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Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a magical girl series written by Urobuchi Gen. Saying there is a particular twist on the formula in it is a huge misconception, but it is pretty special in that its writer is a huge sadist. He tortures the characters for a dozen episodes, then blueballs the viewer by giving a not so much bittersweet, more outright confusing ending, and then there is a movie that just has the obviously originally intended ending that did not fit into the show by 90 minutes of running time or so, and features 90 more minutes of psychological sadism. To call it, the way that the movie chooses to deliver its sadism, a twist of some sort, is failure at basic pattern recognition.

There is a bunch of cosmetic stuff in there like time travel and lesbians, but sadism is actually really what it boils down to. Decu doesn't know much noir beyond Blade Runner and Max Payne, but he managed. What makes this all noir, and what makes noir noir, you see, is the willingness to hurt the characters in our care to the breaking point. It is the sadism of people like Raymond Chandler, the sadism of Urobuchi Gen, Deculture's sadism, and of course my own sadism, as well as the sadism of any writefag who wrote for MGNQ and any GM who will pick the system up.

I myself believe that 'Magical Girl Noir' is a very special and not at all stupid idea, and this campaign has been sort of an exploration of what can be done with it thematically.

As far as Magical Girl Noir Quest itself goes, the QM, Deculture, at the time, has taken this magical girl series, and put it through the absurdist filter of 40k brand where the framing story of madoka is so very done, that it has become a mockery of itself, like an argument by inflation. He has tried his best to make it into actual noir, for the most part at least. It has eventually evolved into a total kitchen sink setting (doesn't every quest?), but the themes stayed there. If you ignore an unironic Index character here, a chaos terminator just to increase the story's spike ratio there, it's still about the darker concepts under mahou shoujo, which traditionally get lost under all the bonding and filler. Our ever-teenage chucklefuck selves also could not help but reference what we like, but soon enough, it became it an unwritten rule that every character from another franchise must be a bent and twisted reflection of their original selves, carrying the weight of the world that their parentally abandoned high-school selves never knew. If mahou shoujo is coming of age, then this setting is midlife crisis.

What if the world did not exactly depend on the magical girl, and she protected it because she depended on it instead?
What if there wasn't a curse, a misunderstanding, a rivalry, and a friend betrayed her for good reasons?
What if Usagi didn't have a bullshit post-death power-up, and had to get good and not die?
What if Fish Fin was too far gone?
What if Anthy was too far gone?
What if every Precure was Cure Moonlight?
These aren't bad endings. They aren't gritty reboots. They can be worked around, with effort. They give the childish ideal humanity.

This, in the end, can be seen as the framing question of our campaign as well. In general terms, how much must one suffer, before they should change?

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You will notice that the setting becomes more noble and more dark the higher you get in it, but it's really the most interesting at mook level - so this is what we focus on. Small failures before the big ones. It can get pretty pulpy, and in pulp, as we know, the scene is more important than the plot. And at the start of the story, you could really call the whole party a bunch of small failures.

So gather around the fire of narrative passion, children of /tg/, and partake in the most ancient of our rituals. The time of a story being told. Today's storytime is perhaps a little legnthy and unorthodox, but I promise it's every bit as good as the storytimes of old.

。。。

Though Oriana Belmonte is not a woman of great destiny, and in fact leaves the story entirely halfway through, maybe the best way to start it is with her. She is a straightforward girl with her head firmly on her shoulders, and it's good to begin on ground level, with a reasonable person, before things take turn for the unreasonable.

She is born in Italy, and didn't really face particular struggles in her upbringing indicative of high Magical Girl potential, unless you count her family being devoutly Christian, and her youthful doubts concering that faith. Despite that, the potential was there, somehow. It could have been in those doubts. Thanks to that, Oriana was once offered the chance of having a wish of hers fulfilled, in exchange for fulfilling a dangerous duty.

The contractor called himself Pius, and took the form of a furry critter wearing a mitre for some strange reason, looking like a tiny mutant cat pope. Despite what you may expect, the contract included all the particulars of what being a Magical Girl entails, and Pius made sure she'd read the fine script. It said there how if she did not cleanse her soul, she could become one of the monsters she fought against, and how short the lifespan of his contracts tend to be, because most of them just weren't careful enough.

Nevertheless, Oriana agreed. She never shared what her wish was with others, so it was either something so stupid she was later embarrassed to talk about it, or very smart, and a done affair. Either way, Oriana agreed, and her soul was forever changed. She'd gain the abilty to turn into a spiffy costume, create a giant fan to smack things in, heal herself and others, and control wind to her advantage.

Pius introduced her to his organization, called the Fourteenth Officio, and she underwent the Basic Training, consisting of nothing less than military drills, inflicted at her maiden body.

Somehow, though, she could take it. The Fourteenth taught the art of melee combat in particular, and Oriana had a gift for it. Her body's entire physiology changed through the contact, giving her much more endurance and vitality. In several months, she found herself able to sprint a hundred in under ten, but she still wasn't considered a real Magical Girl legally. As far as skills go, though, Oriana has no real faults. She's exactly what a properly contracted Magical Girl is meant to be, and so we can use her as an example, to explain exactly what Magical Girls are usually capable of in this world.

。。。

Are you curious now, what can every Magical Girl do? Let's get it out of the way:

For complete basics, every Magical Girl has a Magic Weapon, and a Costume. Magic weapons are fairly special tools that are a big part of the girl's identity, and in Oriana's case, it is a giant fan she can control the wind with, or more typically, bludgeon someone to death with while it's folded up. Not all Magical Girls use these: Some use a more regular weapon, commonly a gun, or never summon a weapon at all, relying on their various magic powers. Magic Weapons are powerful tools of force, that wield their user as much as they're wielded, and unless you can handle it, they can be pretty impractical sometimes.

Every Magical Girl should be able to use her Soul Gem to 'ping', and detect entrances to Barriers in the vicinity, where Witches may be hiding, to prey on clueless civilians. If one exists that for some reason lacks this ability, she would be in big trouble, and completely dependent on others for survival in the wild. Some can also learn to use this ability to detect other Magical Girls, but Oriana has no idea how to do this.

Witches usually kill people by charming them first, sometimes having a Familiar of theirs carry the charm, called a Witch Kiss. Once charmed, they may be called into the Barrier to be consumed physically, or simply made to commit suicide in the real world, with the Witch content only eating their soul from the Immaterium. Witches seek out weak-minded people, on whomst the charm will work better (for example, people who would kill themselves anyway). An often overlooked part of the contract is that this will never work on a Magical Girl, and so there is normally no issue stepping into the Labyrinth, and cleaving your way to the master of this strange realm.

Before more complicated powers, personal and general, the Soul Gem can generally help you pour out magic energy in very basic way. This power can remain and strengthen your body, or be a form of an attack itself if you expel it. Most Magical Girls can attack with raw magic energy somehow (this is called a Magic Blast), but it's normally not done: It's not very dangerous or reliable, unless you specialize in it.

The general functionality of Oriana's body is somewhat enhanced, even out of costume. She is also pretty resilient to any sort of interference in her body, like disease, poison, or alcohol. Since her body is essentially a meat puppet of the Soul Gem she carries, controlling bodily chemistry is possible, and taught as a basic skill.

>Magical Girl Noir Quest
Was this ever finished?

Finally, Oriana has access to her Inventory, which is a pocket of hammerspace accessible near her Soul Gem, where she can store items, which is very convenient to not have civilians see things that a teenage girl really should not be carrying around. Oriana's Inventory is about as big as a rucksack, which is near the standard size.

In case you are asking, no, sparklies don't get automatic telepathy here. Some people do, but it's complicated.

。。。

It all began way back in Romania.

Although we're calling it a noir world, that place wasn't all that dark at a glance. It was a mountain city at the start of Spring, sun still shone upon the cheeks of the arriving Magical Girls warmly, and they barely stood out as foreigners, since people of Romania are all kinds of colors as well. The meeting spot was set up in a restaurant where they'd still kill and gut a pig on demand, and an older-looking blonde with dreadlocks greeted them, introducing themselves as Sister Therese.

In the times of legend, when First Knight Oktavia and the Lady herself walked the Earth, when the Dark threatened to devour all that was, these girls would not last a day. It was only thanks to certain limited safety measures and tolerances for failure, set up by Incubators for reasons among which pity was not, that they could tumble their way all the way to this tearoom somehow. We first see Oriana in that tearoom, around a table with five other Magical Girls, their backgrounds widely different. They introduce themselves in turn to her, as well as to the woman she has been working under here, ever since finishing her training.

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There is a pretty good reason for this happening, and Therese patiently explains it to the newly founded Magical Girl party, as the reason for their presence:

A powerful Witch is hiding out in the peaks of Carpats, only sending down her Familiars to bring snacks up to her. Normally, Witches aren't common outside of population centers, and Familiars aren't able to cover quite that much distance going back and forth, but this Witch seems all kinds of special, having already defeated an entire squad, if Therese is to be believed. Now, stroling all of the Carpats is pretty much impossible with the detection range the Soul Gems have, and so the girls were in for the long haul. Tracking down this Witch would be their long-term goal, and until then, they'd help Therese try to get the city back under control.

That wasn't all, though, there was a catch to that mission, or maybe a few catches. Or, unbeknownst to Therese, every girl around the table outside of Oriana constitued a catch of her own. In order to hunt down and defeat this Witch, all of their special gifts would be needed.

> "The world-famous detective, Eriko of the Seventh, is at your service. If there's a mystery involved, I'll get to the bottom of it no matter what!"
One of the asian girls, Eriko, described herself as the detective. This must have meant she was the Callidus, and therefore she was there to deal with the first catch Therese knew about: Alcyone's 'song'. Apparently, Alcyone's Barrier attacked the psyche of those who entered, and so Therese needed somebody competent at mental magic, to protect everyone from the Witch's influence. Of course, mind magic practiced by Callidus was of more subtle kind that would beguile people, rathrer than something forceful, but what Therese got sent here had to be enough.

>>76629916
A variety of factors contributed to it being put on indefinite hiatus, maybe chiefly /tg/'s decision to ban quests. /qst/ just doesn't have the same community.

> "I'm Liese, I come from Aachen in Germany, contracted the 12th in Prague as a Vindicare."
The blonde, Liese, said she was from the Twelfth, an Officio which documents and records various things – especially Witches. She wouldn't just be uselessly taking notes about everything, though, the hope was that she would be able to decipher exactly what Alcyone's deal was. A Barrier was a projection of the original Magical Girl's mind, and if you could trace the clues back and figure out exactly how it worked, you might be able to get an upper hand in the coming battle.

> "My name is Oriana Belmonte, though you already knew that, Sister Therese. I am also from the Fourteenth, and an Eversor. I look forward to working with you all."
Oriana was able to heal, which would take care of another inevitability. She could also be said to know her way around Romania a lot more than the others, especially since Therese had shifted all the paperwork and dealing with the Fourteenth's brass to her.

> "Jordan Ramses, 8th Officio, Top ranked in kill count! Ready to go at any moment. I'll show anyone a knife time."
Jordan seemed eager to fight, which was good. This American was also clearly older and more confident than the others, who still wore the bright look of Neophytes. The local woman could have used another experienced hand in daily hunting, as well as someone with proper practice in tracking down Witches. Alcyone was ranked Beta, which meant that the usual hunting party that would be sent to deal with her would have to be several times Therese.

> ”I'm Emiri. Emi is fine. From the Ninth. No one important."
Emiri was a big question mark, and it wasn't clear exactly what the Ninth meant by sending this quiet Japanese girl who seemed mostly interested in sipping her box of orange juice, only to order a glass when she finished it. Looking back, Emiri's presence actually betrayed the real catch that Therese would have yet to learn about.

But even if the necessary skills were there, seeing these five misfits together was already less than reassuring.
It goes without saying that to compose a squad of girls from a different Officios, corners of the world, and entire ways of thinking about being Magical Girls is highly unusual. For some reason though, the girls are now apparently on the Fourteenth's payroll, set to receive a seed from Rome about every three weeks. The Fourteenth will claim all the seeds they collect while patrolling, anything else the girls earn is under the table, in their free time. Therese unceremoniously passes Oriana a few phone numbers for the regular delivery routes, and leaves the party to stew in realization that their budget was tight. The budget was their collective resolve, and getting into red was death.

Additionally, the Squad Leader had something prepared for them before she left in a hurry, as a test: A fairly weak Witch whose presence nearby had been prognosticated in the Fourteenth, for this particular date and time. The party is told to bring the Grief Seed, so that Therese knows she can trust them with basic street work.

> Oriana puts her hands together and closes her eyes. "Blessed Lady, thank you for this meal and these companions you have brought to me. Watch over us in our time of trial, and bless us with the strength and insight to perform our duties. Amen."

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>>76629776
>Saying there is a particular twist on the formula in it is a huge misconception, but it is pretty special in that its writer is a huge sadist. He tortures the characters for a dozen episodes

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As far as Neophytes were concerned, Witches were either 'Charlie', or 'Beta'. Charlies were easy to handle and hunters had them for breakfast, Betas were tough cookies that you needed a lot of backup for. Being a Charlie, this should have been easy, but Oriana still had to make sure this will work out, in a fight. In her mind, there was a pair of Eversors on the frontline, and a pair of Vindicare presumably in the back, and then it is pointed out that Eriko has no business being a in a Barrier as a Callidus. Since that's what she was there for in the end, though, she had to learn.

The Barrier was located under a bridge, its entrance lying behind a steel door that did not really have a place on a finished suspension bridge. There were no Familiars about, or apparent victims, so the intel was right on point. Right after the group hopped over a fence meant to bar them from doing exactly what they did, their prey had just sat down and unfurled her realm. They open the door to do their duty, and hot air blows on them from it. Someone inside has been cooking fish.

The world flashes black, and the party finds itself entering an oversized kitchen. Through a gap between furniture, they entered a landscape of pans, seated on stoves of Witchfire. Some cold, some filled with hot oil. The pans, wide as houses, were arranged in a labyrinthine path, and as long as the girls would stay on the handle-path, they were probably going to be fine. At some point, though, they would have to tiptoe on the edge of a pan, and that's where trouble started. The boiling oil seemed scary, but flames of Witchfire scorched below, and getting tackled down into the depths would be worse.

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There would be someone to tackle them, too: the area was filled with ten meters long, sharp-toothed, shark-finned slugs, leisurely swimming in circles, sometimes crawling up on the handles, even hopping from one pan to the next. An educated adult would call those Familiars phallic in shape, and the girls were polite enough not to reach for different words.

At this point, most Magical Girls use their Soul Gem to figure out which way in this landscape rests its owner, but Liese could do a little better. She rose her left arm to the side, standing parallel to the ground, and uttered a single word in German. A lone, reasonably large, and somewhat unnatural looking raven then materialized on her outreached arm, and she tasked it with a mission: To fly in the direction she pointed it to, and report to her what the Witch looked like.

While the girls make their first steps into the Barrier, Liese also cannot help but notice the walls, which are mostly fridges, freezers, and kitchen furniture. As a kitchen often is, these walls as well are filled with kitschy pins and magnets, and some paper notes covered with unintelligible scribbles. Those scribbles are of eminent interest to Liese, who has actually spent the last three months undergoing a crash course in Runes. Not nordic runes, the 'runes' of Witch script that fill Barriers, and seem to twist under one's gaze. It's not really something you translate, but rather read empathically. Most hunters never bother to learn to do it, but Liese can, and thus gets the opportunity to enjoy such wondrous notes as:
> [What would you like for dinner? Eggs? Fish? Or perhaps... me?]
> [To buy: grapes, knife, toilet paper, new friends]
> [recipe for happy life: don't go no pan. Don't leave your pan outside in the rain]
And, lest we forget, a floppy disc pinned by a magnet.

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The road forward was inevitably barred by the slug Familiars, who would intercept the party.

Oriana's a melee fighter, but she got an account of the girl's abilities beforehand:
> „I blap things.“
(Upon being asked, Emiri explained that 'burapu' is not Japanese, but just a short for blowing-them-up.)
> “I knife things."
> "I wield the unstoppable power of a detective."
Seeing the first Familiars approach, Oriana sighed.

> "The crime is giving in to the temptation of the Dark. The sentence is the Blessed Lady's mercy. Keep on guard, everyone."
Before Oriana is done speaking, Jordan leaps forward and lobs a knife at a Familiar. As it slides and dies, the Barrier now turns its attention to the girls fully. Oriana braces for combat and hisses at Jordan.
> "You sanguine fool!"

Things go pretty well, as the squad's initial assault tears through the slugs, with blade and bludgeon, and bullet and magic arrow. These things are weak enough that Starbucks could sell them as coffee. The girls exchange some banter and small talk during the assault, with Eriko getting into the habit of calling Emiri Orange Watson, and Liese Raven Watson. Oriana is apparently the inspector who is always wrong about everything. Being perceptive, Eriko also points out the familiar's MO: They like to cover themselves in oil, and use it as a defensive layer, so only the handle-crawling ones were so easy to take out. However, inside the pans, these things could get pretty fast. The girls would have to dash through the path as a hazard course, avoiding the slugs launching themselves at them.

The things were easy to deal with, but still numerous, and so everyone has to make a run for it. But, this was what Magical Girls were made for. Oriana's fan, Jordan's knife, and Liese's gun have no trouble killing these things in a single hit, splattering their spongy matter across the Immaterium. Jordan leads the way, and she is apparently bored enough with the enemies to try and butcher the things into fillets as she goes. That, while Eriko just lets herself be escorted, wielding what seems to be a magnifying glass with a knife-handle. And, though no one says anything, everyone notices that Emiri's shots aren't quite cutting it. They were enough to knock the bastards out of the way, to their fiery death, but on more stable terrain, she'd be unable to kill them as fast. In fact, one or two took a shot from her, and still stand in the party's way.

I am going to step out of the narration sometimes using spoiler tags, to comment on what's happening mechanically, if it's necessary or if it's interesting. It should be a tour through how the system was being made, for one.

Note #1 Emiri sucks.
This is a good opportunity to explain a central mechanic of the system: Emotion. In essence, characters have an Emotion score of usually around 0, plus or minus a few. This score determines how invested and passionate they are. Magic becomes much stronger when the girl cares about what she is doing, but stains the Soul Gem more. Conversely, you can save up on Grief by being disciplined and detached. A single point of Emotion up or down translates to about 20% effectiveness and cost both.
Every girl has a pool of Grief to work with in long term, starting to zero, and going up as she uses powers. Absolute maximum capacity of the Soul Gem is 100, but about 60G is where the soul gem should seriously be cleansed.

Powers that actually do something substantial in combat tend to cost 5G+E, or a multiple of that, so you should think twice about when to blow your juice, since getting seeds is a matter of weeks and months.
Now, Emiri has the Moody drawback, which causes her to randomly wake up with -1 or +1 Emotion depending on what foot she gets out of the bed with (odds or evens). This sounds like nothing, but it turned out to be one of the most crippling Drawbacks in the game, because it represents a 40% swing in power. Turns out that's a lot.

Liese's raven comes back, relaying news to her, which she relays to the party: The Witch is up ahead, apparently an antlered snail sitting in a wok. Then, the raven points out something else it sees from up above: The girls had company. Two more people, coming up from the same entrance the girls took.

> "They could just as easily be civilians lured in by a Witch's Kiss. Be cautious, but don't be afraid." Oriana says. "It seems like the familiars are losing interest. Don't pursue them if they run away. Keep moving."

The others agree about the need to be quick, while Emiri keeps taking potshots at a slug sliding away from her, which won't die. This seems to frustrate her immensely, and she makes it known.

A pair of Magical Girls appear at the direction of the now distant entrance. The first is a short girl with an eyepatch and a pretty eye, but a rather entirely fat face. Wears the costume of a ninja. Looks intelligent. The second is a tall girl with thick eyebrows, a pot cut, and punk costume. She looks dumb. It is obvious who is actually the Bulk and who is the Skull in this relationship.

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After them, a third girl weasels herself through the entrance, with strawy hair and what appears to be a washed down magical girl dress, clearly uncomfortable to be here.

> "FUCK!", the fat one exclaims. "More fucking sparklies! Just what the fuck we needed."
> "I, I don't like shooting other girls. They're hard to hit. Like you, Maggie." the tall one says.
> "C-can we just move past them or around them somehow? Or talk to them?" asks the blonde.
> "Sparklies are assholes, Debbie!" says the fat one. "Just look at the two of us!"
The group finds itself split. On one hand, they would have a big advantage in a race for the Witch. On the other, they don't want to find themselves sandwiched between a Witch and hostile Magical Girls.

> "Let's get them to leave. This is our kill." Emiri proposes. "We'll ask nicely."
> "Damn right it's our kill." Jordan agrees. "If they want it too, then they're my kills."

> "Eriko huffs. "No, they'll leave. I'll make sure of it if I have to." With that, she clears her throat. "Ah, excuse us!" the Callidus calls out. "We were here first. This is our case."
> The fat girl clears her own throat. "WELL WE NEED THE SEED FUCKING MORE! Eightball been really stingy as of late."
Eightball would be the Eighth Incubator, which is to say, Jordan's boss. What a bunch of americans were doing here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Romania, was beyond anybody's guess.

>>76629733
Does your system work for normal PMMM games?

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> With everyone awestruck by this revelation, Emiri takes the initiative to shout: "Sounds like a personal problem!"
> The fat ninja retorts: "Now this is really mean to Debbie here. She suffered enough. We're doing this from the goodness of our hearts you know!"
> "There's five of us and three of you!" Emiri shouts back.
> Eriko adds to that. "Eightball? You mean 'dick-ass weasel-looking fucker' what keeps making bad decisions about running the Eighth? So that explains where you come from."
> The lardy Eversor apparently named Maggie, probably the boss of the group, turns to her teammates, still speaking pretty loud. "Hey, Minnie, that ain't a long jump. I bet we can beat them to the center."
> "I, I'm not sure that's a good idea, Maggie. There's more of them, and, and, we'll be leaving Debbie here for that." Minnie urges her. She seems to have a speaking disability of some sort.
> "Eh, Debbie can run. Does that for a living, even."

The situations grows tense, and the Familiars get ready to watch what's going to happen next from the front seats.
> "Eightball, huh?" Jordan clears her throat too, loudly.
> "Yeah, the dickass. Where do those seeds he makes go? Does Annie stick them up her ass?"
> Jordan sighs. "If they're smart, they'll recognize me and know their place. If they aren't, I'm going to have fun for the first time today."

Liese reminds everyone about where the Witch is, and the pursuers also realize they have to hurry. Maggie takes Minnie into a princess hold – between the height and width, they weigh about the same. She braces against the pan she stands on, and, in a big release of energy, bounces off it, toppling the terrain and spilling hot oil everywhere. The blonde, Debbie, seems to have long since left, while the pair crosses air in a titanic leap – a good few hundred meters. Until they land, the party can't do much but watch the maneuver.

>>76629916
The last thread is a conclusion, of sorts.

>>76630223
Technically yes, you ignore the Grief mechanics and just replace them with daily fatigue or something, rather than basing the entire game around soul survival and forcing the girls to watch their juice budget. That said, the system is meant to be kind of gritty, plenty of issues is stuff like being mentally ill. Precure or Nanoha is going to be a better fit than your typical mahou sentai. Right now I definitely would not recommend it.

>>76630312
PMMM as in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, not magical girls in general.

> "Liese, which way is the witch?"
> "Lower down the path. They'll go after it, don't split up too far."
> "One of you guys cover me, I'll handle thing one and thing two."
> "Wasted effort. Just lure them over here and I'll take care of them. Promise." Eriko strolls towards the landing zone confidently.

Liese takes a proper shooting posture, and takes aim at the landing zone. Right as the pair lands, fairly softly compared to the lift-off, two gunshots echo over the Barrier. Minnie has been dropped a bit early, and Jordan finds herself narrowly missed by a bunch of birdshot from her shotgun. Maggie's face, meanwhile, is grazed by a round from Liese's rifle. Briefly, Maggie seems a bit shocked. Jordan doesn't flinch as the shot rings out, but she does get quite mad about the gall of these girls.
> "What the fuck did you just try to do to me, you little bitch? I am Jordan "The Ace Breaker" Ramses of Hell's Bitches. I'll have you know I rank top of my class in the Officio, and I've been involved in numerous purges and witch hunts, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in stealth warfare and I'm the top killer in the entire eversor forces. You're are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with doing that shit to me in a witch barrier? Think again, fucker."

Maggie draws her katana, and wipes the blood off her face, just in time to see Eriko approaching her with open arms. Her words oddly echo through Maggie's mind.
> "You must leave! You have no relevancy to this case, you must leave it all to us!"

