you could start the concert wearing white and the e̙̭f͕̙̩̬̜̰f̜̬̜ͅe̬c̰̙̳̲t̻̦͍̳as you went would be s̱̦̗̗̭͚̱̝͚̰͕͎̗̠̝̟u̯̠̪̲̳͇͚̟̯̞̞̼͚͖̙̠b͈̟͍̺̤͉̖͎͙̝l̯̦̼̮̮̞̥͙͎̫̻͚͉ͅi̳͕̖̮͓̜̮͎m̗̥̮͉ḙ̰̫̭̟—
Your girl calls out again, shrill, her voice wavering, distress apparent. "CLariSse!!!"
— something's wrong, Ryouko doesn't ever make that noise.
you turn your head back to look and
the shard of glass snaps, and you drop it
and it clatters to the floor
and the spell
sort of
breaks (like the glass)
and
clarisse
what did you do
clarisse you
you
you nicked your hand
with the edge of the broken glass and
it's not at all deep but
it is bleeding, slightly and it
hurts just a bit and it's
dripping blood on
the incubator corpse
who you just
you just
you just killed a thing
you just killed a thing
you've never killed
a thing before,
let alone in front of Ryouko,
and
Ryouko is standing over there (horrified)
looking at you a little like you're a monster
and
and
maybe you are a m̰̭̼̝ͯͩ̋ͯ̚ȏ̯̖͛̎ͬ͊ͯn͓̟̖͔ͫ͐ͣs̹̝͙͔̯͉̲ͮ̾͊͊͛t͙̺ͭ̋͊̽͗̍̀̚ḛ̞̾́͋ͪ̇̂̈́r͉̭͍͍̅ͥ̃͑̌ and
and Hitomi opens the door in a huff
and demands an explanation for the noise.
"What in heavens' name is going on in here?"
Ryouko is apologizing for you, trying to smooth things over with Hitomi.
"She's had a very long, and very stressful day," says Ryouko, "and, um, I've helped make it worse. Also, he deserved it."
"Who??" asks Hitomi.
"Oh," she says, "that's right, you can't see. It was Kyuubey. He wanted her to make a contract with him…"
You are sitting on the floor, leaned up against the bed, hugging your knees and remembering to breathe.
"It was … Why would that be a bad thing?" asks Hitomi.
"Well, she was emotionally compromised, to start," says Ryouko, and continues from there...
[3] Kill QB to death
[2] DO NOT kill Kyuubey to death
Ryouko is covering for you, this is all backwards.
You've failed her, and, yourself.
It didn't make sense, you didn't even really want this.
It's scared Ryouko.
It's upset Hitomi.
What are you going to do with the grief cubes? What even are you going to do with the pile of incubator guts on the bureau if he doesn't come back? Throw them in the trash?
It's wrong, all around.
Well...
almost all around. This is actually growth for Ryouko. All those times when you weren't going out of your way to point things out to her, when you weren't telling her how to be less-awkward, when you were letting do her own thing, dates with Asami, negotiations with a hostile twenty first century Mami — the results were unimpressive. Now, when you can't do anything, she's doing somewhat better. Does that make it any better, or… does it just make you a double failure?
Maybe it would be better if you —
[1] kill your (human) self to be a better tactical computer
[13] DO NOT KILL OR HARM YOUR HUMAN SELF
— no. no, never in a trillion years...
but what, then?
Hitomi, still looking skeptical of the whole matter, steps back out of the room.
Ryouko closes the door, then sits down on the floor next to you.
You lean over to to the side, scootching away from her half-heartedly.
She leans over further; it's an unbalanced position, and she's using you for support. You could try to wiggle your way out of it, but she'd fall to the floor.
Well played, Ryouko.
"Am I like that?" asks Ryouko, quietly. "Is that what it's like to … other people who are watching?"
"… only sometimes," you tell her, mumbling. "I sort of went straight for the worst of it."
She processes that for a little while.
"Is it my fault, then?" she asks.
