> Check for witches near...
> hospitals and clinics.
After some deliberation, you decide to check out the local hospitals and doctor's clinics. They don't particularly lend themselves towards easy suicides, but medical practices tend to attract witches anyways due to all the misery that clouds around them, and people that
survive being witch-kissed tend to end up there anyways, meaning there might be a trail of some sort to follow even if there's nothing specifically present. It's a good place to start, at least.
As you begin flying around the city in search of your chosen targets, your thoughts drift to some of the other things that have happened this morning that you haven't really gotten a chance to think about yet, like those weird spiky branch things you briefly had right after subsuming Sayaka, and that bizarre profile of her that Novella has in it now.
Actually, you wonder...
You have Sayaka hop down on to Tome before looking at Novella and focusing. The pages again begin to flip by rapidly under their own power, before settling on
another two-page spread you've never seen before- yep, looks like there's one of these for Saar, too.
You take a moment to examine the image of the left, which is a slightly stylized, but for the most part fairly accurate depiction of the other witch, before moving on to her description and abilities on the right. Given how it's described, you guess "Tearful Storm" must be that tornado attack you used yesterday... although, you kind of feel like you already knew that. In fact, you feel as though you already know
all of the information written here, even though at least some of it should definitely be new to you. The existence of the Brandy, the flooding beneath Saar's fields, even the "names" of the other witch's abilities — though you've no clue
why they have names to begin with — all of them seem bizarrely self-evident.
That's... huh. You suppose that since Novella is literally a part of you, intrinsically knowing its contents does make a strange sort of sense, though the fact that you get what are essentially detailed encyclopedia entries for the things you absorb is still perhaps the weirdest part of your whole "subsuming" shtick so far. You may be one now, but witches continue to make very little sense to you.
Resuming your search, you come across a couple of smaller walk-in clinics, but find nothing at either of them. This is harder than you thought it would be — the majority of doctor's offices are actually fairly small, and are hard to really distinguish from other buildings. You'd have thought they'd stick out a bit more given that this is Mitakihara, but the ones you did find were strangely normal in appearance, and you're not comfortable with getting low enough to read the signs and billboards that may or may not point you to others.
Luckily, the hospital in the distance is much more easily identified due to being marked with a giant red cross on the side, and also being utterly
massive itself, as in at least as tall as most of the surrounding skyscrapers and probably over ten times wider. Even from here you can tell that the place looks more like a castle than the local emergency room. You'll head there next.
As you begin slowly heading in that direction, a quiet mental sniffle from Sayaka draws your attention.
<I'm the worst…>
"No you're not." you automatically refute.
<...quit eavesdropping on me.> Sayaka bitterly replies.
"…um, pretty sure I don't hear anything you're not actively projecting to me, so I kind of
can't unless you let me, actually."
You think that's how it works, anyways. You can definitely hear any deliberate telepathy attempts she makes, whether they're directed at you or not, but you think you can also hear when Sayaka is trying to talk normally but can't? Or is it when she's just sort of internally talking to herself? It hasn't been long enough for you to be entirely clear on that yet.
<Just leave me alone…>
"Alright, alright…" you capitulate, "…but tell me why you're being so down on yourself first."
<Like you really have to ask. I wasn't even a magical girl for a full hour before I lost against the very first witch I tried to fight->
Wait a minute, she's THAT new?!
<-and now that witch has total control of me, and I can't do anything about it. I've got to be the worst magical girl ever->
"No no no, hold the phone," you interrupt, "are you telling me you literally became a magical girl
this morning?"
<...>
Oh for- well,
that certainly clears a few things up. No wonder Sayaka's taking this all so badly- experience wouldn't necessarily make the three-punch impact of losing to you and Shemesh, finding out she's stuck with you for who knows how long, and having the less pleasant parts of the magic system revealed to her one after the other any less hard, but you imagine it hurts a lot more given that those were the literal
first things she experienced as a magical girl. Her current below rock-bottom mood makes a lot more sense in that light.