Maggie looks at her for a while, and then quietly goes "Okay." Minnie follows suit.
Then, the pair just walks away from the situation at pedestrian pace, back to the entrance.
> As they walk back, Minnie starts crying. "What's Debbie gonna do? I'm scared for her, Maggie."
> Eh, I'll call in some favors. Or we get lucky and find another."
> Eriko jumps up and down with glee, then remembers she's not alone. "Yes, right then. Let's be off, shall we?"
Silence reigns as the party tries to catch up to what actually just happened. They are mostly shocked, while Jordan is mostly mad, but they had an entirely different job to attend to.
> Liese_Brandt remains quiet for the rest of the trip, and although her smile eventually returns, it is partially fake to hide the sudden cold shower of distrust and paranoia she just received. Callidus are scary and she probably won't feel safe near one again for a while. Her mood, on the other hand, won't stay mired long, as the target is finally in sight.

Note #2 Eriko is overpowered.
This being an alpha test, I've asked the players at the start to break the shit out of the system as hard as they could. More than anybody, Eriko's player took me up on my word. After a solid half a year of applying nerfs to the things Eriko was using (like here at the start, maxing out her Mental Strength score and liberally spamming Suggestion - essentially using baby's first enchantment like Charm Person in combat and having the spell save to make it work), it was already sort of a theme of Eriko's character that her powers were ridiculous, and that she was kicked out on this suicide mission because everybody in the Seventh was terrified of her. It still brought me quite a bit of headache to believably prevent her from bypassing any and all obstacles in manner not dissimilar to a 3.pf caster in a party of martials.

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Soon enough, a wok appears before the party. The Familiars seem strangely vary of it, there are only very few inside. In the middle of it, amid broiled vegetables and what seems to be a slice of pizza, she sits.

> "I did tell you what it looked like." Liese says.
> "And I was wrong for doubting you." Eriko responds.
> Jordan_Ramses crouches at the lip of the wok and take a big whiff of the frying contents.
The girls furthermore notice a worrying thing: There are sparks coming out of the thing's mouth. It probably had some sort of a breath-type attack.

Taking great caution, they slowly move to surround the beast, toeing on the edge of the wok. Whether the Witch is sleeping with her eyes open, or completely oblivious, she lets them come quite far.
> Oriana tries to keep the party together again: "We should come up with a plan. The shell rules out attacking from behind, but Jordan and I can attack from the sides while the three of you surround her on the rim of the pan and shoot.“
Eriko grumbles about confronting a culprit before knowing their motive.

Nobody was sure if the Witch was going to react if they started stepping onto the vegetable to smack her, and so Liese uses her familiar for something else: She has it land behind the Witch. That way, if the Witch becomes angry, she should turn away from the party. Sure enough, the Witch turns to the bird, and gurgles something. A perceptive observer could see a stream of letters fading around her, and Liese can read it – the Witch complains that it is not yet done cooking.

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> [No tasting before it's done! Get out!]
> "Well it ain't going to die from us staring at it." Jordan complains, restless. She hops onto the vegetable, while the Witch is moving towards the crow, to adress its presence in her cradle properly. Just as Jordan lands, though, it spins towards her like an office chair.
> [I SAID OUT! DO I HAVE TO SPANK YOU WITH A LADDLE?]

It's on now.

It twirls and weaves around the pan, trying to catch Jordan with its antlers. Jordan evades it deftly, hopping over and under, but if someone were to get hit, and dragged into the oil, they probably wouldn't be fine.

> “Its motive is related to what it's cooking right now!“ Eriko looks very proud of herself.
> Liese actually adresses the 'detective's rambling that time: "That's correct, she asked us to wait for her to finish. I'm not sure that's a good idea though..."

Down in the wok, Jordan duels the Witch. Getting in on it is difficult, and so she mostly throws her steak knives at it. It does not escape anybody's attention that ranged combat is not Jordan's strong suit, either, but Witches of this level are broader than the broadest barn at the broad barn store. Liese, a bit better at it, starts providing her some fire support. The Witch's areas of interest are just the face and the shell, and so all that the girls have to worry about is that, whatever they do, they must not hit the shell. Eriko then warns everyone that Familiars are coming to protect their master, and pulls out a handgun of her own.

>>76630399
>Note #2 Eriko is overpowered.
Giving mind control to players never works in my experience, and using it on PCs just generates butthurt.

Emiri's shots mostly bounce off the face, which only seems to drive the Vindicare angrier. Oddly enough, the angrier she becomes, the better she shoots.
> Liese notices this as well and manages to draw the appropriate conclusions thanks to her own knowledge of Enchantment magic and Witches in general. "Her face is warded for defending against magic attacks, but open to physical shots, try hitting her somewhere else if you're going to use magic."

Under the following onslaught, the Witch recoils backwards, only to splash a whole lot of oil at Jordan, and Eriko, who had to move onto the vegetable to get any range with her handgun.
> Jordan Ramses crosses her arms over her face as she gets splashed with hot oil "Shit. I haven't been hit with that much oil since I last ate at Pizza Hut!"
> Eriko, meanwhile, screams in pain, and tosses her oily jacket down at the massive piece of carrot. "How DARE you!" she accuses the witch.

> Oriana hops from vegetable to vegetable while roaring. She lands behind the witch and rings its shell like a large bell. "Come on, you slug, keep up with me!"
The Witch recoils back again. This time, everyone can see the sparks gathering at her mouth. It is clear it's going to shoot something.

> "HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO THE DETECTIVE, YOU TWO-BIT, THIRD-RATE, FELONIOUS SLOP-EATER!" Eriko screams at the witch, pointing a finger accusingly. Leveling her gaze at the witch, Eriko infuses her words full of power and self-righteous certainty, and she shouts, "ALL SUPERNATURAL AGENCIES ARE RULED OUT AS A MATTER OF COURSE! ERGO, YOU, A SUPPOSED SUPERNATURAL BEING, ARE MERELY AN ACT OF DECEPTION ON THE PART OF THE CULPRIT!" She's actually shaking a little as she continues belting out orders at the witch. "REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE, A MERE HUMAN BEING, AND END THIS CHARADE! BE SILENT, AND DISAPPEAR INTO NOTHING!"
Eriko claps her hands, and the Witch stops mid-move for a second, before resuming what it was doing. A few letters appear at its mouth.

The sheer amount of magic power that Eriko is wasting in trying to affect a Witch with a basic charm is enough to make the snail momentarily hesitate. It is clear to all at this point that Eriko is a completely sane person you want to have on your assignment, as she pants and gawps in angered disbelief.

However, everyone else gets ready to use the opening, and coordinate the next attack, being faced with the very real possibility that the oil will be set on fire, alongside everyone fighting atop it. On one side of the wok, Oriana gathers power into her feet just as Maggie did earlier. In her case, though, she'd use the leap's energy to back a strike. From the other side, the Witch is petered with bullets and knives, giving the Eversor a clean shot.

The hit cracks its shell, and corrects the Witch's facing to the sky. A tongue of flame erupts towards the nonexistant ceiling of this nightmarish kitchen.

> [But... I had to make it... he wanted to try Flambé...]
> [Maybe... I should have gotten into cocktails...]

。。。

The last thing that remains of her are a few more letters at her mouth, before the world fades to black, and everyone is standing on concrete floor again, under the shadow of a bridge. On the ground stands a single Grief Seed, unmoving and straight, like Grief Seeds do.
> Oriana bows her head and closes her eyes. "May the Blessed Lady take you into her arms and grant you peace, and may She do the same for us when our time comes. Amen."
> Then, she further asserts the situation. "It was a good fight. When her mouth started to light up I thought we were in trouble, but we all came through it just fine. I think we have Eriko to thank for that. Sometimes even words can be an effective weapon."
> Eriko snorts... then acts as if everything is fine "Naturally, Watson."

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> Oriana goes on: "Thanks for your fire support, Liese and Emiri, and thanks for helping me flank it, Jordan. Without you taking the front, I wouldn't have been able to get a clean shot at the back."
> "Yeah, not bad for our first run." Jordan stretches.
> Oriana picks up the Grief Seed and places it in her inventory. Smiling, she says, "Alright, who's up for a little rest and relaxation?"
> Emiri crosses her arms and frowns, but nods anyways. "We really don't have anything else for today?"
> "Not until we get debriefing out of the way." Oriana explains.

That's when it suddenly occurs to the party that nobody has any idea where to find Therese. Even Oriana. At times like this, she would call the Squad Leader, but her phone appears to be turned off. With not much else to do, she tries the other number Therese gave her, of a contact that would deliver the party's monthly Grief Seed payout. The number is picked up by someone introducing himself as Sara Vogel, and subsequently saying a bunch of slavic words that Oriana doesn't understand, before trying English. The party's situation is quickly explained.
> "Therese, huh. Didn't talk to her in a year. You serving in Romania? Last time I remember, she is kind of a lazy bum. Career ho, you know? She'd play a lot of video games for training, and then present herself as an ace. Try looking at an arcade. Shame she got sent two countries over, hahaha! Got her promotion alright."

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> Oriana makes a face at this last remark. "Alright. Thanks, Sara, I'll try the arcade. If I can't find her there, should I check back with you, or is there a better number to call?"
> "I'm serving in Serbia. There are other girls close by, she probably got a Seed through someone else, like say, Anne, over in Croatia. Not that she needed it, having a few whole towns for herself. When you request seeds, you fill in a form, go to the next city over that has a cell, and leave it with someone there. Then they will pass it on, and the package will come back in two weeks or so. So I can tell you where I live, and you can leave the paper here. Though it's better to leave a few same papers at a few people's places. In case someone dies, you know. They'll just ignore the other ones."

When the party understands that the turnaround time is two weeks, they realize how screwed they potentially are if they don't do their job.

> "They got some norms, so they take your request once in two weeks, three weeks, month, depending on what you do in the town. You've got to plan for postal offices in different countries and shit, though. Well, I'll tell you my adress now. You'll probably have to take a long-ass train ride, but it's once a month you know? Won't kill you."
Oriana is now shocked about what she signed up for. "We have to do the forms in person?"
> "We're not exactly Vanus headquatres, here. Better keep it simple. There were cases when some rogue would try to claim someone's seed by filling their form with a different adress, though. I have no idea why I can't send a mail. Well, here's where I live."
The girl proceeds to dictate a few numbers and names to Oriana.

> "Oh yeah, there's no form on the internet. You either come with it or get one from someone else and copy it. Try Therese if you have no idea about the forms, I guess."

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> Oriana takes the phone away from her ear and stares at it incredulously. After a moment, she returns it to her ear and says, "Do you keep copies in your office?"
> "Yeah. You can do that too."
> Jordan makes a gagging gesture at mention of paperwork
> Eriko wrinkles her nose.
> Emiri grumbles.
> Liese appears to be unaffected.

。。。

Since everybody is dirty and oily, they decide to take care of their lodgings first. Oriana lives at a boarding house, and she is not great at lying. If the boarding house had more attendees of Pius's Academy for Passionate Ladies, it should only sell her story more easily. Three rooms, six beds, five of them. Fate would not provide the party with single-bed rooms, as if to imply that something was still missing.
Things are going smoothly.Emiri and Liese go looking for the Squad Leader right as they empty their inventories into the room. Jordan is happy that water doesn't taste like rust. Oriana spaces out, listening to music, and sings a song her Warmaster sings poorly in the shower. Eriko sniffs Jordan's clothing while she isn't looking, leaving a trail of oil. The wounds are cleaned, though a competent medic who could spray the hurt with the stingy thing would be helpful.

In the meantime, Emiri and Liese try to hunt down the Squad Leader, joined by the other three around nightfall. This turns out to be a practically impossible ordeal, as the woman they know as 'Princess' is the local biggest spender, and staff keeps letting her through back exits, leading to wild chases through the streets. Late into the night, Oriana gives up, just calling her phone again, and they manage to agree to meet up at Hoof's Burgers, a large local hamburger place.

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After arriving, the Squad Leader deigns to mention that when the girls from the Eighth stop by, they tend to this hamburger place for a talk, but she hasn't seen Maggie in a while. Maggie's turf, however, is a hundred kilometers away, in Bucharest and its surroundings, so it was unlikely you'd ever run into her here.
Rather than explode into anger, Jordan agrees that yes, they'd definitely get along, and yes, she'd love to meet Maggie sometime.
It is then further explained that it was actually a cell of 12th, originally, but Maggie basically runs it these days, because they were short on staff. When Therese hears that Maggie in fact has been here, she does not seem to mind, because after all, the 12th is stingy. That was quite a bit of good will, considering the ramifications of poaching.

Furthermore, Maggie had ten girls under her thumb, while Therese only had Oriana, and she had more than one city for every Magical Girl, while Therese only had this big one. And now she had four more mouths to feed. She must have been pretty confident about that whole Witch infestation thing.
The party requires Maggie's number, Therese tries to call it, it does not pick up. The woman promises to try arranging something, but it still looks like she is rather happy about the presence of more sparklies in her city.

> "Just so you understand, my territory, and now yours, is smaller than hers, by a lot. It's this city, and the villages around. Now, the mountain Witch we'll talk about again in a minute, has lots of Familiars. I didn't get one, and they seem to grow into Witches. So there are more Witches now, so there have to be more Magical Girls, as well as people supposed to take care of the problem - who, as I was told, are Liese and Eriko here. And Familiars can grow into Witches. That's why, if you have a squad, you probably want to cover all the entrances to a Barrier. This time I only knew of the one you came through, though. "

> "But you wouldn't want a Familiar to get away. It won't lead the victims to the Witch, it will eat them itself. They can even form a Grief Seed of their own. Actually, if a Witch does not drop a Grief Seed, I'd say that's because it wasn't a real Witch.
> Just a very fat Familiar.
> ...so the reason why there are more Witches lately in these parts, is because of the Witch in the mountains. Kindly point me in her direction, and I'll rid us all of this mess. But so far I can't even find one Familiar of hers. They're supposed to be birds, I hear."

> Liese leans back slightly and clears her throat. "Alcylone's familiars are birds, yeah, but split in half, blue and pink. They're actually said to be very smart so they can deceive us or understand us."
> Therese looks grumpy about that "...Well, that is an information I could have used."
> "Maybe Maggie can find the Witch. She's already up in other people's business anyway." Jordan says with obvious sarcasm.
Therese, for her part, does give the party a few clues, such as the recent death of a mafia boss's daughter. Allegedly, she was chasing a bird into the mountains and fell. It was something she meant to investigate, if she wasn't busy protecting the lives of folk in more immediate manner.

It is clear at this point, that Liese has additional information that others don't, and that Eriko's role is protecting the party against Alcyone's song, which can apparently even charm Magical Girls.
> Oriana nods in thought. "...I can understand why Eriko and Liese are here now, but what about Emiri and Jordan?"
That was truly a mystery for the ages. If the Fourteenth had needed extra muscle, they would have just thrown more Orianas at the problem. Seeing the opportunity, Jordan also asks about something sensitive:
> "Oh, Therese."
> "Mhm?"
> "Did uh, you get my file?"
> "...I probably passed it to Oriana. Liese and Eriko were the people they told me about."
> "I-I see."
> "...actually, wait, they also said there were two people that could be a bit dangerous, one from the Eighth, and one from the Ninth."
But, as the Squad Leader then said, that was probably prejudice. Clearly, they were all good girls, and nothing bad would come of this. Ever.
Until the time that no such thing would happen, the party had three months to find and kill the Witch Alcyone, wherever and whoever the hell she was. After three months, it was assumed by the brass that the situation would become critical, and an inordinate amount of civilians would start dying to her spawn. The girls' daily patrols made hunting look easy, but the big prey would keep laughing at them from the mountains above.

>>76630329
Sure. You'll just have a lot more homuras running around, especially if you allow guns, which technically is half of the system. At the same time, the Gear and Requsition tables were lost at some point, since then we did everything by memory or ruling on spot for three years, and technology or generally ability for a meguca to subsist without magic in return for being suboptimal is meant to be half of the entire system.

>>76630515
It worked out in the end. The system's core ideology is giving the player enough rope to hang thimself.

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In the following weeks, Hoof's Burgers were used as a place to meet up with Therese, and give her a status report, which mostly consisted of the unrelated Witches and curious public unrest that the party ran into. Around the second week, just when the girls started getting comfortable in the dorms, they ran into an odd person in the burger shop – Therese was talking to a girl with shoulder-long hair apparently swept back by grease, with features so American-Italian they were blackmailing your cats just by entering the house.

> "...so that's what it boils down to. Them's the breaks. Myself, I don't give a fuck about Debbie. She pulled the wrong straw from Eightball if you ask me."
> "But it creates... circumastances. You know."
> "Well, they're there. I should go. They probably have a grudge or something."

As she leaves, the eavesdropping party is noticed by this person despite their best efforts, and so Eriko cheerfully greets this person, playing it by the ear. She introduces herself as one of Maggie's girls, a Callidus. She goes straight to the point, clearly not keen on getting dogpiled by these girls.
> "If you got some ham with Maggie, it's best to go to her straight up. We aren't really power rangers over there. Mostly work in pairs."

The situation back at the Barrier is quickly explained: Debbie, the blonde who ran away, has a badly corrupted Soul Gem. She needs an abnormal amount of Grief Seeds to keep going, and being a Vanus mostly concerned with paperwork, can't very well go out hunting herself. This has eventually made Maggie go looking for some of those seeds outside of her turf. Of course, she'd thought Therese needed help here anyway, and did not expect to run into an entire new squad. Maggie is very bad with first impressions.


The Callidus badly needs to leave, but before she lets her through, Liese asks her an odd question:
> Wait.. are you Zlata?"

> "Oh yeah. My name's Vinnie. Nice to meet you." she brushes her hair back with her fingers. "And nope. Zlata's been missing for two months now. Mira says she totally didn't get nommed by a Witch, but I don't buy it."
> Liese crosses her arms with a thoughtful expression. "MIA for 2 months huh.... Think the cult might be involved somehow? This is still their turf."
> "We've thought about that, but no way to confirm it. Zlata is a blonde. Has short hair. Looks really, really like a dyke. But there's like ten of us, you know. Maggie is only the leader in name, too."
No one questions Liese's apparent extraneous knowledge – it's not the first time she said something like that in the last two weeks. She is eventually let go, but not before taking a message from Jordan to wish Maggie a knife day.

The girls catch up with Therese, and the results of their work are put together. Firstly, Eriko has had a productive number of days, studying the town for clues.
> "As for what I've found, there have been a lot of disappearances lately. One wealthy old man's daughter up and vanished; he's blaming his business rivals, who have mysteriously declined a ransom. There's a big string of disappearances, really, and the media is placing blame on the mafia groups. There's a lot of unrest. People want the police to do something." Eriko gestures to the empty burger place, "Which could explain why this place is almost deserted. People are scared. Meanwhile, the 'hipster killer' is considered unrelated, because while many victims are found, anyone considered a 'hipster', or women who dye their hair, simply disappear."
The girls mull over the info, while Eriko goes on.
> "Let's see... a local gym was burned down, blamed on a gas leak officially. Everyone else thinks it was someone working out there. What's interesting is that according to what I've heard, the fire didn't touch the buildings nearby."

Eliminating the other more evasive Witches who fed in the area was required, to make space for researching Alcyone. This was mostly Oriana and Jordan'|s job. There was a Witch with eye-fireball Familiars, and a form of a goopy wolf, who escaped the girls for a while, until Jordan managed to finally kill it. Oriana also mentions meeting a few monkey-ish Familiars who did not seem to belong to any of the Charlies the Fourteenth had set them upon throughout the weeks.

Notably, Therese with Jordan together managed to catch one of Alcyone's Familiars. It was a big noisy bugger that kept attacking them with sound waves, however, and kept breaking everything in the city, so they had to kill it.

Therese, as one avenue, mentions she knows the mafia boss who lost his daughter likely to Alcyone since she fit her type, and the girls could probably just try to talk to him, but after a lengthy discussion, the idea is abandoned. In particular since Jordan seems big on painting the town red with mobster blood.
It is then proposed that one of the girls – maybe Eriko, who won't be affected by the charm - could dye their hair purple, and trek the mountains to bait Alcyone out. This thought, which should have been by all rights abandoned, is declared the best idea ever, with only the slight, admitted downside that if it works, it leaves Eriko alone against a Beta Witch's entire Barrier.
Oriana takes the opportunity to note that, upon observing everyone's capabilities for a while, they're probably not in any shape to reliably beat a Beta, even if all of them manage to slip inside. Therese's plan was to call up Maggie, and get a large hunting party together with her cell, once there is was a reliable way of tracking Alcyone down – maybe even request reinforcements from the 14th, if they have anyone to dispatch at the time.

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> Liese eventually decided to come out with it by revealing partial amounts of information, since she didn't know how much was classified. "Actually, if we find the Barrier and you give me some time, I'll have a way to keep track of it. I'm not allowed to say more about it though, I think."
Additionally, Liese was given some sort of a supernatural tracking device which could be planted into a Barrier, strengthening its signature to hunters, so if the Barrier could be reached once, a larger raid could later be called as long as the package got in. Actually, it turns out that 12th had already called dibs on Alcyone's seed, and so the girls feel the slavs should be pulling their weight as well.
> "Liese, is this enough information to bring more of your people in on?"
>"I'm not sure, I tried to get into contact with other girls from the 12th, but I couldn't reach them."
The bottom line was, Maggie's squad was able to come over within hours. Like that, it becomes the plan to procure thick-rimmed glasses. They'd get into Alcyon'es Barrier once, let Liese do whatever it was she planned to do, and once the Witch was tracked, organize a big hunt. Emiri is opposed to bringing in Maggie, which results in a lot of arguing, and the meeting ending on a sour note, with everyone running off to do whatever they want.

Liese leaves early, and Emiri eventually storms out too, sucking on her OJ-straw as she huffs with anger. The detective girl catches up with Liese, interrogating her about the weird, coded journal she's been writing notes into, and together they wow to try approaching this as the smart people.

Oriana, meanwhile, catches up with the Vindicare from Japan, who was clearly the most in need of her attention.
> Emiri doesn't notice Oriana catch up to her and tries to quickly but quietly slide the bag of OJ into her storage
> Emiri fails miserably and accidentally dumps the contents of the bag all over the floor and silently curses under her breath
Oriana helps her pick up the cartons spilled over the street, wondering how to start the conversation. The archer girl has only very rarely been seen without a pack throughout the week, and at this point it was past the point of teasing, and well into the disturbing territory. After all, Orange Juice is not addictive, is it?
> Emiri is still angry about Jordan. "I'd put her in her place."
> Oriana puts a hand on Emiri's shoulder. "You shouldn't have to, and you really shouldn't at all. She isn't your enemy. We are all magical girl. We are all the Blessed Lady's chosen. Officios and origins don't matter. We're here to fight Witches and keep the Dark from gaining power, and infighting is doing the exact opposite."
> Emiri turns around, her mind visibly filled with unease, "I don't see what killing people needlessly has to do with fighting Witches and keeping the Dark from gaining power."
> "It doesn't have anything to do with it, but putting another magical girl out of commission works in the Dark's favor. I'm not telling you to go along with Jordan when she gets murderous, but don't provoke her, either. Let me take care of her. I'm sure she can be made to understand."

Maggie must have gotten a memo herself, and is found sitting on railing in front of the building, joined by a different girl – an african american in a tuxedo, with a bit of an afro, and a sharp face. She would later introduce herself as Juliet Jackson, Vinnie's coworker. Something about her feels off to Jordan, in a good way. Greetings are exchanged carefully from both sides. It's clear Maggie is embarassed about the affair, too.
> "Couldn't have known the third Barrier we run into will have a bunch Neophytes in it."
> "Squad Rank." Jordan corrects, "50 some missions."
> "That's reassuring." Maggie tells her. "Figured you wanted to murder me or something. I'd talk alone, but Julie here says she remembers you and that I shouldn't be alone with you.
> "No offense." the dark skinned girl speaks, in a deep voice. "You've kind of got a real shit rep."
This is not so shocking to Jordan, but as it turns out, Maggie's caution is also brought upon by the yet unlearned fact that the exact same thing happened with Therese before, and Maggie got destroyed in the duel. Jordan connects the dots, and saves her the huge lecture. Instead, she inquires about Debbie. Answer is the seer was supposed to be safe for at least a month after the raid, but.
> "It might get worse, though. She gets these visions and sees weird shit in them. That might be what fucked her Gem up so bad."
> "There probably isn't anything to do about that but stick her in a Silent room. And in there she's useless to Eightball, so."
> This spurs Jordan's curiosity."Visions? What kind?"
> "Witches. There's one that comes up a lot. Like a giant brain I think. Has black Magical Girls as Familiars."
> "Saw a picture of the Walpurgisnacht? Like that."
> The other girl speaks up for a second time. "It's scary as shit, is what it is. She wakes up at night screaming about how all shall be consumed by oblivion and the whatever of angels."