"Why would it be your fault?" you ask her. It's sort of a double-purpose question, rhetorically dismissing the idea of her being at fault while also making her think about why she's at fault; it's easier to see her reasoning this way.
"I don't know, besides the two us being genetically identical?" she asks. Which is … to be fair, a very good point.
"… you're no more to blame for your genetic identity than I am," you tell her.
"My wish, then," she says. "Started this mess."
You shrug.
"Then… for bringing Kyuubey here just now," she proposes.
You look into her thoughts for an explanation. "How does that even begin to make any s—"
You stop, suddenly uncertain.
Ryouko was thinking about you as she stepped into the shower. She was reflecting on why things were suddenly different. She was thinking about the idea of you having a girlfriend, trying to get her head around what you must be going through, the idea of you being more independent, of you being maybe physically attracted to girls, tentatively, with Kyouko, and (since you didn't want to help) maybe even to her. Of you maybe hungering for freedom. And she had the sense that this was how it should be, but it didn't quite fit. So she tried to make it fit, tried to shift her conceptions of you around it… to make you even less of a helpful voice, and more of a person just like her. Maybe you could even be a magical girl.
Then she was really confused when you mentioned Kyuubey, the fantasy matching with the reality too closely.
It's uncanny. But…
It could be a coincidence. It could be your thoughts leaking up to hers. They were more intense than normal. You weren't actively recording the precise specifics of her thought processes, or of your own, so you can't line up time-stamps with enough precision, and it could go either way. And since you're only looking at her brain's own recollection of its thoughts, there's room for the recall to be shaped by the facts afterwards.
Even so…
"… okay, I don't know," you mumble.
"That's not no," observes Ryouko, distressed. "You were supposed to say no. How would that even work?"
You mumble it out. "Your soul considers my body — the original one — part of your body. Maybe you can change that. Maybe you can change it as easily as you change your self-image. Like Yuma, in the visions we saw."
"What?!?" exclaims Ryouko. "But I can't — I don't know how to do that. When have I ever done that?"
"Just today when Hitomi asked you to call her father Papa," you state in a quiet, low voice. "Or when you decided to call Asami your girlfriend."
Ryouko is aghast. "I did what?!?"
"changed yourself," you say again simply. "Rewrote part of your personality with a new one."
"If I can just change myself then… then… who even am I?" she asks.
"Who do you want to be?" you ask. "It might be good to decide..."
"I … I don't know!" she exclaims. "If I … If I knew my place in the universe, I wouldn't have wished to find it, would I?"
"Oh, that's right," you say. "We know who you are, you're a pretty green soul and it's shaped like a star."
"That's … remarkably unhelpful," says Ryouko.
"I'm sorry," you say. "I'm sort of going through a bit of an identity crisis too."
"Wait, what?" she asks.
"I don't know if it's your fault," you say, pre-empting the question before she can articulate it. "I know it's definitely not all your fault. You didn't ask for another mind to be installed in your body. You could have done better, I guess, been more proactive about treating me as a separate person, and I could have asked you about it, too. If I asked for something, I wasn't even ever scared that you or governance would say No. I was scared you might say Yes. And … that's the heart of it, that's why it's not just a little ethical lapse, but a full blown scandal. Because…" You take a deep breath. "Because I … I want to have hopes and dreams and loves and life too, and instead what I have is you, and I love it, I love it so much that it hurts, and … "
and Ryouko is feeling really bad about it, and she's not quite sure what she can do, but she wants to do something, anything, she wants to be able to see you in a different light, something to make it better, because she cares about you, and you're sad, and you're crying, and…
"STOP RIGHT THERE," you screech, pushing Ryouko off you. "STOP. Don't… don't you dare, if that's you what you're doing to change your mind with magic don't you dare, not for this, not for me, it's not … I'm supposed to be yours, you're not supposed to be mine, if I wanted to change you like that I'd have just gone and made the damned contract!!!"
She blinks. "… and then … what would happen then?"
You don't answer that.
"Maybe we could figure something out anyway," she says, unwilling to abandon the idea that it's all her fault and that she has to fix it.