"…nevermind." you say, backpedaling. "If it helps, you put up a pretty good fight for someone who only just contracted."
<Give me back control of my body and I'll show you an even better one.>
You try not to laugh. That's good- if she's confident enough to say something like that, she can't be feeling
as awful as before. Although… wait.
"…um, you realize that since your soul gem is in me, killing me might just end up killing you too, right?"
<...>
The conversation ends on that rather dour note as you approach the hospital. As you enter the palatial building's vicinity, you feel something similar to what you felt upon nearing Saar's barrier, the sudden wave of despair and other nebulous negative concepts genuinely rather startling you.
Well,
that's a tip off if ever there was one.
You open Sayaka's mouth, about to tell her that you've found a witch — then pause, noticing that something seems slightly off. After letting several more of the psychic waves break over your barrier, you're left metaphorically scratching your head in confusion.
...huh. There's definitely something here — which is a pretty lucky break all things considered, as you haven't even been searching for all that long — but the "signal" of despair it's emitting seems way too faint to be normal. Admittedly, you only really have your experience with Saar to use as a metric, so it could be that this is just a much weaker witch... or perhaps the signal is somehow being smothered? Hmm...
You circle around the hospital from a distance, scanning thoroughly for any of the telltale distortions that would indicate a barrier, but notice nothing. This is strange... maybe what you're sensing isn't a witch at all. A magical girl, perhaps? No, can't be; you've had three separate run-ins with three separate girls at this point, surely you'd have noticed
something like this before now. A familiar then? That would make sense, except that you should still be able to see its barrier... well, assuming it isn't
inside the building, at least.
You give the place another quick once over before deciding that this approach is getting you nowhere. You're pretty sure what you're sensing is somewhere around the lower half of the building, but either it's not originating from outside, or you're just too far away to see anything. You'd rather at least know what you're getting into before personally moving in closer though, and you don't really want to risk accidentally drawing people into your barrier by driving it directly through the hospital. In which case...
"Hey, Sayaka?" you say, having her hop off of you to the ground as you lower your barrier to the rough edge of the hospital's perimeter. "I think I've found something, but I'm not sure what, so I'm going to send you out to scout, okay?"
<...>
With the backing of that rousing endorsement, you focus, aiming to dispel Sayaka's magical girl transformation. A quick flash of blue, and her outfit is replaced with the school uniform you briefly saw her in earlier this morning. You still have no idea why she's wearing this on a Sunday, but you suppose you should just be glad that worked, as she'd be a little conspicuous otherwise.
Forming a portal, you have Sayaka walk outside, then immediately close said portal. There's a lot of people in the parking lot — a lot of people just
around, likely owing to the size of the place — but none of them pay Sayaka any mind as you begin walking her around the side of the building, making sure to keep pace with your barrier as you look in all directions for any obvious haziness in the air. If you don't find anything out here, you'll see if you can get Sayaka a visitor's pass so you can look around indoors. If that doesn't pan out either... well, maybe you'll just leave whatever this is be.
<...of all places...>
"What?" you ask aloud, stopping for a moment.
<...nothing…>
You blink a few times, but ultimately shrug and let it go. You don't really want to worsen Sayaka's mood any further, so you suppose you won't bother questioning that odd little remark.
Your stroll around the perimeter eventually brings around to the back of the building, which features a secondary entrance, a line of planted trees, and a long row of bike racks. Not noticing anything particularly of note, you make to continue onwards.
...that is, until something behind Sayaka tangibly
throbs.
You spin her around to face the origin, your gaze almost immediately zeroing in on the source — there's a
grief seed jammed point first into the hospital's outer wall. An orb of darkness covers the tip, black, thorny roots extending into the surface around it, while the spherical portion pulses intermittently with pure white light, continually producing a slow, rhythmic noise that reverberates through the area like a heartbeat.