Being all Americans, they get along well. The Eighth's girls here worked in four pairs – including Debbie who worked as a clerk, and remnants of the Twelfth's former cell they were replacing. Those remnants used to be two girls, named Miroslava and Zlata. Miroslava was still working on her own, but Julie seemed fairly convinced that Zlata is dead, even though the other slav, Miroslava, would insist she wasn't.
Finally, the girls admit Julie and Vinnie worked on Therese's turf normally, doing odd jobs for the mafia – but since they weren't working as Magical Girls, and taking her prey, it was not an issue covered by inter-Officio laws, unless Jordan wanted to make into one. Giving them a clearance, Jordan exchanges contact info with her compatriots, and makes her way back home. In the boarding house, she surprises everyone by not only actually returning, but not having a drop of blood on her, either.

Note #3 There are a lot of named NPCs in this campaign. A good few hundred.
I blame this wholesale on Jordan's player, who started a bunch of their first interactions with nameless mooks with the question 'What's your name?' and upon finding out that this pisses me off, proceeded to do it every time they reasonably could ask the question.
Therefore, it follows that every mook has an on-the-fly created backstory about her sick grandmother and domestic violence and family debt and her favourite bowling alley being turned into a sweatshop for dildoes.

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There is a point where these tragic stories and characters begin to blend into each other, which is pretty ironic, considering every Magical Girl is supposed to be a special snowflake, but in the end I suppose it does drive a point home. Some of them raise above bait and carve their own stories into the fabric of this setting. Most don't.
So, you don't have to remember everybody. You don't have to remember Becky the Quarterback, Vitula the Cowgirl, or Chuckie the Nun-Chuck Nun. They were created in the moment, and in fact I may never tell you about them. I will try to spare you as many names as possible, and remind you who people are if they ever come back, but know at least that every character from this first story arc makes a cameo later, so it's good to remember them.


> "So, Maggie agreed to help us out, no one's going to intrude on our witches anymore, don't piss off Therese, and you might be interested in whatever's going on with Debbie, Lieze!" she smugs happily.
> "And I didn't kill anyone!"
> "Oh and Zlata, was it?"
> "Yeah, she's deader than the tree that got made into the stick still stuck in Emi's ass!"
> Liese bears the news somberly. "That.. much I figured.."
The Twelfth is an Officio primarily concerned with recording Witches. As such, it's customary for their hunters stationed in an external cell to take a trip to Prague once every month or so, and submit a report on the Witches they've run into. Zlata, as Liese explains, is a local girl she was notified about, who hasn't reported back in three months – more than the two that the Eighth had considered her MIA for. Liese had the phone number of her partner, but calling it wasn't a joyous duty.

Jordan then passes the exact description of Debbie's dreams onto Liese, since the americans told her to bother some kind of a dildo with it that understands Witches. Liese seemed to be just that.
> "Well, I - stop that you double-dildo - I study them but that doesn't mean I have every single one of the memorized, I'm just a rookie."
The eversor communicates the rest of the information, as well.
> "So I basically did all the stuff Therese was supposed to do."
> "I feel like a dildo now."
Fortunately, the Squad Leader wasn't there. In her place, seeing what Jordan did entirely without telling anyone, the person actually tasked with responsibility does what she must:
> Oriana stands and addresses the rest of the girls. "It's become readily apparent to me that we are not currently able to function as a team. If we go into combat against Alcyone like this, we will be in great danger. For this reason, we will have mandatory team building starting tomorrow morning."

Time is henceforth spent mostly shopping for hipster clothes, and Jordan drilling Eriko in the basics of combat to not much avail, mostly just as an excuse to molest the Callidus. Another week passes. The girls get a better feeling for the area, and get their plan ready. The next event of relevance finds them in the dorm, discussing whether studded spikes count as hipster, and by extension whether scene girls can be considered hipster while they're dressed in them, an accessory more closely associated with post-apocalyptic roadsters, who are the antithesis of cute, and obviously more in the punk direction, though both are into dyed hairdos.

At some point during that particular conversation, Oriana dashes past the group while they sit in the boarding house's lounge, with a phone on her ear. She yells something at them from the hallway she rapidly disappears to, out of which their ears can salvage 'Therese', 'new girl', and 'back you up for the hunt'. The group leisurely gets up and follows her, which results in them completely losing her somewhere around the reception, and having to figure out where she could be meeting up with that new girl. At the hour, residents were coming back from school, and anybody here could have been a magical girl to a stranger. The boarding house was also a rather easy to miss building with no discerning signs, which was good for camouflage, but bad right now. That left either a nearby town square, the train station, or the number of restaurants.

After a bit of bumbling around the square, Oriana is sighted at the train station, alone. She then explains that the new girl was taking her time, but really, they could be anywhere. Therese did not leave Oriana with much information, it seemed, so all that was left was to wait.

Eriko has a different idea, and pulls out her Soul Gem. Normally, what Magical Girls called a 'ping' would be used to locate Barriers and Witch-like beings in the wild, but it was possible to learn another method of using it. Especially among Callidus, it was commonly taught how to attune this ability to detect nearby Soul Gems. Its effective range would be much shorter, but enough for a big building like this. The big downside of this ability was that it could be more or less felt by every Magical Girl within its range, so it would reveal one's location to enemies as well, but for this kind of situation, it was perfect.

>>76631010
>I blame this wholesale on Jordan's player, who started a bunch of their first interactions with nameless mooks with the question 'What's your name?' and upon finding out that this pisses me off, proceeded to do it every time they reasonably could ask the question.
lmao that's first class

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When Eriko does this, aside of her companions, she finds a signature at a surprising place – at least the full hundred meters away, on the street outside the station. Running there, it turns out to be an asian, who is entering a bus. A bus that could, and would, take her very far away, at the foot of the mountains.
> Eriko points at the girl getting on the bus. "It's her!"
> "The one in the hoodie and jeans!"
The girls do all they can, and run towards the girl, shouting at her to get off, which surprisingly, she does, forcing the door back open with her hands and leaping out when the bus is in-motion, as the driver shouts some slavic insult at her. She stands up to face the party, looking quite perplexed.
> "Hello! Are you the new girl?"
> "Well that tactical roll would indicate to yes."
> "Yes, and yes, I suppose. Kagamine Fuyuki."

Fuyuki explains she is from the Ninth in Japan, like Emiri, having volunteered for this job – which already sets her apart from the rest of the party in their minds.
> "In any case, have you guys seen Miss Oriana?" Fuyuki says, as she procures a map from her hoodie.
> "She was by the station a few sec---"
> A girl with a sidetail raises her hand, claiming to be Oriana.
> "That's me."
Seeing that the jap is having clear trouble internalizing that Oriana is in fact Oriana, it is now clear to all that there are some shenanigans afoot here. She then explains herself from the top. Things begin to fall in place, in more than one way.

Upon arriving, Fuyuki called first Therese, then Oriana, who asked to just meet her at the station. There, the only person who looked magical-girly was a hungry-looking stocky blonde, who seemed surprised at being asked whether she's Oriana, but confirmed that sure, she is. This is followed by a bunch of confused ramblings, culminating in a statement that she'd have to leave for work soon, and she'll give Fuyuki directions to the others, followed by a bit of odd mumbling to herself. In the end, she said that 'they probably already left for the mountains', and told Fuyuki she should take a certain bus to catch up.
> 'Oriana' stops by a tobacco booth, pulls out a map from one of its stands, and lays the change on the resident old lady's counter.
> She pulls out a black liner, and draws out a way for you to get to the location without blinking once. She also adds a lot of notes about bus routes and distances.
> At one point she writes a few Witch letters down, which disturbs you slightly, but she crosses them over right away.
> Fuyuki stays silent all throughout, her eyes flitting rapidly left and right as she absorbs all the info as fast as she can.
> "This is a bit of a cheat, though, I can't tell where on the road they are, so I'm showing you where they will be fighting."
Fuyuki hung around the station increasingly confused, staring at the map as the blonde left, and eventually headed for the bus station. Alas, Japanese politeness prevented her from doubting anything. The map was still in her hand, and the party took interest in it. It would have Fuyuki take a few more buses, effectively getting to the highest situated village possible, and climbing up the rest of the way. It even had a few notes attached about the timings of the buses.

Liese suggests that this is a trap laid by the Witch – seeing an isolated Magical Girl, she posessed a civilian, to lure Fuyuki into her Barrier this way. If the team was lucky, they could knock the whole thing out right now. A bit more worryingly, she also points out how that the description of the blonde matched up with Debbie, the Vanus that was starved for Grief Seeds in the other cell. If she carried Alcyone's Witch Kiss, it could explain why her Soul Gem had trouble holding back the stain. And, in case of posession, it also would not be strange that the Witch would have her scribble some Witch letters by mistake. After all, the girls' dossiers mentioned the Witch had been known to kiss Magical Girls before, and that was also why Eriko was here, to protect their minds.

The plot has thickened. Everyone is kind of spooked by the amount of dimensions this Witch was capable of playing board games in, but also realized this is an opportunity that could not be thrown away, and with all of them together, no harm should come of checking it out. Thus, their new teammate would be baptized by fire, and they would get onto the next bus with her – hopefully, half an hour too late would not make the Witch give up on waiting. In an ideal case, they would be able to at least enter her Labyrinth. Once in there, Liese had apparently been carrying a device given to her by her Officio, which could allow them to track the Witch once the Barrier was unmade.

Because, that was sort of the issue with Alcyone. Witches normally picked urban areas as a hunting ground, but not her. The reason the Incubators could not just send in a professional hunter squad from the Second, and be done with it, was her elusive nature. She'd move her Barrier around the peaks of the Carpats often, only sending Familiars downhill to hunt civilians, and even if you knew where she was, it was hard to reliably reach her without the benefits of a vehicle.

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Basically, in order to mobilize a large hunting party, the girls needed to make sure they wouldn't just be forcing everyone to randomly hike around the mountain range's spine, limited by the reach of their Ping.

[]

Alcyone's Barrier – entrance.png

A few bus rides and hundreds of meters above sea level later, just when the goat paths noted on the map start disappearing, the girls' Soul Gems finally confirm the presence of several Familiars, as well as a Barrier entrance.

> Eriko smiles and shifts to a commanding, authoritative tone, with undercurrents of magic enforcing her will: "You will not allow yourselves to be taken by the Witch's Kiss. You will not allow yourselves to become ensorcelled by Alcyone. You will be the ones in control, and will not let the witch control you."
> Fuyuki gazes at the direction through the trees. "Well, the damned thing is expecting me."
> "So, I guess I go... first." The Callidus replies, much to her consternation.
Fuyuki disappears off the path, and goes to scout ahead. This is clearly something she is good at. She comes back, explaining that the entrance is over a cliff, but the area is swarming with colorful, bird-like Familiars. Bit by bit, the group draws closer, until they can confirm these are indeed the shitbirds that Jordan ran into in town. Right as they have visual contact, the birds notice them too. Eriko, now hidden in a bush and not intent on fighting much, informs the group that there are two types – thin ones, and fat ones.

Now, since they are merely Familiars, the group decides to split up and do a methodical sweep, the kind that are routeinely done before and after locating a Barrier, to make sure none of the little assholes can slip out and hurt somebody later.

This confident approach is a mistake.

>>76629733
>Magical Girl Noir Quest, in our eyes, was a little too good
Thanks for announcing your shit taste right out the gate.

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Liese raises her assault rifle and it jams with the first shot. Emiri's bow fortunately cannot jam, blasting a bird to bits. What also cannot jam is their enemy's beaks, which spit a hail of sparkling, pearly, lance-like projectiles back at the group, with surprising accuracy. Emiri, who takes a grazing one in the side, notes it is almost as strong a magic projectile as the stuff she is shooting herself, and there were many more birds than them. Fortunately, their range was limited, enough that the birds had to stay low to the ground.
> Jordan leaps into the fray and swings out with a wide arcing slash that impacts with the damaged faggotbird and keeps going. The bird is transformed into several chunks of gore and feathers. "Fuck off with your sparkling vomit bullshit, shitbird! Only I'm allowed to beat up Emi."
> Emiri overhears this and freezes in astonishment for a second before going back to killing faggotbirds, unsure how to think of this.
Fuyuki then appears out of the foliage far ahead, wielding her magic weapon – a cavalry sabre, well suited for lunging attacks. Though her strike manages to break the bird's formation, and take the heat off the party, the birds quickly turn their attention to her, and she's pelleted by the silver projectiles, until Liese gets her gun to work, and sprays the group with high velocity ammo.

Note #4 Liese rolls like shit.
Especially in critical moments. One should by all rights claim confirmation bias, but it's not a matter of le ebin natty 20. One of the players made a script to figure out how well people were rolling on average, and within tens of thousands of rolls even sans cognitive bias, Liese's player is cursed.

>>76631345
Ah, I knew I'd slip up at some point. I thought the posting limit was 4000 characters on /tg/, for some reason, so now everything is out of order, and it might pretty easily take two threads.

>>76629970
contemporary /tg/ doesn't have the same community either

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To make it worse, just as Fuyuki finds her footing again, she sees the second wave of birds approach – these ones being all fat. The approaching birds open their beaks in unison, joining in singular shriek that reverberates the entire mountain, and sends Fuyuki tumbling back to the rest of the party. Jordan saw this before – there's no avoding that one, besides being out of range, or landing well
> Fuyuki Kagamine grits her teeth as her nerves are set alight by the blast, flesh and fabric alike coming off fromthe burn on her side.
> "I'm fine! I'm fine!" She growls. She rolls back on her feet with a groan, staggering as she keeps a tight grip on her Blade.
She is not the only one caught by the attack. Emiri lands cleanly with no wounds, but Oriana, in particular, hits a large rock in her tumble.
> Liese Brandt took into account everything going on around her. Most of her squadmates had been hit fairly significantly already, and they weren't even close to the entrance of the Barrier yet, let alone venturing deeper inside... "Fall back, I'll cover you."
> "Thank you." Fuyuki grunted out breathlessly, the faintest hints of panic creeping into her tone as she breaks cover to make a beeline for Liese and the rest of the group. "What kind of Familiars are these things?"
Since magic attacks did not seem to be very effective on those things, she reaches for her own handgun, and Emiri draws a revolver of her own, by the example. Oriana and Jordan decide to simply charge the enemies, hoping to get their attention.

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> Jordan takes a special stance with bent legs and her knife brought up to the front of her face in a reverse blade-out grip. Her eyes seem to sharpen and muscles tense up as if compressing a spring.
> She releases that energy in a fast, but fluidly smooth charge at the hapless fatbird. With a powerful slash, she rips through the bird. The sharp steel blade glints in the light as blood spatters her face, but it can't cover the look of complete joy. "Hahaha! I didn't know thanksgiving was here already, just look at all the fresh turkeys!"
The rest is not all peaches, and shots go both ways, but the Eversors eventually make sure that the 'singers' are gone. With that, the remnant tries to annoy them with their shots, but the previous energy is not there anymore. By the end of this all, Eriko crawls out of the bushes, finding the party very badly beaten up.

The girls consider their options. Obviously a Beta Witch would have exceptional Familiars, but with this, the party's inadequacy as Magical Girls was made clear to them. There were just a few more birds between them and the entrance, but if the Barrier was stacked full of those things, it could go very badly.
> Emiri pants, "We... we should get out of here while we can."
> "Yeah... I don't plan to die here." Fuyuki wheezes out, clutching her singed side.
> Jordan is dissatisfied with the battle's result, wanting to make up for it. "They aren't that tough, I think we can at least get in and plant that tracker."
> Liese opposes her: "That won't work, I was specifically warned against that. HQ specifically said the Familiars were smart enough to remove the scroll from the Barrier, so I have to get in some distance away from the entrance -and- we need to clear that area."
The girls argue for a while, eventually deciding to sleep on it, and at least come back with Therese next time. The sun, after all, was nearly gone, and they only got to do this in the evening because of the season, and clear mountain sky.

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The last person left on the battlefield is Jordan, leaning over the remnants of a bird she had personally dissected.
> "You think we can cook them?"

Note #5 Fatbirds:
These things are probably the most annoying generic enemy I've ever come up with in any game. The power they're using (Spatial Push) was made more expensive to PCs after this encounter, but the Familiars kept it, establishing a rule that giving 5G powers to numerous enemies is dangerous. They'll appear throughout the campaign into fairly high levels with unchanged stat block, and they never stop being obnoxious.

Cooking a Familiar is a bit of a tricky affair. Familiars are made of a kind of Warp matter that's colloquially called 'witch goo', or less endearingly 'Witch Flesh'. There is density to the different parts of it, which does indeed allow for them to become a meal. They are edible, though it's said they do funny things to the stomach of a regular human, and only a Magical Girl can take it. One issue is, that this goo tends to dissolve into black smoke when the Familiar dies, or its owner dies while it's in the Barrier. In case of very powerful Familiars, however, this is not always the case, and even Witches themselves can leave a body in our world, under the right circumstances. Now, eating >actual< Witch Flesh does funny things even to a Magical Girl, and you better believe we'll talk about those later. Eating Witch Flesh of a Familiar is considered mostly safe, but foolish.

Now, according to the doctrine of the orthodox Church of the Blessed Lady, eating Witch Flesh is extremely heretical, so, of course, as soon as all the wounded were tucked in their beds, Jordan had to try it. It would be her first time, but long past due. All the cool kids in the Eighth ate Witch Flesh. It was said to drive you crazy, so the cook figured it would have no effect on her anymore.

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Liese, the other person who wasn't greatly hurt, is also up and about, having taken up the task of nursing others back to health. Magical Girls healed wounds quicker than normal people, even out of their costume, but that didn't mean they didn't need cleaning, dressing, and bandaging. As long as nothing was broken, it was better to do it this way, than to make Oriana expend her magic resources on healing faster. It would be the same in an Officio – Venenum, who were mostly in charge of the sick bay, would only expend their powers on critical cases, or highly-ranked patients whom the Officio couldn't afford to lay off duty for long. Others would have to tough it out, because their work hours were less valuable to the Incubator than Grief Seeds.

So it happened that when the roast is done, Liese is the nearest person available for Jordan to taste it. The Vindicare was initially wary of it, since she was basically being offered drugs, but eventually tried it out for the sake of science. It tastes like chicken. Chicken with the bittersweet seasoning of despair and broken dreams. Very filling, though the texture is a bit goopy. What's not eaten ends up in the fridge, and not everyone in the cell knowing the meat's identity.

In the meantime, the Squad Leader visits, is briefed on the situation, and seems deeply worried about the description of that blonde 'civilian'. She identifies her as Debbie, the Vanus from Maggie's cell, and makes a few calls, which eventually gets her Debbie herself on the phone. The phone is handed to Fuyuki.
> Fuyuki looks uncertain, but takes the phone from Therese, gingerly placing the receiver to her ear. "Hello?"
> "Hey. It's me." A familiar voice of a weird person echoes from the reciever.
> "I was just passing by, sensed a Magical Girl, and you seemed lost. Did you not fight a bunch of those bird-like Familiars at a Barrier with the other girls? That's what I prognosticated. Was my prediction accurate?"

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The entire room, surrounding Fuyuki skin on skin, tries to make sense of it.
> "Miss Debbie, I apologize for the inconvenience. And not a problem, I managed to find my way soon enough." Fuyuki replied levelly, but definitely wary given the look she was giving the other girls.
> ''Yeah.'' Debbie replies. ''Telling you I am Oriana may have been a dick move, but you wouldn't have believed me otherwise."
> "Go on."
>"That's it. First prediction was me trying to find out where the others were, and it seemed they were out of town. The second one was where you could meet up with them in a few hours, and I got a map out of it."
>The Vanus goes on: "Except it showed as a wall of Witch Letters. Hate it when that happens. This service is free of charge. I already blow a seed every odd day anyway."
Since Liese knew a thing or two about the topic of Prognostication, her face had been contorting into something entirely out of this world while she listened. Fuyuki kept asking questions – apparently Debbie had no idea what Witch this was she sent Fuyuki up against, and sounded shocked to find that it was Alcyone.
>Well, don't get angry on me. It was fated to happen."
Fuyuki takes the opportunity to ask the million dollar question. Would Debbie be able to do it again, this time specifically telling them where Alcyone's Barrier is, or will be at a given time?
> "I'll do it for a seed. It will probably take a few tries."
> "But that's how Witches are normally tracked down, so yeah. You normally wouldn't have a Vanus at a place like this, though."
> With that, the Callidus is about done. "Hold that thought until we can scrounge up an extra Seed for you, and thanks."
The call ends, and the girls go wild. This person is sketchier than a recently discovered Da Vinci manuscript, and 0% of the room believes what she said. She appears too lucid to be under a Witch Kiss, but insufficiently retarded to actually have done this to a stranger, at the expense of her own supply of magic power.

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Jordan wants to have something 'fated' happen to Debbie, while Liese puts forth a theory. Though she didn't have clearance to view the whole thing, she saw a part of Alcyone's file in the 12th's archives. According to her, it mentioned she 'had a nurturing nature', and 'doesn't understand anyone she cannot contain.' The Witch thus had a habit of taking new things into herself, which might explain her habit of trying to charm Magical Girls.
> Eriko folds her arms. "Hell, I have half a mind to detain Debbie if we see her again, but the witch would probably make her soul gem witch out if she has that kind of control over her."
> Emiri smirks. "That'd be fine, I think. One less trooper for the other team."
> Liese tilts her head lightly. "Everyone has to go at -some- point, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable making her Witch Out just like that."
> The blaster goes on. "First, I think we should find some smaller witches to toughen up, try and learn new tricks or something. Build teamwork. Try and keep Alcyone contained. Then, when the time comes to face Alcyone, we come together with the plan. We might be its preferred targets since we would be messing around with its plans a lot anyways."

It was obvious the girls were in for the long haul, now. Therese watches them argue like that, and come together mentally. More importantly, she is faced with the fact that the girls needed to become proficient if they were going to be any use in the hunt. Thus far it's mostly been Jordan dragging people out to kick the crap out of each other, but strictly speaking, it was supposed to be Therese's job to drill them.

After a few hours of searching the city for Witches to no avail, she instead does this in the most direct way possible, to get a full assessment – by dragging them out into an abandoned warehouse in the suburbs, and proposing an all-out fight, with just the limitation that people would not go for soul gems or faces. Whatever the damage, Therese claims she'd be able to heal it after the fight, at her own expense. The whole place is rusty and rotten, but it wasn't going to collapse on their heads, at least. It does not escape te girls' attention that some of the walls and partitions within the warehouse have bullet holes. According to Therese, the local crime families resolved their business here, and elsewhere.

The Squad Leader then transforms into her costume, which is basically ornate full plate armor, and summons a pair of morningstars sparkling with golden lightning. The girls are told to get some distance.

Things quickly go south from there, as Therese determines Liese to be her primary target, thanks to the assault rifle, and charges her over the length of the warehouse, but also quickly finds that defensive magic is about the only kind of magic the Vindicare is actually good at. This results in a certified Yakety Sax sort of scramble, where Therese chases Liese around the warehouse, bonking her all over, the snap shots fired her way mostly bouncing off also, while Jordan is trying to catch up and stab the Squad Leader, all the while Emiri blows up their surroundings unsure who to aim for, causing the rusty shelves to collapse all over the place. The fight ends with Eriko intervening once Liese is knocked out, the two Eversors now exchanging blows.
>"Please hold still and let me shoot you in the face," Eriko says with a smile.
>As Therese recovers from her evasive maneuver, she looks straight at the Calidus.
> "Okay."
> “Oh, fu-"
> Eriko draws her silenced pistol, levels it at Therese, and fires slightly to her left

Fuyuki takes this opportunity to leap from behind the ruined shelves for a sneak attack, but fumbles her footing, and falls on her ass. Therese concedes anyway. If everyone wasn't spooked by Eriko yet, they are now. The intended lesson was protecting the back line, but Liese could probably hold her own on the frontlines, and so the moral given is a bit half-baked:
>"You can get a living out of survivalism, but not a career. It's better to have an ace up your sleeve, I think."

。。。

Lessons are learned, and the girls know what they should focus on improving. They sit on it for a week or two, until Eriko runs across a particular cue on the news: A suspicous case of arson, the building of a public gym. It's a place in the city that Jordan has been to a few times. Eriko keeps coming by it as a part of her schedule, determining that Familiars have appeared nearby, and getting rid of those but not finding a Barrier. A few days later, she runs back to the boarding house to mobilize the party, because the place started feeling different. Emiri and Oriana are patrolling at the moment, so a four-woman party of Eriko, Jordan, Liese and Fuyuki heads out.