"Yeah," you say, bitterly. "Sure. Maybe Ryouko and her clone could kiss and date and fall in love and get married and have a big wedding and have lots of genetically identical babies who will all grow up and contract too."
"What?!?" asks Ryouko, taken aback.
"See? Do you see now?" you exclaim. "That's what me being everything to you forever looks like, that's the end-game, and it's like something out of a twisted fairy-tale set back in the FA days."
"Families. Babies," repeats Ryouko. "I've never thought that far ahead at all…"
"I've thought ahead," you say. "Assuming the status quo, I'd be right there inside you, experiencing it all with you, every battle, every lover, every pregnancy, every childbirth … it's … there's no good either, it can't last, it's not good for either of us. It's my fate, sooner or later I have to lose you, it's just … it's happening so much more quickly than I thought it would. You'll be gone forever before I know it."
"What if we were just … sisters," says Ryouko. "I mean, we have the paperwork, and, um, it's genetically sound, too… We could still be really close forever."
"Forever?" You look at her askance. "What about your real parents?"
"My real… oh," she says.
"Oh goddess, Ryouko," you exclaim, "don't tell me you rewrote yourself for Hitomi and forgot about who your real parents are?"
"I don't know … did I??"
"maybe not quite that bad, but… Ryouko … you can't just do this, you'll can't just spend pieces of your self and your identity to please every passerby you meet, you'll run out of self and you'll be no one!"
She looks at you, numbly. "I just… I just want to find my place," she says, helplessly. "Who am I supposed to be?"
"You're supposed to be Ryouko!" you exclaim to her. "You! Be yourself!"
"Well, you're supposed to be Clarisse; who's she?!" retorts Ryouko.
"I —"
You stop.
"See?" she says.
"Yeah," you say.
"At least … " she stops, and chokes back a chuckle, "at least somebody understands, I guess."
Okay… that's… it probably shouldn't be funny, but it really kind of is.
"That's — that's terrible, though," you say, trying not to laugh, trying not to cry. "Ryouko, while I am certainly not the worst, my creation might be one of the single most ostentatious ethical lapses Governance has ever permitted. That's who you have to understand you?"
Ryouko thinks about that a bit.
"Azrael was sort of an ethical mistake too," says Ryouko. "And … Sacnite. Not that it's governance's fault... is that so bad?"
"That's a disturbing trend," you note. "And all our new friends here have twenty fifth century implants in the twenty first century. Except Kyouko, who just accidentally brainwashed her father's congregation… goddess, even Simona was mixed up in something in your vision." You frown. "Do we need to start worrying about your normal friends when you get back? Is Chiaki secretly an alien infiltrator? Or is this this just everyone after your wish?"
"… not … not everyone," says Ryouko, halfheartedly. "Not Asami."
Well. Now might not be the time to point out Asami's family troubles and her wish. But then … what do you even say?
You just shake your head, and take a deep breath. In, out.
"Maybe sisters could work, anyway," you finally admit. "I'm not sure both of your twenty fifth century parents will take it quite as well as Hitomi's, though."
"Our parents," says Ryouko. "... from a genetic perspective, anyway."
The bedroom door opens, interrupting your train of thought. Hitomi enters; she is carrying a wooden box, and has changed into a kimono.
"Hello," she says, pleasantly.
"Hitomi?" asks Ryouko, puzzled at the change in outfit.
"I understand the two of you have been under an awful lot of stress today," she says, "and I can sympathize, because I have, too. It isn't fun when your life feels like it's out of your control, but one thing that helps is to take a small part of your life and put it back under control." She sets the box down on the floor. "Have either of you ever attended a formal tea ceremony before?"
"No," says Ryouko.
"I was afraid that might be the case," says Hitomi, kneeling down on the floor opposite the two of you and opening the box. "It appears that important family traditions may have been lost on the way to the future; perhaps we can remedy this while you are here." She begins to carefully remove several implements from the box: a tea caddy, an iron kettle, a small electric brazier with simulated charcoal blocks, a Hagi-ware tea bowl. "In the meantime, a casual tea offering will do nicely. You two will need to have some experience before Mama sets up your lessons, after all."