You cautiously move Sayaka closer, not entirely sure what to make of this. This must be what you've been sensing... you're pretty sure the waves you're feeling are even synchronized with its pulsing, in fact. But why is there a grief seed stuck in a wall? And what's happening to it? You've never seen one do something like this before...
As if in answer to your unspoken question, the grief seed suddenly turns entirely white and shines brilliantly, lighting up the area around it like a flash grenade. A surge of near-tangible despair crashes over your barrier, this one
much stronger than any of the previous, and you realize what's about to happen.
Acting quickly, you throw Sayaka into a backwards leap in a bid to avoid her being engulfed by the rapidly forming labyrinth. She clears the bike racks and trees entirely, landing on one of the cars parked behind them and leaving a large dent in the roof. Er, whoops — hopefully that guy has insurance.
You have Sayaka climb off the car as the light begins to fade, revealing that the grief seed has vanished. All that remains is a cloud of shimmering air, marking where the newly-formed barrier now lies.
<...what just happened?> Sayaka asks, her desire to understand what's going on evidently outweighing her desire to stay silent.
"I think we just watched a grief seed re-hatch." you answer. "Never actually seen that before..."
The former seed certainly feels a lot more like Saar's barrier now that it's hatched. Not quite identical though, as this barrier doesn't seem to exude loneliness, but instead a strange sort of...
determination, oddly enough. A very single-minded one, at that. Alongside the much more negative conceptual impressions you assume are just inherent to witch barriers, it's a rather weird combination.
...though, regardless of how it feels, you doubt it's a particularly good thing that the barrier came into being almost directly on top of the hospital's bottom floor.
JOIN...
Damn... come to think of it, that changes things. You were kind of hoping to avoid this, at least for the time being, but it looks like there's nothing for it.
You take a moment to bring Sayaka back inside your barrier, then begin steadily moving forward towards the side of the hospital. As you expected, your approach soon crosses some invisible threshold, and the other barrier begins slowly pulling away from the building to drift towards yours, gaining speed with every second.
As they meet in the middle and hold fast, you take a moment to brace yourself, remembering well what happened last time.
Just as before, everything begins to rumble and quake as the separate dimensions begin to intertwine. This time however, the ground doesn't crumble away — instead, a portion of it simply
splits, as if a massive fault line just opened up in the middle of your barrier. While not in your immediate vicinity, you're alarmed enough to have Sayaka quickly jump onto Tome and hurriedly start floating away as the crack continues to lengthen. After several tension-filled seconds, it finally stops... only to then commence
widening instead, causing the world around it to thrash and heave as earth around the edge of the fissure is almost contemptuously shoved aside. Space itself begins to visibly warp and expand, as though something is literally pulling at the confines of reality, and as the rumbling reaches a fever pitch, everything seems to suddenly
stretch... and a new mass of scenery abruptly fades into being. It occupies the newly created hole in the landscape perfectly, and instantly, almost anticlimactically, the barrier begins to settle back down.
As the shaking of the land fully dies away, you take a moment to gather your bearings, feeling slightly off balance. That "restructuring" wasn't really any more violent than the last one, but the fact that space itself got all weirdly warped this time rather concerns you. Here's hoping you didn't just set this place up for some sort of magical structural collapse.
<…what did you just do?!>
Oh, right. Probably should have told Sayaka what you were doing before actually doing it.
"I stuck my barrier to the other one, and now it's one big barrier." you explain, pulling your newly expanded pocket dimension upwards. "Wasn't planning on it originally, but if I let the other witch linger on the hospital, people might have ended up getting kissed or drawn into its barrier and such. Now, I can just drive us into the sky so that can't happen, and we can move in at our own pace."
You look over at the slightly-distant new addition to your barrier, which appears to be some sort of black and white cavern. It bridges the border between your and Saar's areas, and looks roughly circular in shape, its curving outer walls dotted with tunnels of varying shapes and size. The ceiling seems to have somehow merged into both adjacent section's skies, creating a sort of odd gradient where air suddenly shifts to rock and back again. Overall, it's actually smaller than you'd expected, at least given what happened with Saar's barrier, but that's not exactly something you're planning on protesting.