The building's ruins are under police investigation, circled by white tape. It makes sense they would be, since a lot of things point to arson or controlled demolition of some sort: it's the only building in a city block that has burnt down, all the way to the basement, with the fire barely even singing the neighbors. The girls, of course, understand this for what it is - the Barrier they can feel beneath the ruins is overlaying onto the mortal world, but its size is limited.

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That is one of two ways that Witches operate as far as a civilian would be concerned. They themselves can only exist in the Immaterium, but their presence affects our world. When they want to feed, they can have a Familiar go through the bother of placing a kiss on a human and leading them all they way in, or they can simply lead them into the area of reality their Barrier is laid over, and have them hang themselves or something, consuming their soul on its way out of reality. The Witch's presence is strong enough that she may sometimes place the kiss on a person standing on top of her Barrier herself. Sometimes the ambient negativity also has more physical effects than just worming itself into the psyche of people. This kind of destruction was probably be one of them.

The girls know for a fact that every Barrier has an 'entrance'. That's the whole point of setting the Barrier up, from the Witch's point of view it is rather an 'exit' – Familiars have to get out somehow, so that she can feed. In here, it seemed likely that the Barrier was set up before the house burned down, which meant the entrance was buried under the rubble, and the Witch just didn't bother shutting down the whole thing for safety's sake. Then again, though Witches generally had intelligence of -some- kind, it was pretty rare for a Witch to have any idea what they were actually doing. A hunter's hope is killing the Witch before she could possibly figure her newfound self out, and become a lot more dangerous. We'll discuss more Witch behavioral sciences later on.

Anyway, while some of our heroines were certainly strong enough to do that sort of work, especially Jordan, there was no sneaky getting around the cops on the site while lifting it all out of the way.

> Eriko, feeling safe and making some observations, states, "Right. So. I patrolled this space earlier, and the barrier was gone."
> "Now it's back."

Upon realizing what house this actually is, Jordan gets a bit loud, screaming profanities at the bitch that burned down her gym.
> Eriko is rather upset. "Jordan, stop screaming. People are looking at us funny."
> "MY LIFTS. MY SQUATS. MY PREWORKOUT."
Suddenly, the back door of one of the police cars opens, and a tired old man wearing a trenchcoat steps out of it, and wobblily looks in your direction.
> Eriko narrows her eyes. "Jordan, shut the fuck up right this second."
> Eriko points her thumb at the guy who noticed them. "You just got the police chief's attention. Are you happy now?"
As he deftly tells the party, the fact that Jordan was here before was of eminent interest to the investigation. Especially since her hair was dyed. Thus begins the inevitable questioning, and explaining.

Apparently, there was an oddity about this gym – it had been frequented by a tomboyish, short haired blonde girl registered under the name Margareta Gratia, of which the police was reasonably sure that no such person had existed. She was special among the gym's members for being able to lift quite the weight for her size. She's been there for a year or two, but a month ago, she stopped showing up completely.

> "Well," Eriko says, trying to draw attention from her misbehaving friend, "yeah, I don't know anybody by that name."
> The man Colomboes on. "But if a young girl goes to a gym full of old men, or, say, to a shooting range..."
>"Well, people notice."
> "And there was only one such girl. Are you the girl, Jordan... excuse me?"
> Liese_Brandt raised an eyebrow at the mention of the shooting range. Was that a jab in her general direction or what?

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Last the girl was seen, she left after getting into an argument with the locals, calling them stupid apes. This was a result of her being apparently some sort of a honor student, who had horrible attitude towards exercise and took her gains for granted, which the apes attempted to correct. She was a suspect less for that, though, and more for the obviously faked credentials the police found in the company's register.
Eriko recalls the monkey-esque Familiars she's ran into a few days ago. It was said that the form of the Witch's Familiars reflected other people that the girl knew in life.

> Fuyuki Kagamine folds her arms over her chest. She didn't quite want to know how fucked they were right now. "And you're asking four random teenagers about an arson case, why? Nevermind my friend here flipping out over her favorite Gym going up in smoke."
> Not worrying about the cop in the least, Jordan eventually connects the dots. "Zlata fits the description but...urgh!" She grabs her head in frustration turning back to look at the cremains of her temple of iron. "Ahhh fuck!"
> "That kind of fits..." Liese realizes. "Zlata stopped returning calls about 3 months ago.. It's starting to look more and more like she was slowly breaking down... and this is the final result."
> "Okay, let's stop beating around the bush," Eriko declares suddenly. "You know what we are, don't you?"
> She folds her arms over her chest as well.
He laughs fakely.
> "Now of course I do. You are very empathic girls, concerned for the fate of one such as you. Honest, discussing your matter in broad daylight. Unlike the Princess, for example, who is really such a shady person."
> "People even say she is one of them Puella Magi, you know? Mahou Shoujo? Kouzelna Dievka?
> "Of course they do." Eriko nods. "Local hero and all that. Of course they believe she's magic." She falls back into the groove as her frustration lessens.
> "Well, if she was, then clearly we would not have such a rotten city on our hands!"

>>76631813
> "You should work harder. Our town needs more common and unremarkable young women. It seems they just keep dying."
The man looks genuinely sad for a brief moment.

Though Fuyuki, who was taught all about OpSec in her basic training, was completely freaking out, there was nothing so strange about this, really. It was the equivalent of the detective asking Jordan whether her family is very rich, since her name is Miriam Zola.The existence of Magical Girls was carefully kept something of a conspiracy theory to the public, but responsibility of the sort a police chief or a mob boss both have filters all the conspiracy theories, prejudices, and hear-say, through empiric first-hand experience, into the reliable and flexible mesh of Inland Empire. This man might not have known precisely how sparklies were organized, or what a Witch was, but he's been at it for too old not to know how things really worked in these parts.

Additionally, some of the girls have actually noticed a bunch of reccuring men apparently following them around on patrols. The city was big enough to give those some plausible deniability, and the girls thought they might be the mafia keeping an eye on them. But they could have been cops, too.

>Liese looked back into his eyes with determination that would normally only be found on hardened veterans. "We'll break that trend. For sure."
>"That's good." He smiles warmly. "If you want to brighten our town's life with your youth, you should stay out of the goddamned mountains, too. Folk have been climbing them without food, or water, or back up. Weird kind of an extreme sport."
> Eriko nods in understanding, teeth grit. There's something stirring in her; she doesn't know what it is, only that it's driving her towards something.
> Jordan stands up and pulls out a protein shake. "This one's for you." She pops the top and spills some onto the ground solemnly, then drinks the rest while taking vitamin supplements.

Upon having exchanged all the information he could, the detective eventually declares that the murderer is clearly not returning to the crime scene, and makes his leave. This allows the party to finally investigate.
> "... What the fuck just happened?" Fuyuki finally speaks after the man gets in his car and drives off.
To be a bit more useful, Fuyuki decides to make a show of her powers – by showing nothing. Crossing the tape would still be visible by people passing by outside, as well as from all the windows around the block, and the party didn't want to go through the sewers until they absolutely had to. So, Fuyuki finds the nearest alleyway, blurs, and fades from existence. While invisible, returns to search the ruins. She immediatelly notices papers covered with Witch letters all over the place, and starts searching the ruins for any possible entrance. Anyting like a hatch or a broom closet could have been it, but the entrance is eventually found located simply down a stairway, behind a sizeable fallen-over fridge. It is pretty easily accessible from the courtyard inside the block, and that's how the rest of the party gets in.

Before they do, the papers found in the ruins are handed to Liese, since she's the only one that can read them. While she goes through them, Jordan uses the refridgerator for the gym's final lifting session.
> [...but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.]
> [...Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.]
> [...As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.]
There was a longer segment too, about a kingdom of bees, or something. These seemed to be literary quotes, which was common in a Barrier, but Liese or anyone else in the party would of course not have known the Witch could only communicate in Shakespeare. Still, she keeps them for later.

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The girls, of course, went through their intended tactics again before entering the Barrier. It has been written that no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but Sun Tzu also says a lot of other things about terrain. He says them for good reason, because this Barrier was a big complication.

It was a truly quintessential big bother indeed. The girls found themselves in a cubic cavity on the edge of some sort of a wooden wall. Peeking out, the walls were filled with monkey bars, much like a gym wall might be. Hundreds and hundreds of meters of wooden climbing bars, spanning up and down and to the side, as far as the eye could see. The only thing interrupting the damnably vertical terrain were other cavities that possibly offered a spot to rest, as well as the monkey familiars climbing them. The skybox was a bright yet cloudy sky, just misaligned to gravity by ninety degrees. Like it or not, though, they had to move, before the Familiars already started to.

The Witch's signature came from up above. It would seem that the girls were expected to climb hundreds of meters, no joke.
> These Familiars have no mouths, but have beards. Their limbs fit together in a mannequin-like fashion, and seem easy to tear off. They appear quite apt at climbing, themselves, possibly due to having two thumbs on each hand.
The girls ran into these agile Familiars before, and so they knew that they liked to try to dogpile the hunter, but did not actually have much of a way to inflict damage. In this environment, this behavior now instantly made sense – if someone was too slow and got swarmed by familiars, the weight could cause them to fall into the infinite azure depths. Jordan was acrobatic enough, and focused on full contact sort of combat, so she could get then out of the way somewhat easily, but others were in serious danger.

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As an upside, Liese found that her gun's effective range has increased by a lot. The familiars weren't that fast, and even though Jordan took the lead and started doing the closest she could manage to charging the Familiars, she wouldn't be getting too far ahead of Liese anytime soon just by climbing. If the Vindicare could lock herself onto the bars, she'd be able to get rid of a lot of the monkeys before they make contact. Fuyuki did her best to follow Jordan, but Eriko only had a handgun to work with. So, the plan was that she would take care of the Familiars coming from down under, while Liese keeps clearing out the way.

Unfortunately, Jordan's patience in taking the enemies one by one lasts about half a minute, at which point she gets way too annoyed, and simply channels her magic to teleport herself as far up vertically as she can. After all, it wasn't as if these little hairy guys were going to do much to stop her. While a bold move, this leaves everyone else's plans in shambles, and leaves her deep in enemy territory as Fuyuki, picking enemies off with her handgun, can suddenly draw her sword to defend herself.
> Eriko shouts in despair. "IF YOU RUSH AHEAD LIKE THAT AGAIN I'M... DON'T YOU DARE!"
> "They're not even strong! Don't take my kills."
> "THEY'RE TRYING TO SWARM YOU!"
> "JUST" The Callidus is trying to keep her palms of her face, since she needs them to aim.
> "Let them! They can't do anything to me!"

Teleportation was a pretty rare power. Since this sort of thing would be talked about during spars, Fuyuki and Jordan found that they could both use it – Fuyuki's version was much more subtle, and combined with magic concealment and illusions, she was at her best doing recon, like finding the entrance minutes ago. Jordan's version was more focused on pure power. She'd spend a lot of energy in order to attack someone from a dead angle, reappearing in a flash of light and a boom of thunder behind their back, to drive fear into their hearts.

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The girls discern that there are two kinds of monkeys – smaller ones and bigger ones. The bigger ones were going straight down to face Jordan, but the smaller ones seemed to flee from her. Unlike the madwoman charging ahead, the girls below correctly figure out that these little ones are running to alert the Witch, and that this might be somehow important to what happens next.

Liese and Fuyuki pair together to progress, calling targets between themselves – unfortunately, no such communication is now possible with Jordan, who only gets angrier by the minute.

>"I can't pick them off from here! Someone else will have to!" Fuyuki calls out from below, still frantically trying to keep pace.
>Liese continued her ascension, catching up to some extent while taking down another large monkey. "Fuyuki, watch for our flank! one of them is still down below."
> Jordan hears none of it. "What, again!? Did you not just hear me call out my targets?"
That meant all the targets, apparently. This was a real gut punch after all the effort the girls went through to learn to fight, sparring with the veteran who really should have known better than this, but thinking back on it, the signs were all there. They just assumed that Jordan was making awkward jokes about brutally disemboweling the baddies, when that was really all she was interested in all along. As progress stops due to the ongoing argument, Eriko notices something very bad with her supernatural eyesight.
> "Jordan, look out!"
>"Bogey's homing in on you! JORDAN!"
> Jordan takes aim and throws her knife at the monkey above her only to be interrupted by Eriko's yelling. The knife slips out of her hand and flies away into nothing
> "WHAT ERIKO. WHAT."
> "WHAT IS IT NOW."
> Eriko shouts back, an expression of steely patience. "Above you! Something's flying your way and getting ready to land!"

> Eriko comes to a realization.
> "It's a cube!" she calls out. "The papers aren't coming from the top! The witch is either not at the top, or..."
> "...in any event she's attacking from there!"
> All of sudden, a gigantic paper airplane rams into right where Jordan is standing. It misses her narrowly, probably because of the prior warning.
> Liese looked around, confused "Huh? what are you on about?"
> "What do you mean not a-" Jordan's complaint is cut off by a narrow miss as she strains to avoid the attack.
> "From wh-" Fuyuki is cut short by the sound of something crashing into them, her eyes widening like saucers at the sight of the culprit. "Eriko! Where!?"
> "What the hell was that!?"

It all comes together, then. These clouds surrounding the wooden cube that the girls are climbing, outside of even Eriko's range of extended perception, aren't really clouds. They are A4 papers floating amidst nothing. And now that the Witch knew about the party, she was controlling them to snipe Jordan down.
> Jordan shouts crazed expletives as she attacks anything within reach that moves. She pointedly ignores the orientation that gravity demands of the situation and stands perpendicular to the wall with feet hooked into the bars. Such a rebellious youth. "Was that a paper fucking air plane? Are we in kindergarten? Are these monkey bars? IS THIS A SCHOOL YARD?"
> Eriko is speechless. Not only did she not reach that conclusion, but the whole setup is...
> Jordan VIOLENTLY CLIMBS towards a back of DUMB APES before her frustration at her slow pace causes her to blink instead. She FURIOUSLY TELEPORTS above a STUPID looking monkey and stabs it in the fucking face.
> Eriko looks on in despair. "...Little more to the right," she manages, aware that Jordan can't hear.
> "Witch is a little more to the right. Somewhere up ahead."

Unlike Jordan, Liese actually pays attention to Eriko, and tries to find the target in the storm of monkeys and papers – a round edge of something large peeking over the top of the structure. She starts taking shots at it as she moves up, hopefully preventing Jordan from getting too flooded.

Another plane the leading climber, and doesn't disappear into sparkles this time – the oversized sheet of paper falling down the wall. Eriko takes a moment to try reading it, as it seems to have a poem of some sort written on it, similar to the clues outside. As all of Eriko's energy was dedicated just to stay in shouting range of Jordan, which she now wasn't, she hasn't really been doing her job of covering the party's back, either. Her magic isn't very effective at convincing them to stop the pursuit. Her enhanced senses also tell her that a lot more familiars were crawling in from the rest of the Barrier, so the bottom wasn't the only direction the three girls climbing under Jordan had to watch out for.

At about this moment, far under the party, Emiri enters the Barrier, having read the message at the dorm. The entrance she picked lands her behind the enemy line, which is helpful. Ranged combat was very preferable to wrestling with the monkeys, and Emiri was a far better shot than either of the three. Climbing too far would be difficult for her as bodies of the dead monkeys falling down present a hazard – they are disintegrating into black mist on the way, but she still decides to just snipe from where she is, and take the heat off the other girls. Worst case, she'll fall back to the entrance, and just leave.
> Emiri looks up at the wall, decides that she won't be able to use her bow, and pulls out her revolver instead. She checks the cylinders and spins them, muttering to herself, "Six shots."

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> Emiri screams "IS THAT JORDAN UP THERE?"
> "CAN YOU GUYS EVEN HEAR ME"
> Fuyuki, having disposed of the rest of the backline, shouts back. "Yeah, barely!"
> "IS SHE OKAY"
With a primal, blood curdling (and blood gurgling as her own flies out of her mouth) scream, Jordan wildly slashes at the pile of monkeys that piled up to protect the quirky QWERTY. Bits and pieces of monkey sail off in every direction, but the sound of the severing, breaking and mangling of flesh is drowned out by Jordan's wet shrieking that soon becomes crazed laughter.
> "I DON'T THINK SHE'S OKAY"

This is where the girl's exact memories of these events grow hazy, since Liese did not have a clear view of Jordan, and Jordan, so to say, lived in the moment.
> "LEGENDARY!" she cheers somewhere in the middle of the carnage, "FUCKING ACE." Now, with nothing in the way, she plunges a knife hard into the witch giving it all of her ruthless fury. "SCISSORS BEATS PAPER CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNT!"

In truth, the Witch sustained quite a bit of damage from Liese's rifle by the time Jordan's knife reached her. Liese's attention stemmed from the fact that she had actually seen this once or twice before. Eversors were taught in a sort of art of combat meditation, which made their movements more precise, but their humanity rather subdued. A Magical Girl's body is a tool puppeted by the Soul Gem, and as any instrument, it needed to be handled with precision and especially detachment. What Jordan had going on was called Deep Trance officially, or Berserker Trance colloquially. In short, Jordan was absorbed in the exercise of perfect motoric control, and gone nuts. Though the form of it was certainly peculiar. As the context was being filtered out, other things came flooding in.

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> Jordan deftly dodges the attack once more, blood spurting out of her mouth and wounds. "HOW MANY LIVEJOURNAL ENTRIES DID YOU HAVE TO TYPE TO GET ENOUGH ANGST TO BECOME A WITCH THIS MORNING?"
>She focuses all of the fury and anger she's felt throughout the day for her finishing attack. "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THAN TO FUCK WITH ME. FIRST, YOU BURNED DOWN MY FUCKING GYM. TODAY WAS LEG DAY, ASSHOLE. THEN I CAN'T FUCKING KILL MY OWN SHIT BECAUSE FUCKING SARAH AND FRIENDS JUST AREN'T HAPPY SEEING ME SHINE. THEN IT HAPPENS AGAIN BECAUSE CALLING YOUR TARGETS ISN'T A THING ANYMORE APPARENTLY. THEN I CAN'T EVEN HAVE SOME ME TIME AROUND HERE BECAYSE YOU YES YOU WANT TO ACT LIKE A FUCKING CHILD AND TOSS PAPER FUCKING AIRPLANES AT ME FROM WAY UP THERE. TELL ME, DOES IT FEEL GOOD TO LOOK DOWN ON PEOPLE? DO YOU FEEL BIG? STRONG? RIGHTEOUS? YOUR SHIT STINKS, TOO AND NOTHING MAKES ME HAPPIER THAN GRABBING YOUR SMUG CUNTFACE DOWN OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND SLAMMING IT INTOYOUR STINKING PILE OF BULLSHIT."
> "MAEVE WHAT THE HELL? YOU WERE JUST GOING TO LET ME FIGHT HER ALONE? WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?"
> "SARAH YOU KILL STEALING CUNT. YOU BETTER ENJOY YOUR LAST MOMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS BEFORE I COME BEAT IT OUT OF YOU."

"MAEVE AND SARAH AREN'T HERE, DUMBASS!" Eriko screams, "IT'S JUST US!"

The Witch, largely broken and with no helpers with sight, falls into the abyss below, in the hollow of the cube.
> "WHO SAID THAT? WHO SAID THAT SHIT?"

The bars which the girls held onto suddenly unfurl, into rolls of paper. The cube's own wood peels off, and explodes into more A4 sheets. Very fortunately, as the Barrier breaks down, everybody loses their footing, and hits the ground with an imperfect vector of one sort or another. Jordan, having been far away, and presently completely incapable of recognizing friend from foe, reappears on the wall of the burned courtyard, some distnace from others. This gives Eriko an opportunity to snap her out of it. Magically.

>SHUT UP! THE WITCH IS DEAD! YOUR SQUAD IS GONE! YOU CAN'T JUST RUN AHEAD LIKE SOME KAMIKAZE AND EXPECT ANYONE TO BAIL YOUR ASS OUT ANYMORE!"
>Eriko is overcome with vertigo and falls on her butt.
>Liese manages to remain composed while the Barrier dissolves back into reality. Once it fades back in, she speaks in a clear, commanding voice. "Wake up Jordan, we aren't in America anymore. You remember us right? That was Eriko, and I'm Liese." Once she has her attention, she makes a show of tossing her gun to the floor. "I won't fight you."
> Jordan climbs down the wall, jumping down when she's half way down, "SHUT THE FUCK UP SARAH, SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH! AND YOU, UH..." she points at the other girls. "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? MAEVE, WHO ARE THESE BITCHES? ...MAEVE?" looking around, she grows more confused as her anger seems to subside.
> "JORDAN, WAKE UP! YOU!" Eriko stands up, and dust herself off.
> "Stupid Watson!" she screams, lowering her arms and laying into Jordan verbally. "Dummy Watson! Jerk Watson! Moron Watson! Nitwit Watson! Halfwit Watson! Witless Twit Watson!" Her eyes are ablaze with fire, and something else.
> Fuyuki's blood starts to boil. Anger and indignation flood her senses, dulling the edge of fear until it can't do anything to blunt her resolve. Storming up to Jordan, stomping as best as she can, the Callidus brings her hand back and slaps the Eversor across the cheek.
> "I...oh, right. Yeah." All the rage and fury washes out of the girl, leaving only a frozen Jordan, deathly quiet with an ever darkening expression.

On the ground where everyone else is standing lies a Grief Seed, and a piece of parchment with some letters printed onto it. Emiri picks it up, and hands it to Liese, who can actually read Witch. It bears three lines:

[Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.]
[Hell is empty, and all the devils are here with us.]

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Eriko, meanwhile, keeps pestering the Eversor about how worried everyone was, to not much effect. Liese, a bit more career-savvy, instead worries if her own Soul Gem is doing alright.
> Jordan stares off into space with a horrified look. She nearly whispers "Maeve..." and begins to tremble
> Eriko keeps struggling, the fight gradually going out of her. She's putting up a massive amount of effort not to cry. "It's not fair..." she whines. "She put us, put me, through all this, and now she's not getting scolded for it." Her efforts to not cry are intensifying, though a couple of straggler tears bead up in her eyes.

This is followed by Jordan and Eriko each essentially having a breakdown, crying out their entire water supply.

The journey home is awkward. It was now impossible to ignore it. Jordan clearly wasn't a spunky hamburger tomboy with a teasing streak that had a morning run every single day to stay in shape. She was some sort of a horribly fucked up person addicted to ultra-violence and sex as a method of escapism that took this out on Familiars and was an active danger to all her allies on the field. It was the reason why she thought eating Familiars was a great idea – being nuts does not come in single packages. It was also the reason she was here. Because she was a complete fuckup of some sort or another, and this remote job was her punishment.

Going to take a little break. We're a bit past first third of today's load or so. And you wouldn't believe how much stuff we are skipping completely.

>>76632436
>Going to take a little break.
Thanks for the thread so far. How much real time did what you've written so far take?

>>76632572
Feels like longer than it should have. Campaign finished about this time last year. About first six months since then were spent organizing session logs alongside PMs by date and timestamp, so that I could use this format, and just paste in logs where appropriate while writing. Then I got stuck for a while, realized I promised storytime on christmas, and finished the entire second half in the last two weeks or so. Players are cringing at the stuff they wrote five years ago right now, but it's that much more authentic, right?

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Emiri, being the only one remotely in a fresh state, splits off to tell Therese why the girls are going to be out of commission for a bit. That, and she ran out of juice. The rest of the party manages to make it back to their rooms, passing for a group of youthful drunkards who definitely are not bearing any wounds in need of more proper treatment than a spray and some bandages, resulting in Emiri arriving at the same time since they moved so slow.

When they meet in front of the door, an envelope is found under it, one that someone must have stuck there while they were out.

Jordan hurries into the shower without a word, and Eriko uses her supernatural gaze and fingers to determine the envelope contains something flat, hard, and magical, which might be a bomb. Liese joins her going out into the woods to open it, since such a thing would affect Liese the least, and the others tag along.
> As you open the letter, nothing significant apears to happen.
> Emiri jumps, "BOOM!"
> Liese lets out a small sigh of relief and snips the side the whole way, checking inside.
> Emiri nods and follows Liese back, kicking her legs with every step.
> Liese notices this. "You seem out of it? something's wrong?"
> "Hm? No, everything's fine. Just need to get, um. Home. Stuff to do."