"… tea ceremony lessons," says Ryouko, in disbelief.
… of course we're getting tea ceremony lessons, you remark internally, having long abandoned disbelief in this sort of ridiculous thing happening to the two of you. why would I have thought for a moment that we wouldn't get dragged into the tea ceremony lessons?
"The way of tea," declares Hitomi, in a didactic tone, perhaps reciting something she was once told herself, "is a spiritual exercise as well as a ceremonial one. It is a transformative practice which teaches us of purity, harmony, respect, tranquility, and besides these, the mystery of mutual charity. It is also a veneration of the imperfect, and a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life."
"Oh," says Ryouko.
Hitomi goes on to speak of wabi and sabi, of transience and imperfection, and the importance, even at the busiest of times, of taking a moment to reflect on emptiness.
You have nearly finished the tea when the incubator returns, whining about your irrational behavior earlier. You can't see him any more, though, not even partly like you could before. It has to have been something about potential being influenced by your proximity to Ryouko, but, it's all gone now anyway.
In a way, it's a relief. You're not even thinking of the could-have-beens, anymore.
[5] Give QB the full and the overcharged cubes
[7] Avoid giving him any cubes
-[4] by denying everything about cubes
-[3] by killing him again if he comes back
--[2] DO NOT kill QB (again)
[1] Tell the whole truth
We have more options if we hold on to all of them, you surmise. Deny everything.
"I'm sorry, Kyuubey," says Ryouko. "We don't have any cubes for you."
"I see," he says. "Please do keep looking. I know it doesn't sound like much, but a two percent difference in anti-entropy makes a big difference over time."
Being able to clean soul gems more regularly makes a big difference to magical girls, you note internally, doing your best to remain calm.
"I understand," Ryouko says.
"I'll keep in touch," promises Kyuubey, earnestly, "but please ask all your friends to stop killing these bodies. I have countless spares, of course, but it's better if they're not destroyed for no reason. It's a senseless waste." He climbs up on the bureau and grabs the corpse you'd been mutilating, then drags it out the window.
"He's gone now," Ryouko tells Hitomi, after a moment's pause to be sure.
"Thank you," you tell Hitomi. "That did help." You're even almost sort of beginning to warm to the idea of lessons. Almost.
"Well, then," she says, returning the now-cool electric brazier to the box, "now that we have calmed ourselves, I would like to ask the two of you for help. I've been having a difficult night with my feelings, myself."
"Oh?" you reply.
She closes her eyes, and smiles. "I want to talk about love," she says.
"Ah," says Ryouko, blithely innocent, "I understand that Madoka offers very good relationship advice, actually."
Hitomi takes a deep breath.
You elbow Ryouko in the arm.
"… Oh," she says, realizing what Hitomi is asking.
"How does a girl … tell another girl … that she likes her?" asks Hitomi, quietly. "What if she only likes boys? Does it just ruin things forever? And… could it even work out? Or do I have to — do I end up marrying someone else in the future?"
> provide relationship advice
[ ] Advise Hitomi to cherish Madoka as a special friend
-[ ] Absolve the future of responsibility, though
-[ ] Blame the future in an abstract way
-[ ] Dissuade her with details about the future
-[ ] Tell Hitomi of Nanami's affections
[ ] Advise Hitomi to wait for a less dramatic time in life
[ ] Advise Hitomi to simply tell Madoka her feelings
[ ] Advise Hitomi to attempt something romantic
[ ] Refrain from providing any advice
[ ] Warn Homura about Hitomi's affections for Madoka
[ ] Warn Hitomi about Homura's affections for Madoka
[ ] Help Hitomi compete with Homura for Madoka
-[ ] Involve some of the others
[ ] Send Hitomi a copy of Kyouko's book
[ ] Send Hitomi a copy of the on-board encyclopedia's movie clip for the Zero-Gravity Tea Ceremony