"Anyways, sorry about not warning you." you continue when Sayaka doesn't, beginning to float in the direction of the miniature cave system. "Should have given you a heads up. My bad."
It only takes you a minute or two to get there, but by the time you actually find yourself in front of your barrier's newest wing, you've noticed something about it that you didn't at first glance — namely, that it is altogether
much creepier than you'd initially realized. The walls you'd seen as just being intermittently black and white from a distance are actually pure black, the white coming from the nigh-endless swathes of heavy gauze bandages stretched across them at random. Inside the tunnels proper, all sorts of oversized medical equipment can be seen embedded in and plastered across nearly every available surface, from giant syringes, to blood bags, to rusty scissors the size of a person. Dim fluorescent lights flicker on some of the ceilings, not truly illuminating enough to be of any real worth, and numerous small, unsettling noises are constantly echoing from within nearly every one of the tunnels, producing an uncomfortable stereo effect. All this adds up to give the place a very ominous atmosphere, to the point that even the comically large sweets you can see propped up against the inner walls don't help to dispel the eerie tone all that much.
"Don't worry, we'll be fine." you say for Sayaka's benefit, though also to reassure yourself. It really shouldn't be a big deal; scare factor is usually completely unrelated to a witch's strength.
...usually, at least.
You take a moment to consider how you're going to go about this. Originally, you were thinking that when you found a witch, you'd send Sayaka in to confront it alone, since you assumed your presence might sort of sour the whole endeavor for her. However, seeing as how you ended up having to attach the other barrier to yours, you might want to just come along — Sayaka might be better predisposed to believe you're not just some malevolent force of despair if you're an active participant in this, after all. Given more than a moment's thought, the initial plan probably wasn't workable anyways, as not only would your connection have had to hold through two literal barriers of separation, but (if you recall correctly) the maximum distance a magical girl can get from their soul gem is about 100 meters, which would mean...
...wait, do you have that wrong? It seemed about right when your connection to Sayaka cut out earlier, but she definitely got further away from you than that back when she was trying to leave your barrier. Does that mean the range is based on the distance she is from her gem in the real world, rather than the distance she is inside this pocket dimension? Because that in turn would mean, since she's not actually going anywhere, that Sayaka can probably move anywhere in your barrier without issue, and that since this cavern is now
also part of your barrier, sending her in on her own might be doable after all-
*squeak!* *squeak!*
You look down. A pair of polka-dotted, two-legged mouse things are standing at one of the smaller tunnel entrances, most likely having come to investigate the fact that their home now exits to somewhere different than it did a few minutes ago. One of them jostles the other, causing the miniature nurse caps set atop their target-like heads to wobble precariously, and they both scurry away.
Familiars... those ones looked harmless enough, but that's not always a great indication of threat level. If there are some this close to the entrance, you've little doubt you'll encounter at least a few of them along the way, so you should probably decide how to deal with them now rather than later.
Your plan is to...
[-] ...have Sayaka scout. These tunnels look like they're going to be confusing, and it's generally a good idea to have some idea of what's ahead before rushing in.
[-] ...have Sayaka be your vanguard. She can do the majority of the fighting, while you serve as support.
[-] ...send Sayaka in alone. If you had to take a guess, this is probably what she'd prefer.
[-] ...not make use of Sayaka at all. Maybe it'd be best for her to just watch until she's mentally recovered a bit more...
[-] ...ask Sayaka what she'd prefer. No guarantee she'll answer, but it might be worth asking, at least.
[-] Write in.
As for the familiars...
[-] Kill any you come across. Sayaka might appreciate it, depending on how much she knows/cares about familiars.
[-] Leave them alone unless they attack you. Best not to start fights you don't need to.
[-] Attempt to subsume the ones you come across as you go. Worth a try...
[-] Write in.