> Emiri slams the door behind her and quietly locks it, going over to the bathroom and locking the door behind her in there, too.
> Emiri dumps all the OJ in the bathtub on one side and sits on the other, still in her outfit
> Emiri starts shaking as she opens a carton of juice and drinks it, visibly relaxing as it gets into her system
> Emiri tosses the empty carton aside, echoing against the tile floors and picks up another box. One by one, she drinks through the boxes, letting the juice spill down the side of her lips and occasionally just pouring some on her face until she physically can't drink anymore, resorting to just sitting amongst her pile of both empty and full cartons

In the meantime, Jordan spills the beans.
> "She should have been the one to kill me, not the other way around." She'd cry if she had any tears left. "That situation was so fucked up, and the trial after it."
> "They didn't care about what really happened, only how they could spin it to benefit themselves. The Officio I mean. My squad had other thoughts. I shouted them down as if I was innocent because I didn't want to believe it."
> Eriko finishes drying Jordan's hair. "I see, I think I understand," she comments, silently thanking Liese for closing the door.
> "It was even worse because I did get away with it. I didn't even get a sentence. I wasn't found guilty even though I was. And when she heard that news, that pushed Sarah over the edge."
> "She witched out."
> Eriko breaks out the brush. Jordan needs it.
> She keeps brushing the poor girl's scalp. "Oh dear."
> "I don't really know what to say."
> Jordan goes on: "The Officio wouldn't punish me, I was innocent in their eyes, but my squad gave me their own verdict."
> "That's just," Eriko bites her lip and stops talking. It's not helping here.
> "And I had to fight Sarah's witch alone."
> The Callidus brushes slower - because that was a worrying thing to hear. "I'm so sorry."
> "After that, I was ordered to see a psychiatrist. This time I thought I'd have to face what I had done."
> "But I was wrong again, after an exam, they took my side and told me what I was telling myself. They gave me a bottle of pills. and sent me off."
> "Before I could even see my squad again, I was reassigned and shipped off. They disbanded it. I never got to see them after I left to fight Sarah."
> Eriko sniffs. "And that brings us to here and now, right?"
> "I still didn't believe I was as dangerous as they said I was until I found myself ready to cut Liese's head off. I couldn't even see Liese for who she was."

> Eriko nods. "And now you're upset because you haven't faced the consequences that you think you deserve, and you're afraid you might do it again. Is that correct?"

>Jordan reels the explanation back a bit. "If someone gets hurt because they were out of place, it's their fault."
> Eriko taps a finger on her thigh. "That's what you were taught?"
> "Yes. You never approach a girl that has gone berserk unless you can take her."
> "But Maeve. She wanted to save them."
> "She could have taken me on easily, but she was hurt. She saw me lose myself but stepped in anyway."
> The Eversor goes on: "She was just protecting some innocent people in the compound that weren't supposed to be there. She didn't want them to get purged too. So she tried to stop me from getting to them. That's what the reports say."
> "I didn't even know it happened. I cut through them like any other target and was ready at the other end waiting for her to show up for extraction."
> "It was on camera."
> "I still didn't even believe that for a while."
> "Maeve was set to be promoted after her One Year. She really worked hard for that and she took Officio business seriously."
>"She wanted to be Warmaster. I only cared about fighting and killing and being at her side."
> "I was even going to give her this when we both reached one year of service."
> Liese glanced to the side at the mention of that dream, seeming slightly uncomfortable with it.
>Jordan rummages through her bag for a while and pulls out a tiny box. Carefully, with trembling hands, she opens it to reveal a ring.
> "Eighth girls don't live for long. We all know it. So we have to live our lives quickly or we'll never make it to some of the best parts."
> "I had plans to do just that."

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> Liese glances back and notices the ring, biting her lower lip and falling empty on words once again. This... is just beyond her competence.
> Eriko almost chokes, trying to hold back her tears once again. She mouths 'I'm so sorry' because she doesn't trust herself to speak.
> "And I destroyed all the happiness I could have had, and I thought I got off easy by not being terminated. In fact, the worst punishment of all was to be sentenced to live with it."

Jordan slumps down to her knees, and just stares at the ring in silence. The girls try to console her, but they're coming with a cross after the funeral. Having said her bit, and now that all of her past has finally been revealed to her new friends, Jordan's book turns to a new chapter. And there's plenty of blank pages yet to be filled.

But, in the corner of each of their minds, her new friends began to understood at last, it wasn't just themselves and Jordan. It was probably why all of the girls were here. They were better at hiding it than Jordan, they made different mistakes than Jordan, they were fuckups of different sort than Jordan, but this was probably meant to be their last chance, too. Even if it was also their last chance. For each of them, the Incubators could have had a different reason to send them on a suicide mission like this. To think that their security was not worth the resources, and make them swim or sink like this.

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The letter, written entirely in japanese and thus slowly translated to the westerners, is packed with fascinating, suspiciously on-point information. To Liese, it confirms that Alcyone was going to grow in power faster than a regular Witch, and the party was on a very real clock, with an absolute deadline of six months. Furthermore, it confirms her other hypothesis: Alcyone's Familiars were largely independent, growing into Pseudo-Witches of their own. If they were allowed to consume enough civilians, they might even grow full Grief Seeds, which would be great for Incubators, but pretty bad for the local population. This phenomenon wasn't unheard of, but it typically happened to Familiars that somehow persist after their mother Witch had been slain, and with no one to feed their prey to, consum it themselves. Them doing it from the start might have been a clue about Alcyone's nature.

Eriko spins a fairly solid theory then, that since Alcyone's Familiars look like the mascots of Chirpee, a social media platform, then perhaps her way of handling Familiars was how she got more 'followers'. This made sense, considering that Alcyone hunted hipsters, but the girls could not exactly explain why it would be fixated on japanese people.

Revelations aside, the girls are finally hit with the fact that they've beaten a regular Witch all together. Their drills were paying off, they were getting the hang of this, and just needed to keep at it. Helpfully, the envelope contained a pair of charms. reminiscent of the wooden tokens one would leave on a shrine on the New Years, in Japan. According to the mysterious benefactor, these were supposed to help them find the Witch. Using them, they could just get right back onto tracking her down... that is, if they were to take the letter at face value, and not question who the hell was in the city other than them.

Soon enough, Jordan is busy coming up with yet another way to cook a bird Familiar, trying to get others into her odd hobby. Liese, in the meantime, needs to do something of her own. To explain it properly, we'll need to talk about Liese's Officio a bit – the Twelfth, situated in Prague – and her circumstances in all this.

The Twelfth is also known as the Witchmakers. Every Officio, as far as our girls knew, had you read through a proper contract as the Soul Gem was constructed, and sure enough, you could read in it about the purpose of this process: The transformation into a Witch, to be eventually harvested by the Incubator. Where Twelfth differed, however, is that this process was greatly encouraged, and perhaps even somewhat fetishized in Officio culture. Where other Incubators mainly needed feet on the ground and treated a Witch-out as a happy little accident, the Twelfth had seventy percent of his contractees eventually harvested the right way. Of course, humans are naturally afraid of change, and so this could never have been really sold to everybody at face value. So, officially, the Twelfth was an Officio mainly concerned with research into Witchdom, the process of becoming a Witch, and extracting useful information from Barriers: By its proper name, the field of research would be known as 'venefical semiotics'.

Liese is all in on this. She isn't a Vanus, but she considers herself a researcher, and even managed to figure out the Witch language throughout basic training, something few people bothered with. Study of Barriers is its own extensive field of psycho-archeology that a real psychologist would probably have a ball delving into, but as things stood, the number of venerable researchers could be counted on one hand. We'll learn bit by bit as we go, ourselves.

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Since she was so passionate about this, it follows that Liese considered it her duty to call the remaining member of the Twelfth's cell, to make sure she's still sane – and if she's going to Witch out, that the process is under control, and she doesn't go off collapsing buildings and killing civilians, like her hunting partner apparently did.

That meant Liese had to undergo the same ride to Bucharest that Jordan went through to straighten things out. On the phone, the girl, Miroslava, sounded outright eerie. She made long pauses in her speech constantly, and it was difficult to tell whether she was that out of it due to her partner's disappearance, or whether she wasn't comfortable using a phone. Once Liese actually MET Miroslava, waving her lanky limbs in the wind, sitting on the street guardrail, and looking straight through Liese with a thousand yard stare, it quickly became apparent that distance mattered not. Miroslava was simply the kind of person who was never quite there, and practically articulated the ellipses after every unfinished sentence with deafening silence.

Unlike Jordan, Liese is invited into the american quarters properly. The girl gets ahead of her on the stairs using her long legs, and gets some tea ready. In spite of being clearly depressed, Miroslava has interesting information to share. For starters, she has been seeing a lot of the same kind of loud, toothy witches lately, which she thinks are connected. That's pretty worrying news, if they indeed are Alcyone's Familiars who somehow got all the way here. In the proper spirit of a girl from the 12th, she also remarks that it's nice having so many Grief Seeds around, even if she knows it's a terrible thing to say.

> "Witches kill humans... that's why we purge them... not because of our survival... or because Woland says it's important to keep the world spinning."
> "That's... the noble way... When you think about it... it's really selfish..."
> "I wanted to be a hero once... but then I found out... I just really care about what's before me... I guess..."

Liese disagrees with this, assuring Miroslava that there's nothing wrong with feeling that way. It's impotant to prepare her for the bombshell.

。。。

Since we just went through Jordan's backstory, and now we are getting into Liese's, this is a good time to set up a kind of dichotomy in this story, between Jordan and Liese.

In a loose sense, while her mind was quite scattered, Jordan was certainly the type of person who would accomplish things she was commited to. To paraphrase a popular media figure, much like Oriana took care of the paperwork, Jordan had one job in the party's downtime: Cooking. And she managed to do that every day. The party was not on the receiving end of Dinner Undertones. Following that line of thought, once Jordan started molesting someone, like in particular Eriko, it was with the intent to fuck them. She might have molested several people simultaneously with the very same intent, but let it be said that Jordan was always fully committed, for good or bad.

In comparison, an apt way to describe Liese Brandt would be as a woman of three-quarter measures. Like many children harshly brought up by perfectionists, Liese is also someone who holds perfection to be an unattainable ideal, and tends to settle for something that's pretty good, taking a bite of sour reality with every action.

And if she ended up working with mistaken assumptions, she'd make sure to still have done at least a quarter of good elsewhere, to get a passing grade with. This is a pretty important theme with her character, which might come back to hit you in surprising ways. Foolish Magical Girls bet everything on their singular beliefs, and when they turn out to have placed their bet wrongly, when they are betrayed by the cruel world they were born into, their life is forfeit, because a Magical Girl is always betting her Soul alongside everything else. Liese understands this, and makes sure to spread her bets. She isn't a hypocrite who would play stock market with beliefs, and with morals. You can be sure she is at least 50% commited to the main bet, and just has something going on on the side in case it doesn't work out. And she'll be holding back a little, too, so she doesn't run out of chips if everything goes out of the window.

The Twelfth is a cruel Officio, and it let Liese understand that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer, and enthusiasm is a double-edged sword. But, as a person, she cannot help but be enthusiastic about things, and so she holds herself on a 25% leash.

That's how it also went with Liese and Debbie's first meeting, as Liese realizes that the living room of Maggie's cell was conspiciously left empty for them on purpose, and the pair is being watched by the blonde as they talk.

She gets called out, and sits herself at the table also. Since she has a birthmark at her collarbone, Liese recognizes that this is definitely the person that sent Fuyuki to die in Alcyone's Barrier. Upon stating this, Miroslava mentions that Debbie ran into Julie in the party's town, and got already chewed out for it. The black girl had a job there with the mob, but the fat blonde was absolutely not supposed to be there, and Juliet Jackson had a really loud shouting voice.

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In her defense, Debbie insists that this made sense at the time. She saw a lost sheep at the station, so she had prognosticated where the rest of the party could be found an hour later, which would be fighting the Familiars on the mountain, so that's where she sent Fuyuki. It was in fact predetermined that they would meet on the station and have this conversation, because otherwise the party would, obviously, not have gone into the mountains in the first place. Upon having the birthmark on her collarbone pointed out to her, she simply reaches for it with a finger, and removes it.
> "That's my Soul Gem."
This is, of course, alarmingly not okay, because the thing is completely pitch black with only some sparkles of green, to the point that it can be mistaken for a birthmark. Having undergone her Basic in Prague's streets where Neophytes could Witch out at any moment, Liese reflexively reaches for the typewriter Witch's seed, but the blonde refuses it. Apparently this was just the way that her Soul Gem was.

The issue with it wasn't that she had a lot of particular strain on it at the moment, the issue was that it was broken. The vessel was leaky. Corrupted on fundamental level. Debbie accumulated much more stain on daily basis than other Magical Girls, and only didn't turn into a Witch yet by spending an appropriate amount of Grief Seeds – which brings the conversation back to what the hell the first encounter was about. Maggie was procuring some more outside of her turf, because she was short.

Liese explains that she figured the birthmark Fuyuki talked about was actually a Witch Kiss, upon which Debbie pulls up her skirt and then her multiple layers of pantaloons, turns around, and reveals a symmetrical tattoo under her left buttcheek, which actually does look like a Witch Kiss. Apparently, Debbie has had that one for a very long time, and it is the main source of her trouble.

This was not entirely unheard of – some could even call it the mark of a saint. So long as the Witch in question was far outside the area, there was mostly nothing to fear beyond slight alterations to the psyche. Still, this Kiss looks just a bit familiar to Liese, like she has seen it before. Must be a famous Witch of some kind.

Liese says that Miroslava should have the Grief Seed anyway, considering where it came from, and subsequently feels really retarded. She is able to smooth it out with Miroslava only a little, barely able to explain anything with the Typewriter Witch, prompting the Czech girl to excuse herself and run to presumably cry in her room. It seems not everyone from the Twelfth shared her enthusiasm about Witches.

Debbie, however, did. She provides Liese with some details on Zlata's personality, providing helpful notes for her that the Officio could use for why she ended up taking this particular form. That said, she also recommends the Twelfth take Miroslava back, because she needs friends to make it now, and doesn't really have any in here.

>"I figured that's a thought I could express in the presence of somone like you."
> "You being from the Twelfth, and all. That big girl that just left says some weird things herself sometimes."
> "It's a shame I don't really see into your... lithurgy? That's probably rude. Romantic Methodology?
> "Basically she says crazy phrases about roses sometimes and I have no idea what they mean."
> Liese shrugged slightly. "I guess that's true, though not all of us have a easy time with that kind of stuff." She paused and took a small sip of tea. "Anyways, I don't want to take too much of your time, so there's a few things I still need to as--- Normal roses or black roses?" There's suddenly a sense of urgency in her words.
> "Both."
> "There's also 'the rose that blooms at the end of the world' "
> "Which I am pretty sure is an euphemism for Zlata's vagina."

Liese helpfully explains that it's not: It's an euphemism for Witching out bigly. Most likely, Zlata was a part of the Cult of the Black Rose, a part of the 12th that's essentially just a death cult, and this was always going to happen, and Miroslava somehow did not know that her partner had a death wish, and only picked up some of her terminology without understanding what it really meant.

The world was full of cults, which channeled the inherent desperation of the girls' way of life, interpreting the human condition in various ways. Certainly, one could relativize the curse's effect or meaning.

A magical girl living in those times, working for her bread as they do, could notice a certain juxtaposition of morals. It wasn't quite that particular things were being claimed by the Incubators, or their contractees, that weren't true in reality, but rather the entire institution of Magical-Girl-hood did not ideologically belong in this world. Yet, it inexplicably existed, and Magical Girls walked the earth like knights uprooted from their context of storybooks. A blade of justice would surely be dulled by compromise.

In simple terms, like everyone understands what a cop should be, everyone also knew what a Magical Girl should be, and 'sparklies' were at first glance definitely not that. As far as all but a Magical Girl were concerned, they're mostly clandestine jackasses on a power trip. The world was unquestionably shades of grey, and only with that understanding could a Magical Girl survive in it. But this very compromising nature of the world seemed to deny the whiteness most would associate with a Magical Girl. Yet, it existed, and at their very core, all of them could feel the pure feelings that got them to be where they were, like a seed that would eventually sprout.

It was said that what begins as a prayer becomes a curse, and this black eventuality was very real. If it's wrong to call Magical Girls simply post-modern super-heroes, was it also wrong of Liese to seek comfort where others couldn't, and try to turn the blackness of death into something more gray? Or was it just her being more in tune with the world's ways than others?

For now, remember this line of thought. It is critical to understanding Liese Brandt, and to large degree, the whole story we've just started telling.

。。。

The rest of their discussion then takes up most of the evening. Debbie offers to prognosticate Alcyone's location, but asks for a Grief Seed as payment. This is kind of steep, so Liese tells her the party will consider it. Besides that, they conclude that there is somebody fourth at work between Alcyone, the Party, and the Americans.

You see, over the last months, the girls have been noticing odd men in trenchcoats stalking them patrols, which Debbie suggests are either cops, or one of the local gangs, probably working on someone's behalf. Debbie also recalls one of her prognostic dreams: That of a green-haired Japanese woman pulling a red spear out of a sea of dead halcyon birds. Considering that the letter mentioned a 'spear', and that there were no Asians in Maggie's cell, the two were probably one and the same.

> Liese shifts her weight to her side, leaning on the armrest. "Well, I don't believe the future is always set in stone, so personally, I'd still rather know so I can be warned in advance of the danger, then splat it's face~"
> "That seems to work sometimes. Sometimes the future refuses to change and all that." the Vanus tells her.
> The Vindicare nods. "Better take the chance and fight than give up and lay down to die, don't you think?
> Debbie means to explain a specific thing, however: "The future is..." (she intonates)
> "...a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more."
> "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
> "Zlata was fond of Shakespeare."
> Liese has guessed it. "The last part sounds familiar, didn't some famous writer do th-- yep."
> "What I am trying to say," Debbie tells her, "is that knowing the future makes life suck. It's an abstract kind of a feel."
> "Not because you can't change anything, but because nothing you do matters, because you could have done something else instead."
> Liese is confused. "I'll.. admit I'm not sure I'm really understanding that, but I'm sorry if it's weighing you down."
> "It kind of makes you think like..." the seer explains further, "The best world would be one with nothing in it, because then nothing can get fucked up."
> "And you would have to forget whatever was before, too, before you get there."
> "I'm rambling, sorry."

Considering how much fun Debbie was clearly having being a smartass, Liese is forced to conclude that her Soul Gem is just fine. The two talk some more, say their farewells, and Liese promises to come back – since she needed to make sure Miroslava doesn't Witch out ahead of schedule, and especially since she needed to research whatever Witch Kiss Debbie had on her buttocks. Regardless, she emerges out of the train station again with new leads, and the seer's number in her pocket.

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The leads are shared, and the girls decide to focus on the green-haired girl. Fuyuki is rather miffed that there is a 50% chance she is also from the 9th, yet no one told her she'd be here. The Callidus has actually been stalking the local gangs for a week or so now, and found that there was a woman with green-dyed hair going around, collecting art pieces from the mob. She has, in fact, found this particular information by holding an old man at swordpoint in a considerable breach of operational security, and was lucky the man could even speak English, but that wasn't something she'd tell the others. With luck, he'd actually believe that GreenGreen embezzled assets of some yakuza family or the other, and that's why an asian girl with a sword appeared in his bedroom all of sudden. That was totally how yakuza worked, right?

Most importantly, what Fuyuki gained from that encounter was Green's address. All that was left was to go there, and decide on the manner of entry. Since it's evening and it's raining heavily outside, though, and nobody wants to actually go there right now, Liese comes up with a different plan: She creates a flock of about twenty ravens, who are henceforth going to be positioned on rooftops all around, and move alongside the party. Since the familiars cannot distance themselves from Liese further than about 500m, they wouldn't be keeping tabs on the mansion Green was holed up in overnight, but it was something. They could probably make it easier to find regular Familiars in the city's corners, at least.

Way late in the evening, having somehow gotten around the boarding house's curfew, Therese appears, and asks for a status report on tracking down the Big Bad Witch. One bit from what the party says stands out to her: the 'spear', which Debbie believed might have had occult or religious significance. Being from the Fourteenth, Therese is somewhat versed in the lore of Magical Girl religions, so she shoots off the hip: It might be the Lance of Ophelia. That's the only spear she recalls from the scriptures. Oriana and Julie would know better anyway, but Oriana had the midnight patrol, and Julie is in another town. All that Therese recalls is that it's a lot like the lance from the Arthurian legends. It's like the Lance of Longinus, or something, not that the party would know what that is – and extraordinarily special spear, THE spear. If it was here, the Officios would be scrambling to get their hands of it, and Therese would have had more than just Oriana for support. No reason for that thing to be in a random Barrier in Romania, so it had to be something different. Right?
> "Well, parts of Witches can stay in this world. Unlike our Magic Weapons."
> "So rather than a weapon used by one of the saints, that's what it sounds like to me."

That made some degree of sense. If a Familiar that ate a person or five could survive its mother, then perhaps a Witch's weapon could survive its original wielder. If several parties knew that it could have been retrieved from this particular Witch, and Liese had been deployed here with a full file on the Witch and all that mentioned the spear in it, then it again suggested that the Incubators knew more than they were letting on. At this point, the girls were mostly aware that they were being bamboozled in one way or another.

> "But seriously though, things are getting bad." Therese pleads with the party.
> "This Witch has probably killed hundreds of people by now."
> "Could be four digits."
> "Most of it is suicides, as always."

The party is woken by Oriana's soaked self returning. Aside of her regular report, she's bringing something else, from the postal office.Though the hunter expected she'd be going to sleep, this is a pretty big tailwind in the girl's motivation to get to the bottom of this.
> Oriana puts her suitcase on the couch's armrest and opens it. "Six grief seeds, and there will be more coming, soon... ish."

The girls depart hastily, hoping to catch ther interloper early in the morning. On the way, the Eversor is caught up on the events, and gives her two eurocents:
> Oriana looks at Liese doubtfully. "The Lance of Ophelia? Well, Ophelia is the Witch of the Blood Knight, one of the members of the Tetrarchy. Her book, the Tome of Blood, goes over honor and ethics, but curiously, she had to be taught these by the First Knight. She was also known for her courage, and is something of a galvanizing figure to the Faithful. Her lance is said to drip with the blood of her foes. That said... her lance isn't something that would appear in another Witch's barrier. She would never give it up, and it would disappear if she had been defeated. It must be a fake."
> She goes on. "Pius teaches that she is a strong Witch, even for an Alpha Witch, and that she has defeated several Witches herself. She may represent Entropy itself, though I personally find that hard to believe."
> Liese flips the pages back forward and begins taking notes as well, scribbling down quickly. "So it's unlikely, but we have a good enough description that we would be able to recognize it if we saw it. What else do you think it might be?"
> Fuyuki seems pessimistic about all this "It's either another Relic, or it really is a fake or some random thing that one of Alcyone's previous victims had." she concludes, frowning. The girl couldn't make heads nor tails of all this Religious talk.

> "Even if it was the spear itself, it isn't regarded as a holy artifact." Oriana tells the girls. "It belongs to a Witch now. But again, Ophelia has not been defeated, so it cannot be hers. Perhaps Alcyone was a fan of the Blood Knight when she was a magical girl, and that carried over to her Witch."

Eriko also explains, among everything else, the workings of the charms contained in the letter, having investigated them throughly in the meantime. One provided mental defenses, enough to make a regular person resist a Witch's charm, or perhaps make a Magical Girl resist something stronger. The other was a tracking device, similar to the ways one could Ping with their Soul Gem. She tries it out, to demonstrate, and -
GM rolled 1d10=(1), since this is a playtest and all rolls are public, GM is mad about derailing own session in a major way
There's a response.

The charm registers a Barrier about a kilometer from the bus that the party is on. This would be on the edge of a Soul Gem's detection range, or even past it, but the signal here is clear. That's probably what it meant by it 'working on elevation, not distance'. It would pick up signals even better than the girls could, so long as the Barrier wasn't underground, on a roof, or on a hill. Its uses were limited, so it could not be used for regular patrols, but this was certainly something.
> "Did it occur to you that she might be using these to keep tabs on you?" Oriana asks, to no avail.

The party decides to scratch their plan of crashing GreenGreen's warehouse, and doesn't want to leave a Grief Seed unharvested either. It could be a chance to see how well they worked together now, after all the drills. Finally, lest we forget, the signal always meant that civilians could be dying right now.

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Knowing that they were counting seconds, the girls disembark the bus on the first stop, and rush to the location at track team speed. To all the adults going to work, they should have looked like six girls who were VERY late for school, but the real consequences would be more dire than that.

The signal leads them to the top floor of multi-leveled parking lot. While approaching, they spot some smudges of blue and pink disappearing from the scene. At times like this, it was regular procedure to do a sweep of the surroundings, to make sure that no Familiars survive their master, but there were no positives beside the Barrier itself. Eriko perks up right as she enters the concrete jungle, spotting something in a corner of the structure.

Upon closer inspection, it is the body of a middle-aged man, apparently ran over by a car. Very dead. Eriko locates the Kiss, which is somehow on his tongue, and Liese makes a sketch of it for future use. It looks somewhat like the 'mitsudomoe', a classic three-way swirly sign historically used in Japan, except that there was also something too small to discern in the center. Right above the body was a window which was very obviously the entrance, not matching the rest of the windows that actually showed the outside. Presumably, the birds were dragging the man in, and had been disturbed in their work. Eriko mumbles some warding words in case this was >actually< Alcyone's Barrier, and the girls hop right in.

Inside, however, is predictably incomplete, indicative of an engorged Familiar's Barrier with not much of a personality behind it. The girls are standing on a ground of solid pink foam, their surroundings barred with thick bubbles. Close inspection reveals that these are not really bubbles: They are spheres of liquids in pastel colors, usually somewhat transparent, but packed densely enough to make the place a labyrinth. The Pseudo-Witch, the girls could tell, was only a few hundred meters ahead, with no inner partitions being present in the Barrier aside of the terrain. No script or images anywhere, not many details, the Barrier was so simplistic, a toddler would have come up with something more intersting.

The girls take a silent approach, knowing the bird Familiars were lurking between the bubbles, and waiting for a good moment for an ambush. Progressing through the environment, they saw a bubble of blood, and a bubble of what Jordan thinks is gatorade, but which is actually saltwater. Fuyuki sticks her sword into another one of the watery bubbles, since they seem safe, and it comes out smelling of soap and dishwater. Emiri nonchalantly approaches an orange-looking bubble, in hopes of tasting some unearthly brand of OJ, pulls out a glass she's apparently carrying around in her inventory, scoops a bit up, and immediately gags when it touches her tongue. It's fucking Fanta.
> After getting her fill and topping off her canteen, Jordan peers around at the battlefield with a kind of detached disinterest, "So. Guys." she says with a casual pause. "You think a lemon basted oven roast, or a nice fatbird honey barbeque?"
> "Please stop eating witch flesh all the time!" Eriko pleads.
> Jordan savors the taste of the drink finally happy that one of the bubbles is drinkable. "It's not witch flesh, it's witch soda." She retorts at Eriko.
> "You know what I mean."

> Emiri is extremely disappointed, tossing her glass in anger at the bubble, the glass disappears into it.
While they're pretending to mess around, actually keeping a tight formation, Eriko uses her enhanced sight to find the positions of the birds waiting in ambush. Emiri tosses the glass, and Liese takes it for a signal to run into the bubbles, and take out all the targets she can draw a bead on. Gunfire echoes through the Barrier, some of the bubbless pop and splatter on the floor, and she's immediatelly assaulted by the screamers in a pincer attack. Emiri and Eriko have firearms also, but Fuyuki attempts to enter melee with one of the screamers, and gets blown away into the bubble of blood for her trouble, which Eriko was using for cover, causing it to splash over them both.

After that, between four guns and actual cover being available, things go a lot better this time. After a while, and since the popped bubbles opened up some space, the girls create a perimeter, and are able to cross the remaining hundred meters systematically. On the way, Jordan comes across a bubble of something very green and barely transparent, which tastes like mint. And is alcoholic. This causes her to, of course, pour out all the Fanta, and fill her reserves with this miraculous cache of Witch Absinthe. The birds seem to really dislike it, pouring out of the cracks between the bubbles to stop her. Though it could hardly be called an organized team strategy, it somehow works.

> An oddly powerful spittle whizzles a few meters away from Fuyuki. You see a toothed mouth through the bubble maze, but not much besides.
> The Callidus sees a light from the corner of her vision, weaving to the side on instinct as a glob of *something* flies past her... one that looked painfully similar to the ones that struck her during that harrowing first fight in the mountains

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> Liese spots the target and adjust her aim slightly, changing her mind at the last moment as she crushes the trigger, but all the blood and guts on her gun cause it to jam mid-barrage, will her shite luck EVER relent?
>Jordan scoots around the bubbles and lunges straight for the first targets she sees. She does a double take when she passes Liese on the way.
> "I... I think that's the Witch." The Callidus points towards where the glob had came from, a veritable row of teeth at the end.
> Jordan chops up the two skinnybirds that have the gall to stand in her way.
> Liese managed to remain somewhat coherent, but is quite clearly pissed "You bet it that mockery is the immitation. And it's about to get shredded!"

The Witch looked something like a manta ray. A manta ray covered with toothe portrusions, split into a blue half and a purple half. Oriana has ran into these things before when patroling the city, but this one was by far the biggest.

Eriko warns that it is probably preparing something big – all the bubbles were vibrating ever since Liese landed a shot on it through the cover. Though the girls would be leaving Familiars out and about, they couldn't let this bastard harass them, either. The hope was that it would have a glass chin. So, they rush through the maze, getting shot at by the smaller birds in the process. Only one of them doesn't, because she decides to approach the Witch invisible.
> Fuyuki uses one of the bubbles as a springboard, launching herself above Jordan, before leaping at the Witch; breaking her shroud in order to sink her blade deep into the beast.
> Two of the remaining Familiars make potshots at Jordan and Fuyuki, in a desperate attempt to save their now terribly wounded master, the one that targeted Jordan clearly missing wide out of frustration.
> "KILL IT NOW! OVER HE-" The blue-haired Callidus hollers out, cut short as a glob of spit nails her straight in the gut.

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> Liese mostly just ignored all the yelling and flailing, focusing on her own shots and she line one up through, splattering the pseudo-Witch in the face.... only for the oh-so-obnoxious sound of that empty click indicating her magazine has run dry! This is really not her day
> The Witch lunges backwards against Fuyuki and Jordan. It is too late.
> With the last of her strength, she spits a volley of lance-shaped, silvery, glittering spittles.
> Jordan readies her stance and feels the rumble of the barrier around her. Just before she's about to defend herself against the attack of familiars, she feels a presence beside her as fuyuki suddenly scores a devastating blow on the witch.
> Seeing her opening, she darts forward into the witch's maw, stabbing it through the eyeslit, just as it unleashes a powerful attack.
> Before their bodies are shredded completely, and before the Witch dies from the combined damage, with the barrier disappearing around her, their last conscious thought is that these spittles now really look like spears, javelins, lances, and what not.

> Alongside the dead body of a man, and two rapidly dying bodies of Magical Girls, the underground garage now also has a single grief seed lying on the ground.
> Jordan falls to the ground with a wet crunch.
> Liese's eyes widen and she tosses her gun back into her inventory without even taking time to reload, rushing to the other two's aid and taking out her medkit when she notices their state.
> Oriana, appearing nearby, sits by Liese, and starts applying what is apparently healing magic to Jordan and Fuyuki. She must have been taking lessons somewhere.
> Liese takes this time to nab the nearby Seed, while she prepares her own medical supplies and checks on their injuries.

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> Eriko 's thousand yard stare slowly fills with tears.
> Liese has no times for tears, she's a professional and she knows that as long as Gems are intact, then bodies can be fixed right up, no biggies, so that's what she does. No one gets to complain about bandage tightness THIS time!
> Oriana, while attending to the bodies, appears increasingly worried. Once the worst is done away with, due to the immense expense on her reserves, she applies a Grief Seed to her gem, and goes right back to healing.
> Fuyuki could feel herself rapidly fading but despite that she felt inappropriately cheerful. She could *feel* that Witch reel back from her blow, with Jordan's being the final nail in the coffin. Why she felt as if everything was going to be alright, despite everything, was beyond her.

The plan to raid Green's house was a bust – for another week at least. Now, this sort of thing happened sometimes, but this was a pretty bad time. Magic or not, the girls lost a lot of blood, which Oriana could not just magic back into their bodies, and they'd have to be bedridden for a while. Most of all, while perhaps this stupid strength came directly from the Pseudo-Witch's childish nature, it made the situation in the city seem even more dire. Suddenly, Oriana did not feel so confident patrolling alone anymore.

What could have been done? The girls report a dead body, hope that the cops don't think too much about all the blood -they- left on the scene, and drag the badly wounded girls back to the boarding house, pretending to be terrible teenagers who are not only skipping school, but are also terribly drunk before the noon, having to lean on each other to remain standing. And are completely covered in blood, for some reason.

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Hopefully no photo of them in this situation would be made and get onto the internet. On second thought, this was a terrible breach of protocol, but the only person who'd know how to hijack a car – not drive it, mind you – was Fuyuki, who was still overly perforated. Eriko could probably mind control some adult to hitch them a ride, but she realizes she can't actually speak their language, and the power was too expensive to gamble them knowing English on. Long story short, when the girls arrive at the snail's pace and taking the long way around, it's pretty late, and they're all feeling awful.

Though cooking was a favourite past-time of Jordan so the fridge was full, and though the girls didn't have anything to eat all day, the ones that manage to stay awake unanimously decide that they need to get hammered. To adress the pain within, and the pain without. With a supply of absinthe for an army, and Liese's own infinite reserves of vodka that the by-the-books dildo should not have been able to legally buy, getting drunk was an easy task.

> Liese takes out her flask and pours down a clear liquid in one of the glasses on the desk, then does the same with a smaller quantity in the glass next to Jordan's nightstand
> "Ow." Jordan gets used to her new verbal filler of choice before actually saying something with substance. "So, how cool did I look?"
> "Maybe you'd look cooler if you weren't so eager to get close to it and kill it." Emi tells her.
> Eriko sniffs. "Would've looked cooler if I'd been paying better attention to everything," she whines. "Sorry," she apologizes again.
> Liese leaves the 'family medicine' on Jordan's night stand to take a leisure then takes a page from Emiri's book and gently submerges her Soul Gem in her glass of vodka.
> "Well," Jordan tries to refute, "I actually was hanging back for most of that. I kind of wanted to see how you guys would do without me getting in there, but I misjudged the battlefield again."

> Liese rolls her eyes a bit. "We were doing pretty well whenever people were letting me take point and draw the fire..."
> Emiri stops swirling her glass and frowns sternly at Jordan, "You should've waited for us to move up with you. If Fuyuki wasn't there with you, who knows how much more fucked up you would've been. We have to move up as a unit, not get picked off one by one."
> "It's not your fault really. I was just being kind of..." the American lets that thought trail off. "Well when I saw Yuki get thrown like that, I had to step in."
> "No, I mean..." Eriko insists, "I was supposed to see this stuff coming. To detect that kind of threat."
> She sniffs. "And I dropped the ball."
> "In the end, we're just fine." Jordan smirks. "Spear me the details."

An Officio is a paramilitary organization of hundreds, even a thousand girls at times. All the staff is females at their least emotionally stable. There was no amount of good management, preventive measures, or even outright indoctrination that could possibly stop this 'well-oiled machine' from being a shitshow. These girls would usually not finish high school, but the Officio, socially speaking, was high school times infinity. The girls would form cliques. The girls would bully each other. The girls went crazy from the stress. Sometimes, a girl in your vicinity would die, and you were assumed to continue as normal. Sometimes you couldn't. Sometimes, you developed a persona of some sort to cope, if you were lucky enough to live that long. The hopes and dreams stored within the Soul Gem were profound, but at times it felt as if everything else in this world was completely fake. The world's inadequacy could drive one mad.

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Yet, there was... something, here. The kind of camarederie only found on the edge of life and death. Although some had trouble breathing from their wounds, the air in this boarding house was now clean. It was not as if they could lay low and go into their respective countries next month when the Big Witch was slain, and never see these people again. They were all in this together. It was clear to all the drunken sparklies here, that there was really no safety net. If they were to slip up a little more than this, they would all die, and would not see anybody ever again. Much less each other. Keeping to yourself was not an option.

。。。

Over the forced break, Eriko gets it into her head that she should call Juliet Jackson. The african-american worked with the italian-american in the girls' own town sometimes, making it a possibility that she had intel she wasn't sharing. That, and Julie seemed more like the other cell's equivalent of Therese than Maggie did, garnering a bit more respect, and working alone more often.

On the phone, Julie recalls a curious thing: Some time ago, a group of girls from the Tenth, situated in Japan, turned up in this city, and left again. She can give no context or detail to this, so it was presumably just something she heard from the previous occupants of the cell. However, it apparently happened before the entire trouble with Alcyone started. Therefore, it could have been related to her – and to the green interloper.

> "Oh yeah, a few girls of the 2nd had been in the area. But those Barriers are more metal. This Witch you got is pretty obviously some kind of a nerd."
> "The Second sometimes deploys against Betas, so that is kind of inevitable."
> "Well, that's all I got for you. Don't really know of any other girls that I could feel safe telling you about."
> "Pardon?" Eriko taps the phone.

> "Well, for example," the phone responds, "if I didn't run into Debbie every other day, I could swear it's Debbie's Witch."
> "She spends too much time in your town, anyway. Real suspicious."

In return for the tip, Julie asks that Miroslava is deported the hell out of the cell, because she clearly wasn't doing alright, and everything in here was going to remind her of her dead lover. If Liese could arrange that, that would have been great. Now, the girls from the Second that Julie had mentioned were obviously the hunting party sent to deal with Alcyone in the first place. The Second did not like to boast its failures, but since it was an official mission, whatever information they had would probably be extracted by the Twelfth, and therefore already in the dossier Liese had on her person. Their intel refered to the inside of the Barrier, which the girls already knew about. Getting there was more difficult.

Later, confronted with the intel, Therese fences with her hands, saying she's never met anybody from the Tenth in her entire life. However, if this is verifiable, she suggests using it to put diplomatic pressure onto the Tenth. Simply call one of the girls' superiors, and have them ask through an official channel whether the Tenth deployed anyone here in the last half a year. They'd have to give a reply of some sort.

> "I hear the 10th is responsible for -everything- going wrong in Japan.... or was that the 3rd? Why are there so many Officios in Japan anyway, like, seriously..." Liese complains.
> "Two Officios wasn't enough." Jordan tells her.
> "It's not like the Ninth and the Tenth get along well, though." Fuyuki points out. "That many girls in a small island makes for quite a bit of tension."
> Emiri comes into the room drying her hair off, "I like to think there was some kind of ancient feud between people who wanted an Officio to be run one way and others who wanted it to be run another way."

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> Oriana presents a theory of her own: "Isn't it possible that the Incubators saw how terrible life is for the Japanese people and thought that Japan would be a good place to find girls willing to become magical girls?"

For a quick summary, provided helpfully by Emi, the Tenth was an Officio situated in Japan, one of the two on its soil at this time – the other being Ninth, which Fuyuki and Emi were from. The Tenth's main business stemmed from fraternizing with the yakuza, and largely operating like a criminal organization itself. For this reason and many others, the Tenth had the absolute worst reputation, and were just going to lie if they really were involved in this, but there was probably going to be a reaction of some sort at least. For Therese, it is pointed out that basically all she can do is report this to her boss. Her Rank Leader, who as the girls recalled apparently hated her guts, which was the entire reason Therese was stuck in this shithole to begin with, a Squad Leader with a single squaddie. Therefore, there could be assumed to be no help from the above, as always.

However, at least half the party expressly did not like this. Fuyuki seemed to have very particular ideas about the yakuza, Jordan had the worst opinion of mafia for reasons which we'll talk about much later, and Emiri herself practically went red as she explained the Tenth's background, getting suspiciously invested in the topic. This was the kick that the girls needed to start moving again, wounded or not. The pieces fell together – that's why GreenGreen associated herself with the mafia here. The shape that Jordan and Fuyuki were in was probably not going to be a big deal, if all they were going to fight were some mob thugs under the Green's control. They could walk at least.

And walk, they do.

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The adress leads to the outskirts, not exactly to a mansion of any syndicate. It's the little part of town where things are already mostly deserted, but people would still be ashamed to set up a big warehouse, so they put in a tiny one instead, and put a bunch of office buildings next to it. Over the tall and thick fence that circles this compound, Liese's birds are able to get across a decent idea about the layout, the position of vans parked inside, as well as the workers presently unloading things. From the description, parroted by the blonde crow-coner, Fuyuki determines that it would be difficult for her to infiltrate the building, since she'll need to open doors between the offices building while invisible.

At times like this, when attempting to locate a Magical Girl's exact whereabouts, Eriko would be able to use her Soul Gem to find other gems. This was somewhat dangerous, because sensitive Magical Girls, especially other Callidi, could notice the ping, and be alarmed to Eriko's presence. Since evidence points to this being a Venenum, though, and since the target was likely not even transformed, she decides to give it a go anyway. The result is a big unexpected: There are two Soul Gems inside the warehouse, and nowhere else. The whole warehouse felt a bit off-putting to her supernatural senses.

Fuyuki vaults over the fence, sneaking up to the warehouse. She can't exactly listen in on the men talking in Romanian, but takes note that her investigations were correct: The men were in the process of moving a sizeable statue into the warehouse, probably taking a whole day to empty the van. Inside the warehouse there's the unidentified japanese girl with green streaks in her hair, crouched over a working bench of some sort, and an african american in a tuxedo, who Fuyuki guesses has to be Juliet. It was clear that Green had a similar idea as the girls: Dying her hair a bit, to attract Alcyone's attention.

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Fuyuki's job, of course, was far from over. She perks her ears.
> "I really don't trust you that's all of it, but yeah, I guess it's not my business. Got myself into a little bit of a conflict of interests, here.", the brown girl with a slight afro says.
> A heavily accented voice replies: "My word. I'll just get the damn thing and then I'm out of here. That Satomi bitch - she has green hair, you know, and she's actually complete shit except that she can talk into cats - is somehow convinced its my fault."
> "Now I wasn't even a Neophyte back then, but I just don't remember her very well. And this entire thing is just tied into... eh, that's a secret too I guess."
> The brown haired girl doesn't inquire further, but doesn't quite keep silent yet. "What can the thing do, then? Why is it important?"
> The girl with poorly washed out green hair replies: "Oh, you'd love to know that, wouldn't you. Venenum stuff."
The conversation shifts into Green relieving her school bullies, who strongly reminded her of this Satomi person, and Fuyuki curses her job as the magic juice is being wasted, until Juliet is ready to leave.
> You finally hear the brown girl's voice, after a while. "...Well, I work for Trevor. So it seemed like I should warn you people were asking around. But at the same time, I can't stand the brat."
After her research into the local underground, Fuyuki is able to make sense of this: Juliet and Vinnie made money on the side working for the son of the local mafia boss. Green didn't work him directly, then, just cooperated with him, like when she had his thugs stalk the party.
> "You get what you get."
> "I'm not really good at shooting people or anything. So I make buck making toys for rich kids like this."
> "It's better than a wire in the eye."

> "Oh well." Julie sighs. "You can find me in the lounge I guess. Definitely not anywhere near Trevor."
> "If he finds out I am here, he's gonna want to fight me again."
> "And then cry when I beat his ass without even the costume."
After some goodbyes, Juliet leaves, and Green goes back to her work. Due to minor miscommunication on the touchscreen, Eriko takes this as Juliet being already gone.

Eriko moves out of cover and immediately launches into her magically enhanced suggestion. "Hello! Welcome us in, for we're here to speak with GreenGreen! We are your guests!"
Doing this, she runs face first into Juliet.
> The doors of the house open and Juliet steps in.
> "Oh. Hi."
> Eriko waves.
> "Didn't expect to come see you so soon. Good thing this has nothing to do with me."
As Julie escapes the situation, with the question of whether the charm actually worked on her left up in the air, the thugs greet Eriko, as there is clearly nothing wrong going on here. The rest of the party follows, and is 'welcomed' by everyone, as per the order. Liese is reasonably sure that one of these thugs is among those who followed the party around on patrols.

> The person at the far end of the hall gets up from her table. "What, you got out of your room, Trevor?"
> "It's not done yet. Beat up some more of your servants or som-"
> "WHAT THE FUCKING SHIT?"
> She looks over the cheerful mafiosos. "What the fuck are you guys doing? What are you guys even good for? I want those fucking wands all back. Fuck."
> Eriko tilts her head. "You seem upset."

The Venenum pulls out a giant rice bag, and starts showing all the tools on the table into it. This made sense – the value of magical tools would be measured in Grief Seeds, and if she stowed it inside the hammerspace, the party wouldn't be able to take it. That, of course, was not what they were here for in the first place.
> Picking up the last charm from the table, she shoves it into the bag, and then puts the bag into her inventory.
> "There. Fuck you. Can't touch those now."
> "So, you wanted to talk about something?"
It does not escape Jordan's attention that there is a stack of boxes near the workbench, as if prepared for a quick escape into the courtyard, so she languidly walks over there, and blocks the path. She isn't much for detective talk anyway. Alas, it was refreshing that for once it wasn't her that had a problem. Similarly, Fuyuki had to watch the party's back, and Emiri hated the Tenth so much she didn't even want to enter the hall for fear of going off, so Liese, Oriana, and Eriko were left to corner the girl.

This Venenum of Tenth is predictably distressed by this predicament. Apparently, the party finding her here at all is bad.
> "I don't want to have to explain this entire thing to you. If you want to, like, actually have me help you or something, that would probably be inevitable."
> "It's the thing where your Officio sends you somewhere and then will claim they never sent you anywhere if someone asks, and then you are declared Rogue. I think that's what will happen if this breaks out. Fuck this job."
> "But I guess we do want the same thing as far as killing the birdbitch goes."
> Eriko, seeing how agitated GreenGreen is, decides to cut to the chase. "Fine, then. We'll keep this hypothetical meeting that never happened short."
> "Oh, it can be long. I'd just need guarantee that this never happened." She scratches her head.

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> Liese has questions already. "Fine by me. Your letter said there were important books in the Barrier right? Whatever sensitive information we learn we can say came from one of those."
> Green attempts to explain that: "I haven't been to the Barrier. I am just guessing it would have lots of information scattered all around. If it has a form of something you can carry out, then sure."
> "And how did you come to that conclusion about the barrier if you haven't been there?" Eriko finds a gotcha.
> "Because I know everything about her, duh."
> "It's just not a very nice story I would like or be clarified to tell."
> "I guess I can tell you half-truths, maybe."
> "This Witch is the Witch of a sciencist. Absurd as I find it, it seems to be engineered to be this way, to a specific end that isn't just killing everyone in the town."
> "My job is to collect the fruits of her work, I guess, and prevent other people from getting their hands on that."
> Liese nods lightly and crosses her arms. "Makes sense; the rapid growth rate, the high amount of pseudo-Witches that form from the familiars. A bit too perfect right?"
> "Eh, the pseudo-Witches are a good side effect, I think. It turned into a Grief Seed farm, even though that wasn't a part of the plan."
> "Which is something really good for us, less so for the Incubators."
> "Since if the Witch was never a Magical Girl, they don't get shit from it."
> Liese tilts her head lightly. "Oh? I thought that -was- the plan. Then I guess it has to be with that Lance.."
The fact that this 'Grief Seed farm' required hundreds of civilians to die was probably a happy little accident, too. That was the Tenth for you, but in a way, it was hard to judge.

> "Well, the Lance is mostly the part that I am REALLY uncomfortable explaining."
> "If we could make a deal, like me helping you with the job if I can get my hands on the lance, that would be really sweet, but somehow doesn't seem like a thing that's going to happen anymore, eh?"

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> Eriko shrugs. "You made it sound very important."
> "I don't even know if the lance is going to be in there." Green responds. "Maybe she failed. Who knows."
> "If we don't know #why# it's important, that's suspicious." Eriko insists.
> "If it is real, and if I can retrieve it, then it won't cause the end of the world, and it won't cause trouble to you guys if we recover it. I think."
> "I can mostly guarantee that, yeah. It's just a scientific tool."
As expected from a Venenum, Green's social skills weren't amazing. This circling around the topic only made it sound like that much bigger of a deal.
> Oriana grows frustrated. "Let me rephrase that - you don't really think the lance of Ophelia would just be lying around in another Witch's barrier, right? Because that doesn't make any sense."
> "Yeah. Doubt it's the real thing. But it might have an important property of the real thing."
> "Might."
> "That property is really hard to reproduce, when you think about it. I'm sure you can figure it out." She crosses her arms."
> The Eversor finally realizes it. "The blood?"
> Green nods. "That is something you could figure out if you studied the scripture, so why not confirm it now, I guess. Yeah, if it is the real thing, then it would drip with the blood of saints."

。。。

A bit of an aside, about religion this time.

The Lecticio Divinatus was the main religious text in the Magical Girl World. The book consists of four parts: The Tome of Blood, Tome of the Knight, Tome of the Lady, and the Tome of the Maiden. Each book was written by one of the goddesses in the pantheon known as the Holy Quartet. Together, they recounted events which occurred before time, and explained the origins of Magical Girls, and their role in the world. Oriana's Officio, the 14th, built its authority on countless miracles replicated by worshippers and vessels of these godesses, and insisted that its version of the Lecticio be the canon one.

- The Tome of Blood describes a world of sound and fury, in which the Blood Knight made its way as the strongest being, through might which made right. It teaches of the world's cruelty, thanklessness and savageness, and explains the virtues of self-sufficiency, passion, and joy from being alive, with no strings attached.
- In the Tome of the Knight, the protagonist meets the Blood Knight, and attempts to make her more than a beast, claiming that Magical Girls are meant to be more than this. She introduces various rules into her life. Hence, this was the book of law. Notably, this book is beatifully written, and so Oktavia is also thought to be a goddess of orderly harmony.
- In the Tome of the Lady, the two are recruited to follow its protagonist on a grand quest to defeat an entity known as simply 'the Dark'. Despite descriptions of outright combat, it is made clear that this is a spiritual battle, with the Dark being Witchood itself. The book teaches of love, compassion, and self-sacrifice, culminating in the Lady's own sacrifice to defeat the Dark.
- Finally, the last book is written by the Shieldmaiden, the Lady's closest follower. It describes what came after the sacrifice, and her meditations while waiting for the Lady's inevitable return. It teaches of hope, and endless perseverance.

As Oriana knew, the anecdote about blood was true, originating from the beginning of the second book. In the legend, the Blood Knight stabbed the First Knight on their first meeting with her spear. The two would later become allies, but since her spear spilled blood of saints once, it would spill it forever more. Since Oriana only knew Christianity as presented the proper Roman Catholic way, and her faith in the Blessed Lady was a form of childhood rebellion, any more complex syncretisms would be lost on her. But, she knew enough to know that some doubted both the scriptures, and sought some sort of a deeper truth within them.

Note#6 Religion is a big deal.
Those who read MGNQ will get a bit better of an idea of what's going on, but most of this stuff is secret writefag cabal material. We will come back to this subject matter many times, don't worry about missing something.

。。。

> "...Which is a very valuable material."
> "You know, like when you have the Holy Grail, the important part isn't the goddamned cup, it's the blood in it that is special."
> Oriana shifts uncomfortably. "If you don't even think it's real, why would it drip with real blood?"
> "Because she was really sure about it, because Dickbutt is really sure about it, and because she seemed to be able to affect her form during the transformation somehow."
> "One idea is that she could have had access to actual saint's blood, and the Witch is able to replicate it. Notes don't really say. She took most of the notes with herself, anyway."
> "Why a bird, then?" Eriko asks. "Why attack specific types of people? Don't tell me it was just on a whim because she needed to put something in those fields. If her entire motive is 'for science', I'm going to be very cross."
> Green has an answer for that. "She was pretty bird-themed as a Magical Girl too. Had the costume of a plague doctor and everything. But the reason for the visual themes is 'merging', in a bunch of different ways."
> "You know, like in the myth of Alcyone. Did you never actually look that up? I was really afraid you would have been able to tie it to the Pleiades, too. Then we would have been in trouble from the start."
> Eriko blinks.
This made a disturbing amount of sense. Even Eriko knew that the 'Pleiades' were the ruling caste of the 10th.

> Oriana recalls something incredibly relevant. "Oh. I saw a plague doctor-like figure riding a rainbow bird going through one of the offspring barriers before. I thought it was just another type of familiar. It didn't seem very threatening."
> The Venenum looks genuinely shocked by this information.

> "That... well, shit... there are two explanations for that, I guess."
> "The first would be that she did take on the properties of an amalgamation, but the only Magical Girl in it is her."
> "Which is why the only Shadow Magical Girl familiar she would be able to produce is her."
> "The second... is very classifed. Don't even want to think about that one."
> "If the second one is the case, then we are basically all fucked anyway. You'll see if you fight it. If you were able to kill it, then it was probably a shadow girl."
> "If not," Liese fills in, "then she progressed to Alpha-plus already, is that what you thought?"
> Eriko grumbles. "So the difference is a key factor in whether or not we're enough to put it down. Is that it?"

> "At this point, conjecture gets us little else. We need to pin down her Barrier's location and then get ready for the fight of our lives." Fuyuki finally interjects between a lull in the discussion.
> "Word." The Venenum points to Fuyuki.
> Liese shakes her head, about ready to conclude. "Yeah, I sure wish I didn't get the very outrageously censored version of the file. So about that mountain hiking, guys?"

Before the girls leave, they describe their trouble scaling the mountains to catch Alcyone's Barrier before its gone. Green offers to create a magical tool that could teleport them longer distances in a certain direction, in the range of kilometers to which Jordan, who has since been doing pushups out of boredom, replies that she can already do that since forever ago, but nobody ever asked.

In a flash, it occurs to the girls that this is what they were looking for. If Jordan took the charm, and hopped from peak to peak with it, she'd be able to locate Alcyone pretty easily. They'd just need to work out the optimal spots for coverage, so that the Eversor doesn't exhaust her gem more than necessary.

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>am actually waking up in 5 hours
Sorry, I'm going to have to cut here today, will pick up tomorrow. Also,
>110 posts and about halfway done
Mother of god, what have I done?

As one of the players in this campaign, I will take this time to say a word about our GM.

This rat has assembled a group of players that effectively bracket God's flat earth. While most of the players live in The Land of The Free, the Rat himself lives 6 time zones away from us, and one unfortunate player lives another 6 time zones away. Despite this, our incredible GM managed to wrangle a workable schedule which, unbelievably, put him in the position of beginning our sessions at or after midnight his time and running until he could see the sun rise, normally.

This in itself in my opinion, is GM of the Year material; however, he took it a step further when he took a demanding physical labor job at an unscrupulous employer so far out of the way, that he needed to commute 3 hours daily for a 10 hour shift all without a hiatus in the campaign. The job was temporary for better or for worse.

After doing this for 3+ years, we actually finished the campaign that *he* ran or a system *he* built, and *he* compiled all the logs and wrote out the storytime *himself* to give to you today.

I have many words for this absolute legend of a Rat, but I think the blood, sweat, and tears he has put into this effort speaks for itself.

Out of page 10 you go.

>thread about actual rpgs on /tg/ in 2020
This is a nice Christmas present.

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pretty refreshing read, thanks for all the effort OP

>>76634451
>For better or worse
For the better really, the horror stories from that 'employer' convinced me to never have anything to do with them ever. It's also worth noting that two of us also had nightmare jobs at various points throughout that make the miracle even more amazing.

>>76638094
This is like, half of the First Act and there's 4, so plenty of content left to see.

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Shortly after evacuating the gangster compound, the girls start getting to work. This wasn't going to be done in one day, but it was a somewhat reliable way of getting it done. Certainly, it was going to be cheaper than giving Debbie an entire Seed.

It took a few days of hiking and referencing maps for distance to make the jumps count, but eventually, the girls had a rough working plan constructed as they went. One big benefit of their status as Magical Girls was that they did not need to pack much to hike – in fact, Fuyuki even brought a folding couch into the mountains, which she'd plop down onto when it was time to rest.

In the end, a time came that the girls were bathing in the fresh winds atop one of the lower spines of the carpats, when they realized Jordan is taking a seriously long time returning from her latest jaunt.
> With a subtle pop and a not so subtle "Yeeeee Hawwwww!", Jordan literally flies in out of nowhere. She soars over their heads and rebounds off a tree and nearly sticks the landing if it weren't for pesky branches getting in the way. Stumbling forward, she recovers it into a roll and comes out right in front of the couch and plops down on it in one smooth motion. "Sup."
> Eriko is less surprised than most. Just slightly surprised. "So how'd it go?"
> "Well, found the barrier for one." Jordan boasts at last.
> "There's birds. Lots of birds. I mean dinner all the way to thanksgiving and then a thanksgiving for the whole squad."

The Barrier seemed to always occuppy one peak at a time, creating multiple entrances. The girls have figured out as much, and that there was always one unguarded entrance at a time, which they figured would be optimal for their own business. They have also knew about dead people being found in the mountains throughout the few days, fallen from the mountainside, so the next news was a bit less shocking.
> "There were a couple dead bodies. They had the mark. I checked."

There weren't exactly many birds this high up, one could find birds of prey at most. Yet, the Familiars seemed to blend into the sky until Jordan came further. Right now, nothing could be found in the direction Jordan came from. Since the party's time is limited, they pack the couch, and hope that they can make it this time.

The wind's howling disappears, replaced by the omnipresent chirping of birds. It felt as if the bit of greenery that could be found up here was made greener by the Witch's very presence. That was not exactly normal, but perhaps it was just the girls' perception being twisted. Going a bit ahead, Fuyuki notices someone, and points them out to the party.
> "Kid's one of the local grafitti artists, one of my past leads on GreenGreen. I honestly have no idea why he'd be this close to a Barrier but he looks like he knows where he's going."
> She points towards the brightly-colored brat in hip-hop clothes, not the most efficient for this kind of mountaineering.
> Liese follows while finishing her snack. "You guys do realize he's almost certainly kissed right? If you just stalk him he'll probably hop right in to get himself killed."
Indeed, the boy stands in front of the entrance into a cave at a cliff side, staring into the nothingness beyond with a glassy look in his eyes. With a few paces, Jordan leaps up to the cave and grabs him before he can fall or go inside, to which he puts up no resistance whatsoever.
> Fuyuki lands shortly after Jordan, throwing a hard right hook to the lad's jaw in the hopes of putting him to sleep.
While this saves the lad's life, the chirping around grows alarmed. The rest of the girls catch up, realizing that they have to go in before they're attacked by the rainbow bastards, but that they also have to lose this nerd they just caught. Eriko begins applying the necessary mental protections before they enter, and they have about that much time to figure it out, which they don't.

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> "Alright, none of us are going to fall under Alcyone's power, kiss or no," she says, weaving words of power. "We will not further the goals of the witch, we will not attack our friends for the witch, and we will not accept the witch."
> Fuyuki takes a deep breath as the familiar sensation of Eriko's Suggestion starts taking hold, pursing her lips.
For one, the Callidus ties the boy up, and suggests that Jordan teleport the kid somewhere far from here, into some neck of the woods, where they can pick him up later. This, however, is quite a bit of juice for Jordan to blow on a single civilian. She does not like the idea very much. It was going to limit her options against whatever avaited inside.
> Jordan_Ramses looks up uncertainly at the birds. "Ugh, right."
> She picks up the kid, and blinks seemingly out of existence before coming back about 20 seconds later.

This was it, the Barrier of the Big Bitch. Upon passing between the different states of being, and being able to see again, the girls take it all in. They find themselves in a sea of tall grass, filled with blocks and pillars of green stone. The pillars stood in support of the sky, which was covered by a net, much like in a voliere.

Fortunately, there was no threat from birds, since none were around that Eriko could see. The same could not be said of the spikey, purple-blue monster floating in mid-air in the middle of the area, or the black figure atop it wielding something like an oversized scalpel. It utters a few Witch letters, and begins to depart at blinding speed.
> "That couldn't be Alcyone herself, could it?" Fuyuki's eyes trail the monster bird as it flies far away.
> "That's not a skeleton."
> Liese appears to be in an uncharacteristically silent and withdrawn state, not even reacting to the letters.

Since only she can understand that it just said [You are not the one], Liese surmises that this bird-person was waiting for the kissed boy, and wasn't expecting the party. While others figure out how to progress, the researcher splits from the group to look around a bit. What caught her attention were some of the stone slabs, which were actually tablets filled with writing. She begins to take notes.

Eriko determines that the Witch is deep below. If they were to fight it, they would have to crawl through the earth somehow. Far ahead in the distance, there was a gate of some sort, which may have led into the earth, but the disc-rider was hovering above it.
> "This is just the welcome room." the Callidus notes.
> Oriana is less surprised than the others. "That is the figure I encountered in another barrier. It didn't seem particularly threatening then, but be on guard."

Once everyone is rid of the minor vertigo from entering a Barrier, and ready to progress, Liese rejoins the party. The tablets bears a variety of texts – maybe they were what Green was looking for. There is a creation myth of some sort, various ritual instructions, and generally writings that smelled of the occult. Despite being a researcher, Liese wasn't too well read, especially in esoteric texts, so she would have to research those writings later.

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As soon as the being understands that these invaders are going for the gate, it swoops down, blocking the path. It gurgles some letters as a welcome.
> Liese strains her eyes. "...Something about being part of a greater power and being tricked into doing good because of desiring evil... doesn't.. really make much sense to me."
> "Tell it to bugger off." Eriko suggests.
> Fuyuki frowns, knowing that Liese was normally more on-the-ball than this. "It may or may not be telling us its sob story, doesn't matter. Either we go in now or that thing will bar us."
> "Time to kill her then." Jordan nods. She begins to crouch for an attack.

Eriko takes aim, and shoots at the figure from her handgun. Fuyuki takes cover behind one of the tablets, and lays on some more fire, but her shots go wide also. In response, the figure arms itself further – with a fan of five pearly spears appearing around the disc. Similar to the ones from the bubble barrier, but apparently stationary this time. With that sort of set-up, Jordan reconsiders charging it upfront, since there was no telling how those things were going to move.
> The bird person rushes forward, its fan of spears moving with it. It quickly dashes past Liese, slashing at her with its scalpel blade.
> Liese stumbles back a bit but remains standing. She seems a bit dazed from the hit, but only for a bit. "It's spears have some sort of poison or curse, we have to take it down quickly."
> Oriana breaks the nearest spear in two with a swing of her fan.

>>76639074
Jesus Christ, I never saw a storytime that tried to be a length of a novel.

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> The it-bird is struck by Emiri's arrow and falls back, registering it. A part of it having passed through, it doesn't seem wholly corporeal, now.
> Emiri frowns, noting the weird hit, "Did any of you see that?"
> Eriko has a bit of a better idea what's going on. "Yeah. That's annoying."
In short, it wasn't that Eriko and Fuyuki had poor aim, the bullets simply passed through the figure. A magic attack would be required, like Emi's magic blast, and it still wasn't entirely effective.
As far as everyone was concerned, this thing that was being ridden was no different than the pseudo-witch that completely wrecked the group, and it could start spitting spears at any moment also. Fortunately, the party expected to run into more of those things, and discussed strategy that would embarrass them less. Therefore, they split apart, and hope to attack from all sides, so that only one target gets the shit-shower.

> "...one, we've got company," Eriko says, jerking her head back towards the entrance. "Two... the bird person's body's like attacking sludge. But the spear is different."
A pair of Familiars pours out of the unprotected entrance the girls have just intended to go through. Then the arch they entered through originally straight up explodes in birds. This was a half-baked ambush sprung on the group as soon as they were spotted, and they must have triggered it early.
Now, the group had to choose between cleaning out the small birds, targeting the rider, or targeting the fatty. Eriko shoots at the beast next, noting that it is armored, but at least material trauma worked on it somewhat. Pelted with fire from Liese's assault rifle, and now with Jordan throwing knives at it, it weaves out of the way, and into the air.

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> The rider distances themselves a little more, and chucks a lance at Eriko. It seems far less skillful than when she is slashing, but hits the mark this time as well.
> Eriko glances at her midsection in shock, seemingly missing part of it. Numbly, she looks around, slightly dazed, before the pain kicks in.
> "Someone stay close to Eriko!" Fuyuki hollers as cold dread stabs through her veins at the sight of her fellow Callidus, facing down the pancake with a shaky grip on her Blade. They've been through worse, they can do this.
> Eriko shakily takes a shot at the disc before limping to cover. "The hole..." she sputters, pointing at the near birds, "they're surprised." She points at the far birds "Called."
Essentially, the two bastards that showed up from the entrance weren't a part of the ambush – only the birds from the outside, who were expected to follow the party in the first place, were temporarily prevented from entering, and now they came in all at once. Thinking about it later, Liese figures if the bird-faced bastard might have just wanted to talk, and made the ambush as a failsafe, but right now, she sprays the two birds with the new magazine, to gain some breathing room.

> Shouting comes from the ground. "DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH HER YOU ROTTEN PIECE OF SHIT! I'LL STAB YOU INTO NEXT WEEK SO YOU CAN READ ABOUT YOUR OWN DEATH IN THE PAPER." Jordan proclaims levelly. Then, she blinks in and out of existence with crackling fury. Showing up right above her target, she plunges down like a stabby meteor dead center onto the floaty disc Sword In The Stone style.
> Fuyuki launches herself skyward just as Jordan strikes at the floating disk with a vengeance, blade hissing softly while cutting through the air.... and only the air when the Callidus barely misses. She lands next to one of the tablets before rolling into cover.
> "Awww, come on!"

>>76639104
You did, they just took 5-15 threads to do it. Adventures of Chainshirts is at least two novels. AGP is several novels. From recent memory, Crab Storytime is also outrageously long. I actually took the advice of 'write this shit up ahead of time', since I learned from those classics.

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> Oriana smashes another spear in twain and rush back towards Emiri and Eriko. "Are you alright?"
> Emiri takes another shot from above, which whizzes past the figure. "Oriana, can you fix her up?"
> Oriana thrusts her hands onto Eriko's stomach and forces healing magic into her palms, radiating out into the wounds like a cooling breeze. "That's the best I can do," she says while looking around.
Doing this, Oriana observes something strange – there was quite a bit of blood on Eriko that could not have come from the stab wound. Bizarrely, unlike the pearly spears shot by the familiars and the Pseudo-Witch, which just dissolved into nothingness, this spear seems to have dissolved into a line of blood. Oriana then notices that her own fan has some blood on it. Assuming it was blood, it did not smell like anything.

Above, Jordan kept the figure busy, but gave up on trying to hit it – instead, she dodged its attacks, moving in such a way as to cause maximum damage to the disc, getting out of the melee range, and carving into it with her knives again. As she does, she can't help but notice the figure was summoning more spears, but progress was being made on both sides. Soon enough, the beast comes crashing to the ground in hopes of knocking Jordan off itself.
> The bird person leaps off it without trouble, discounting any doubts that they were separate beings. It stands in there for a moment, its fan of spears still arranged around it, before breaking for the tall grass.
> "You're flying round here spearing the girl I love and I'm like, FUCK YOU!~" she sings an edited pop song from decades past.
> Fuyuki looks up in awe as Jordan and Liese simply go to town on the freaky Disk thing, shaking her head as she turns her head towards the incoming flock of Familiars.

Emiri floats away, entering an airborne engagement with the incoming birds. One big advantage of her ability, limited as it was, would be that the incredibly dangerous sonic wave birds have been largely neutralized. She made sure there would be no terrain behind her to knock her into, if she took a hit. Liese also offers some long-ranged support from the ground. Next to her, the limp body of the disc begins to be apparently absorbed into the grass and the earth. Eriko already signaled that this thing didn't have a Grief Seed, anyway – it was one of the Barrier's many props. The rider that started fleeing, however, did have a Grief Seed on her. There were many other things about it that Eriko found odd – primarily the fact that it had a bone structure. Yet, it did not seem exactly human.
>Eriko levels her weapon at the fleeing bird figure and mutters "get fucked". Bang.
> "Yeah, you can't hold on to that incorporeal nonsense anymore, can you?"
> Eriko , incidentally, hits the wielded spear, which she knew was corporeal the whole time.
> The nick in the spear seems to give the person some heavy feedback. Their outline becomes much cleaner now.
Jordan, Fuyuki, and Oriana attempt to pursue it, but for the most part, it is fleeing towards the exit, which means they are meeting the incoming wing of familiars face first. This has expected results:
> Fuyuki grits her teeth as one of the Fatbirds screams, a nasty sound of flesh slamming hard onto cold stone the moment she hits the tablet behind her. To her credit, the Callidus gets up and dusts herself off, definitely not pleased now.
> "Tch!" She leaps up on the tablet before lunging at the Bird, slicing it in two with one clean swing.
> Jordan gets lifted and slammed right onto the corner of the huge tablet hitting her square in the lower back. "Fu-arhgahgh!" she shouts as she rebounds off and flops down in front.
> "You..." she points at the birdman, "And you..." at the fatbirds. "HAVE ALL MADE MY SHITLIST."

> Jordan teleports straight into the path of the birdish figure. It appears to be surprised, but still manages to give her trouble in attacking it. She still lands a good hit, however.
> She confronts the bird figure head on as it prepares a spear to throw. Jordan only hesitates for a moment before taunting, "Bring it, black bird bitch bimbo!"
> The spear is thrown though seemingly out of fear, rather than focused precision, making it easily dodged.
> Fuyuki focuses, one moment beside the Callidus and the next moment finding herself behind the Birdman. She strikes with a furious cry, trying to hew it in twain with a cleaving blow.
> Jordan happens to make eye contact with Fuyuki and a silent exchange and understanding passes between them. In the next instant, they bracket the fleeing bird.
> She closes in for a strike and for a flicker of a moment, her eyes go wide and she loses focus. She misses her shot on her target, but thankfully Fuyuki is there so secure the kill.
> Fuyuki glares in contempt of the Birdman as she pushes it off her weapon, taking a step back in case it decided to pull a fast one on her.
> The creature slithers around the ground, as if it was becoming non-corporeal again, and then shoots towards the now-unguarded arch between the tables faster than you can blink. As a parting shot, it flings one last spear.
Fuyuki realizes that while it was dodging blows, the thing was restoring its spear that Eriko shot, and with it, the protection granted unto it by the Barrier. Since the girls can't actually follow it down there, they just stay where they are and curse, while the rest of the Familiars are being cleaned up. Fuyuki stabs at the ground in anger, and in turn realizes that her sabre's entire blade is stained with blood – and this actually smelled like blood, too.
>"Hey Eriko! Since when did Witches bleed when they get hurt?" Fuyuki hollers in the Callidus' direction, raising her weapon to show the blood on it.

Eriko isn't listenting – she is fading out from the bloodloss, as well as the muscle relaxant that the scalpel-spears were covered with. She is listening to snatches of song that come from deep within the Barrier – no doubt, the source of Alcyone's unnaturally powerful charm. She realizes that the spell she put on everyone to resist its allure has a limited duration, so they should do their business in here fast.

While others make sure to clear out any Familiars that would come nearby, Liese chooses the tablets near the gate to the inner Labyrinth, or more specifically the ground beneath them, to bury her tracker. She was told that it needed to be a place that would recur no matter where the Barrier was deployed. The tracker itself turns out to be a scroll hidden inside a sealed case. Once Liese breaks the seal on it, and covers it with ground, it's all done – the girls should be able to locate the Barrier at any time now.

All that was left for the girls to do now was going home, lick their wounds, and come back with a proper party. There was a purge to be done, but all in due time.

Not even railroading, they came within like 2 damage of actually downing it there.

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So, the girls tumble down the mountain, pick up the civilian, and later drop him off behind the closed fence of a hospital, in vague hopes something can be done by mundane means about the permanent curse on his flesh that was their job to resolve. Afterwards, he girls recover in various ways. Liese's way of recovery consists of feigning health until she collapses face first into her plate while eating and passes out, spurring the others to realize she has an untreated slashing wound that everybody forgot about.

Jordan recovers by proposing to Eriko. If this were a Nintendo game, there'd be shining light and flowers and hearts blooming in the background of the two lovebirds, but we're going to skip over it entirely here. We are also going to skip over Jordan's snatching of a few more birds from the barrier, filling the fridge with yet more Witch flesh, in hopes of feeding it to everybody else, as well as all her other, now mounting, downtime shenanigans.

Emiri's way of recovery is more conceptual. Though she did not make it too apparent, Emiri had the second longest service history here after Jordan. And though not as much as Jordan, Emiri is aware that she is washed out, and that she still isn't up to the par. While she did pretty good in the aerial battle, it was the first time she actually applied herself somehow, after many months. So, she sneaks out at times, on her own. One time, Fuyuki takes interest, and follows her:
> Emiri somehow hears Fuyuki and slows down, looking behind her, spies the Callidus, and waves back
> Fuyuki catches up to Emiri within a few strides while huffing slightly from the abrupt run. "Why did you run off so suddenly?"
> "Because everyone else in the world won't wait for me to train."

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Emiri explains that she is training in that abandoned warehouse where Therese challenged the party. Fuyuki walks beside Emiri the entire time, keeping an eye on the rooftops and alleyways, and tries to pry more information from the otherwise silent girl that she never saw in the corridors of their common Officio in Mitakihara. Outside of a bigger group, where she mostly put herself into the clown shoes, Emiri turns out to be surprisingly talkative in earnest.
> Emiri finishes stacking the palettes and climbs up top, frowning that there's no soft landing and finds some padding material, "It's just that Jordan's already so attached to Eriko, I feel like that should happen and then someone else should be team leader. It's hard when the person who's perceived as leader has a relationship with someone in the squad."
> Emiri slowly starts throwing a bunch of random padding materials below the palettes. She seems to come to a decision.
> "Did I tell you how I got here?"
> The Callidus shakes her head. "No, you haven't. My briefing didn't tell me much about you either, just that you needed backup and some details on Alcyone plus the Town we're in."
> Emiri stares downward. "My squad got wiped out - except for me - in an encounter with some veterans from the Tenth."
>Fuyuki is expressionless at that, but Emiri could see her eyes shifting in a way that made it clear she was thinking. That's two Magical Girls that had their Squads obliterated...
> "... I see. That explains your concerns."
> Emiri stands atop the stack of pallets and nods, not sure if she should just jump or try something else, "I'd like it to not happen again. If it does, it can't be helped, but... so long as I breathe, I want to keep anyone else from dying."

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That at least explained why Emiri was of the informal 'squaddie' rank like Oriana, even though she operated in this ragtag group on the other side of the planet. There was nobody to give her commands at the moment, her squad was gone. Further, it explained the urgency with which Fuyuki's Rank Leader asked for someone else from the Ninth to come here. After something like that, Emiri was likely not considered a stable individual, and her lone presence here must have been some kind of a mistake in paperwork that another volunteer could somewhat alleviate. That is, if Fuyuki's darker ideas were off, and Emiri wasn't sent here to die in the first place.

As for Fuyuki's side of the story, she was still a Neophyte. When seeing the request for volunteers posted near the Rank Leader's office, she picked it up. An offshore volunteer job to earn her stripes, in hopes that her decent English would allow her such a career. By now, she understood that this was some sort of a ruse she's taking part in, but it was too late to back out. But, ever since Fuyuki left school, she did not exactly have any friends, certainly not among the other Callidi who each went their separate ways on their separate jobs. This entire boarding school setup soothed her otherwise social mind.
> "More like I didn't want to make ties with people who I'd be leaving behind." The Callidus finally admits, wrapping her arms around her elbows at that.
> "You guys are the first group of friends that I honestly have in a long time."

Emiri's training progressed slowly, because she needed to completely change the way she went about levitation, and get used to it. Emiri's levitation thus far was like pulling teeth, but in rare moments of insight, when her Soul Gem got real dark and the OJ tasted real good, she knew that she could do much better than float five meters above ground.

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This kind of ability was very rare, so there was no one in the Officio to learn from, but they at least knew that those few Magical Girls that could fly would be able to do so with impunity, not straining their minds or Soul Gems very much, even able to travel between cities through the air, as long as they did not mind that someone might spot them and worse, see under their skirt.

Used properly however, this ability could be completely overpowering, and might catapult one far ahead of their peers in combat potential. A Vindicare that could dictate her terms and distance of engagement at all times was a Vindicare that was going to win at all times. It was no coincidence that Jordan's and Eriko's Warmasters could both fly. Emiri still had a long road ahead of her, and unlike others who could go to a shooting range or spar with each other, she had to walk it on her own.

At the very least, Fuyuki could use her newly accquired knowledge of first aid to clean up Emiri's bruises from falling, even if it wasn't enough to fix Liese up. Once she woke up, the blonde insisted that it could not have been the poison, but rather that she was experiencing a more complicated condition. For whatever reason, her costume feels a little different from when she contracted, having a darker hue. Her Soul Gem is acting a little weird, the part of her hand it's on displays Witch runes, spelling out 'awaken', as if the figure's strike marked her for something.
> "This is the first time I've seen someone's costume change." Jordan comments.
> Liese glances to the side, the worries of others slowly starting to get to her despite her usually implacable positiveness. "Well it.. can't be -that- rare, right..."

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> "I've heard of it." Where Eriko gained such knowledge would be a mystery. "But there's usually a trigger."
> After a while, a further fact occurs to her: "Liese had been feeling hot a while back, though. I don't think the barrier caused it. It may have exacerbated it."
> "About... a week or so, I believe. She said she was hot when we went to visit GreenGreen."
> Liese starts to make her way towards the kitchen, correcting on the way out. "4 days ago the heat wave started." That's the night they got drunk and did 'things'.
> "Yeah." Eriko nods. "I thought it was food poisoning."
> She then considers what the fridge has been overflowing with recently. "Have you been eating Familiar meat?"
> Liese's eye twitches a little as she slows down her pace to let the Callidus catch up. "E-err.. maybe a little..."
> She gulps ever so slightly as she opens one of the cupboards. "Just a few times, every now and then..."
> "How often?" Eriko demands to know.
> Liese sighs lightly in turn. "It's not like I keep count... Hum, maybe 3 times since the type-writer Barrier?" she reaches over to fetch a glass in the cupboards.
> "Jordan? You eat familiars, too?"
> "Of course I do. I eat more than her and I'm perfectly fine."

While Eriko may have been swooned, she was still sane enough to understand that Jordan was not 'fine'. This was not just the cause of the generally manic way that Jordan was, but explained a lot of other things about the 8th Officio. A few more factoids about Liese come to the surface: That Jordan and her also tried to lick Grief Seeds to see what would happen, that Liese doesn't know her own strength as she destroys several glasses trying to pour herself a drink after the long snooze, that she has grown an inch in height within the last few weeks, and that she has recently gotten herself a tattoo of some sort. Of course, Jordan insists that this means nothing, and Eriko is overreacting.

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Liese herself attributes this to a grow spurt, like when a Magical Girl survives a few years and becomes an adult woman, she can't keep wearing her old sailor uniform forever, so the thing adjusts. Clearly the same thing happened to her. Eriko manages to get them both to swear off Grief Seed licking, but that's the end of that.

。。。

A bit embarrassed about this incident, Liese recalls a certain convenient task she had to perform before the proper run on the Barrier. That is, return to her Officio with the research materials she has gathered thus far, and a full report, so that this stuff wouldn't be lost in case she were to, you know, die actually fighting Alcyone.

So, Liese hops on a train, and then hops from it on another train, and then gets from it onto the -actual- train, which finally takes her to Prague. The Twelfth is located deep in the city's underground, but Liese isn't going very deep into the Archive. She is merely visiting her Rank Leader's office, handing in the report, giving a first-hand account to be recorded, and hopes to get one more thing out of that, but actually fails at the last step.

Instead, her boss, a woman named Martyna Twardowska, tells her that while her three months of basic are done, she is not quite legally eligible to receive a badge marking her as a proper Magical Girl working for the Officio, since the badge denotes surviving Prague. In Liese's case, the tail end of that duration wasn't spent in the city, but rather in a cozy town in Romania. That was something Twardowska intended to just ignore and give her the badge anyway, but Liese was considered for a special project the director of which she was ordered to visit.

> "Or, at least it would be a pain for us to do the paperwork if you change ranks within a few days again."
> "You'll probably understand better when you talk to Aneta. I can give you the badge now, but I'd rather you think about it after talking to her."

So, Liese would be visiting a Librarian. She did not speak to many before, but she'd have heard a lot about them. Librarians were odd folk. To become one, you had to be old and knowledgeable enough that an Incubator thought they were worth keeping out of the frontlines and fed Grief Seeds for whatever services they could provide. Now, the Twelfth was an Officio of Vanus, all of which were not supposed to be combat personnel, so there were a lot more Librarians here than elsewhere. And because of that, there was no way to know what kind of a mad scientist, or perhaps rather a mad occultist, Liese was going to wind up with here.

The Vindicare has to go to the Officio proper, then, through the maze of bookshelves and cubicles known as the Archive, all the way to the door of the Librarium. In front of it she runs into Miroslava, which is not actually that surprising – as the tall girl explains, they simply had the appointment at the same time, since the Librarian needed to talk to them both about their current assignment. There is no button to press or list of names to ring up in front of the perfectly cut steel blast door, so the best the girls can do is wait.

The door eventually slides open a bit, revealing a bushy-and-messy-haired bespectatled brunette, who asks for the girls' papers. While reading them, she checks her hand watch to confirm she did not get the time of appointment wrong. There was nothing strange about this, considering that the Twelfth deliberately had no internet access, since that would make stealing information far too easy, and there was not much reason to keep your phone turned on, either. Therefore, many Vanus of the Twelfth were watch-wearing dildos in every sense.

The two follow the Vanus inside, through a fairly sterile corridor of steel. The first time the door had opened, Liese felt something unnatural breathe out of it at her, and now she is convinced she knows what it is: An Anti-Magic Field generator. Normally, these were using for prison cells. Uncomfortable as they were for Magical Girls, they were also the only way to prevent them from escaping.

The Librarium of Twelfth seemed to have so many of those things running at once, in fact, that some of the residue happened to slip from all the Silent Rooms in this complex into the hallway. Presumably the Librarians needed ways to quickly shut down any experiment that went out of control. More worryingly, some of those rooms must have been switched to full power right now, indicating that something was being sealed in these. That said, no one but a Magical Girl could possible get this deep into the underground complex, and a sparklie would not be able to retrieve any of these things, since a field of that intensity would have dropped her to the ground.
> Finally, the Vanus takes a right turn, and types a security code into a steel door at the side of the corridor. The place feels even odder now. As you enter the room, you feel quite stripped.
> "Don't worry, the field is weak. It's to prevent accidental dischages from magic items and such", the girl tells Liese.

Inside the room is an impressive amount of dust and stacks of paper of that sort wherin each has been added onto the pile and abandoned forever individually. Multiple bins full of crumpled paper that some unfortunate soul probably had to take out all the way to the surface at some point. Also, books and scrolls which were a better shape, shelves full thereof, and finally a sofa, on which lies an older woman with similar looks to the pair's guide, but about twice and half as much body mass, and glasses that veritably looked like bottle caps. The woman seems to be gathering some dust herself, before being woken up.

> "Ma'm, these are the girls appointed for a Gathering."
> "Okay, sit down, girls." she says in a cracked voice.
The two do so.
> "So basically," the older woman-looking magical girl says, "This Alcyone thing is my jurisdiction now, it seems."
> "Just call me Aneta. You blonde one are Liese, right? I'll take you first. Tell me everything you know about Alcyone. Tell it like a story."
> "Feel free to tack in any other Witches you fought. I'm taking you first because the other girl will probably have a lot more to tell, not having been in for a Gathering in what, a year?"
The apparent apprentice brings an already prepared tray of tea, and Liese begins to tell what she has seen in the last two months. She is aware that the Librarian is using a technique to record what is being said in her mind, so she can review it later – she is aware of this, because she tried to learn it before. A bit less obvious part is how 'Aneta' picks up her tea cup, and then just stares into it, not drinking much as she listens. Must have been something auto-hypnotic.

> At the end, the woman winks, and takes a sip of her tea at last, which apparently ends the Trance.
> After hurriedly emptying the cup while it still retains a semblance of warmness, she locks her eyes onto Liese.
> "Why are you a Vindicare?"

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> Liese blinks twice and tilts her head, displaying a little bit of confusion. "Pardon me, I'm not sure I'm following..."
> "From what I understand, you could comprehend the texts in Barriers, even their own words."
> "While not having the education to actually know what they meant, though, that's still valuable."
> Liese nods lightly. "Well, that's true, but that's more of an instinctive ability than anything else, it's just a thing I can do. As for your question, I would guess it's because I'm most capable with ranged combat?"
> "Hmph."
Now, though she won't admit it out loud, Liese is somewhat aware that this probably is not the case. The way recruitment worked, you were tried in melee combat to see if you could make an Eversor, you were tried on the shooting range to see if you could make a Vindicare, and if both of those failed, you would be put into the 'problematic' bin. If you were lucky, you came out of it as a Callidus. To be a Venenum or a Vanus was a mark of failure elsewhere... but it wouldn't have been a failure in the Twelfth.

In Liese's case, she was eager to prove herself, and so she went for the shooting range, and did great on the first try. That would be, of course, because she had already handled a gun before, thanks to her military family background. Once the instructor saw that, it was case closed, and nobody asked Liese about what her specific potential as a Magical Girl actually was ever again. Suddenly, what her Rank Leader said earlier made a distressing amount of sense.

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> Aneta lies back on the sofa, and relaxes.
> "I don't hate the idea of someone in the field being able to do it. It's a lot neater."
> "It makes the Gathering less boring. But it seems to me that you are gifted to be a Vanus a lot more. Oh well."
> "While you are before someone who can, is there something about the Barriers and Witches you fought that you didn't understand?"
> "Because it's pretty obvious to me, and I'll let you see the file that will contain these details, but in case something really important slips by, you'd better ask now."
> "I have some of it that I think should be addressed, anyway. Like when you tried to speak to the black specimen riding the pseudo-Witch."
> "That wasn't going to work."
> Liese leans back slightly and gives the question some thought with a serious expression. "Well that 'specimen' would probably be the biggest mystery I've been faced with so far. Besides that I've mostly just had trouble deciphering the riddles. Doesn't really do me any good to be able to read the runes if I can't make head or tails of their cryptic metaphors does it?"
> "Well, let's see."
> "That line about being a part of the greater power that wishes for malice and is tricked to do good, is really classic. Faust, the first part. Right at the beginning. It's how Mephistopheles introduces himself."
> "So, following that logic, I think if you responded with Faust's line, in Witch Letters on a big board or something, it would be able to understand."
> "Now, as for what it is, I can't tell for certain, and the theory I have for it is classified in an area I really can't let you into. Right now, anyway."
> "But you should know that Magical Girls usually can't speak in Witch Letters, unless they are basically just about Witching Out. Not even the really gifted ones, like you."
> "So if you want to yell at Witches a lot, get a big board."

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Liese considers it, but is aware that her Inventory does not exactly have enough space to keep something like that, alongside her equipment. Her efforts will have to be refocused elsewhere.
> "While we are at it, the thing you thought was an universal creation myth was a literal transcription of the Emerald Tablet."
> "The emerald tablet is something like a do-it-yourself guide to Alchemy. How to create the Philosopher's Stone in ten simple steps, some people would say."
> "And I think that the green ribbon thing is a transcription of something in the Grand Grimoire. Purely on the form it was written, I will have to check."
> "Grand Grimoire is basically a hebrew guide to summoning demons. It's a pretty big book, but a lot of it is the same."
> Liese nods to herself. "So that would hint that Alcyone could have been a Venenum, I suppose."
>Aneta smiles. "Well, I already know that she was. Point is that her Barrier is full of sorcerous texts."
> "It would probably be really helpful to our Officio if you can read a lot of them. There might be some that she herself had written."
> "I think that's what that other Venenum you talked about was after."

As her final bit of advice, though she doesn't know anything about the lance, Aneta adds that the blood of saints is, essentially, the Philosopher's Stone, and so it was not strange at all that Alcyone had a theme of merging.
> "Either way, it seems to me that her work is not finished. She seems to be missing something from the full recipe."
> "Maybe she is looking for something."
> "Martyna probably already told you this, but you've given me more interesting results than I am used to. I'd be willing to take you under my wing as you are."

> "Vanus training can be provided too. I'm saying this because Martyna's other idea was making you a bodyguard for some Gatherer, on account of you being experienced at dealing with foreigners."

> "Which isn't half bad I guess, but seems to me like squandered potential. Better to make a Gatherer out of you straight up."
Though better than being interned in Prague, that would not have been an enviable job, since Gatherers weren't very well liked. They were people who went around other Officios and asked people pointed questions about Witches they fought lately, which was rarely met with hospitality.
> "Think about it. I'll have Alcyone's and Tomoe's files ready for you tomorrow morning, you can pick them up in the Archive."
> "If something still confuses you, or catches your interest, don't be afraid to visit me."
Aneta is brought a new tray of tea. "Well, think about it, and tell Martina what you end up with. Now hurry up, Bychová, or this tea will be cold by the time we are done with the first part. We should take breaks with this one, anyway."
With that, Miroslava begins the give her own account. She talks about a Witch, and then the next, and then about another two dozen, and they mostly seem to be Witches she had fought alone. Liese realizes that if this is not her first Gathering, then Miroslava has been working like this for a few years now, and was probably quite good at her job. A single teapot is not good enough, and the brunette keeps speaking in her voice long into the night, telling endless stories of haphazard horror and ill-advised adventure.
Liese also realizes throughout this, however, that unlike her, Miroslava does not put any thought into deciphering Barriers at all.
> After the last story, the Librarian ending her trance comes across as her more actually waking up than anything mystical.

。。。

In the morning, Liese picks up two envelopes at a counter at the front of the Archive. She also requests to borrow a few more common books in the library for study.

> https://pastebin.com/ppxS9c1B

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Then, she goes to her Rank Leader, stating that she has decided to work for Aneta. While her Rank Leader is not thrilled with the proposal of double paperwork, Liese is given a badge with a purple rose, followed by a solemn and unenthusiastic 'this rose is your life' speech. On the way back, Liese reads some Goethe in her native language, and finds that the parallels are uncanny.

。。。

In Romania, without her around, all kinds of things occurred. In one incident, Jordan and Oriana went out on a patrol, Oriana wound up lamenting that she forgot her lunch in the boarding house, and Jordan gave her a sandwich from her own. Biting into it with delight, Oriana asks what exactly kind of meat this was, since it tasted so sweet, upon which Jordan truthfully responded that it was fatbird meat. Once the glaciers in Oriana's mind finally clash with understanding of what exactly 'fatbird' was, the entire precious bite is regrettably vomited out into the grass.
> Oriana looks up at Jordan with a confused, tear-stained expression. "You've been *eating* Familiars?"
> "...Yes?"
> "...WHY?!"
> "Uhh, why not? I mean it's a free lunch."
> Oriana retches again, before explaining. "It's disgusting! It's heresy! It's tainted by the Dark!"
The Blessed Lady's warrior quickly begins to find out out who else has ate it, which would be pretty much everybody.
> Fuyuki stares at the Eversor levelly. "Not on purpose, but I ate some sausages thinking they were bought from the store." She replies, neither disgusted nor proud of the fact.
> Oriana suddenly rises to her feet and slaps the other half of the sandwich out of Jordan's hand. "It came from a Witch, of course it's tainted! How could you not know that?!"
> "Oh yeah, the monkey familiars." Jordan fills in. "Those go great with orange juice."
> "Hey, look what you did to my chicken sandwich!"
> Oriana shrieks, "It's not CHICKEN, it's a FAMILIAR!"

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> Jordan_Ramses huffs as her face turns into a scowl, "What is with you dildoes and eating familiars! I must have eaten a whole barrier worth by now and nothing bad has happened."

Upon hearing this, Oriana begins resolutely pacing back into the boarding house. She gets past the reception and climbs the stairs, only to be met with Jordan standing in the kitchen's doorway.
> Oriana slows as she sees Jordan standing in front of the door, her breath coming in gasps. "Get out of... my way, Jordan."
Jordan, having obviously teleported in here, is a bit put off by something apparently falling off her. She thinks it's sweat from how she ran after Oriana, but the color on the floorboards doesn't seem quite right. Thanks to the distraction of Jordan's hair dripping blood for some unknowable reason, Oriana manages to push her out of the way, and begins methodically emptying the fridge of any meat she can find.
> Oriana angrily tosses "chicken" into the garbage. "Look at this! It's full of Familiars!"
> Oriana slams a sausage into the bag. "And we're magical girls! It's our job to destroy them!"
> Jordan_Ramses turns back to Oriana, "They're dead, like the meat from the other animals. It's not like cows and pigs are doing to stampede out of the fridge! Stop wasting food!"
> "You mean you don't see your costume covered in blood?" The Callidus replies, too confused to focus on Oriana's growing rampage.
> Jordan whips back to Fuyuki splattering blood around, "What are you even-" she stops as she looks down at her unusually wet and red outfit.
> Oriana grabs Jordan by her top and screams in her face, "Would you eat people, too?! Witches were our sisters! They were people! Familiars are their children!"
> This gets some of the blood on Oriana, too.

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While Jordan wants to argue back, for example about how Oriana's fit could draw the attention of some normies, she cannot but focus on the fact that she is bleeding out of her hair for some reason, and that it won't stop. This was possibly an effect similar to whatever happened to Liese, and was genuinely disturbing. So, Oriana gets her way, and no more fatbird would be served for a while.

Well, it's for that reason, and also because, as Jordan stares at her hands quickly dyed red by a seemingly endless trickle of blood, some very unfortunate memories begin to hit her. She has to be sat down, and calmed down, and she has to listen to a sermon about how this kind of thing was the inevitable side-effect of any addiction, even if drugs would be less flashy. It is only unfortunate that she does not seem sufficiently lucid to understand what she is being told.
> "But it's exactly like the nightmare. This is what it looked like...right after I killed Eriko. I'm awake right? Why is my hair like this?"
> Oriana has gone from shocked, through angry and resolute to sympathetic, but now she was getting angry again. "No one is dead. You are awake and everyone is fine. Fuyuki, get some paper towels or something!"
> Jordan, finally, takes a deep breath. "You're right, everyone is still here. It's just the blood. From a bad dream."
> "That's a good girl. Now, let's get you into the shower," Oriana says while pulling Jordan off the increasingly dirtied couch.

This effect would last for about a week, and kicked in whenever Jordan transformed again, which made her briefly unable to go on patrols.

> https://pastebin.com/bbzarjLn
If you're a fan of a certain MGNQ writefag, you can now read this stuff here, if you really want to.

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To somewhat improve Jordan's mood, Eriko returns from town dragging behind herself a sheath with an oversized greatsword much taller than her, with an overly elaborate pattern, as well as runes of power carved into this blade. It was a regular sword, it was a ridiculous sword, and once Jordan tried it out, she found that it was a pretty good sword, too.

Eriko gives an explanation: She called her mom a while ago, asking for help, because she felt really scared of the upcoming battle. Her mom, an important Magical Girl, actually took time out of her day to visit the town, and gave that thing to her. Her mom disliked nerds, to say the least, and this was perhaps a bit of an insult to Eriko in that regard, and that's assuming that mom didn't expect her to actually pick that thing up and learn to fight with it, a manner of thinking for which Eriko's Mother was apparently sufficiently insane.

However, Jordan likes the idea that she can probably sink this thing deep into a Witch and not break it in the process. So she benevolently accepts the blade, citing it to be a proof of their love. After going through several names, including "Do Rend All", "Sexcalibur", as well as "Le Vile Thin", "Missile Teen", "Kusanoggin", and even "Rugbiter", she finally dubs it Thunderfury.

。。。

Jordan seems to become normal again just in time for everyone else to get ready. Therese calls for a pre-raid party at the boarding house, where the two cells involved in the raid would be introduced to each other, since Emiri for example did not know any of the Americans yet. At six o'clock, she arrives with four of them in tow: Maggie the fat mexican ninja, Vinnie the italian-american spy, Julie the african-american whatever-she-was, and Miroslava. The rest cite being generally unsuitable for Barriers, so the girls were getting three decently strong Eversors, and that was it.

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> Vinnie, who is clearly the least socially awkward of them, gives the party a wave. "I'm not actually going with you guys. Just thought it would be polite to stop by. Unlike some other people."
Thus, the final raiding party was going to have ten people total. More to the point, Julie has brought a suitcase with the cell's second monthly payment sent by the Fourteenth, which mean everyone was going to be going in with a clean gem, or a seed kept.
> "This is actually going to be a big farewell party for a lot of people, I guess." Vinnie laughs. "Juliet almost has two years up too, Eightball might let her go if she helps in something big like that."
> "There's going to be like two people left in the cell after we are done here." the girl goes on. "And there won't be a need for Debbie if it's just two people? I guess?"
> Liese regrets missing out on another meeting, then. "Damn shame, I wanted to get a chance to drop by and talk to her one last time at least..."
> "I, I will..." the tall girl starts. She doesn't quite stutter, but seems to talk quite slowly, so only the silence of the room lets her finish the sentence. "I will be leaving too. They only left me and Zlata there because they didn't like giving up ground to you guys."
> "I think I was placed there... as a reward, I think..."
> Jordan crunches a potato chip unnecessarily loud at the mention of Debbie's name, but doesn't otherwise react.
> "Which is different from you guys..." Miroslava goes on.
> "What about you?"
> "I know Liese has a job here... but it's considered good fortune to work outside of the Officio..."
> "What about us?" Fuyuki repeats the question, quirking an eyebrow as she waits for an answer.
> The Czech girl attempts to explain: "Julie always swears about it... so it seems to me like everyone but us is getting punished."
> "I was just... curious..."
> "Forget it..."

> Jordan puffs up. "I'm going to go get my rank back from that rat bastard after this is what I'm going to do. See about that long delayed promotion."
> An actual squad leader, Maggie, has commentary of her own to provide: "I actually have no idea what Debbie is here for, for example, and I am meant to run this shit."
> "But I am not getting punished here, no. This is my squad leader training."
> Therese looks up at Maggie from the papers. "Lucky you. You know I am here because I wanted to be a squad leader too. Did I ever tell you this, Oriana?"
> Oriana looks mildly suprised. "No, never."
> "Basically, the reason why I am a squad leader without a squad is, that I wanted to be a squad leader in the Fourteenth."
> "I don't get it." Oriana shakes her head.
> Therese goes on. "It's apparently a twisted sentiment in the Empress's eyes. Looking too far ahead. And my Rank Leader thought it would be funny if she gave me a promotion and then sent me to work alone. Or she just disliked me, I don't know."
> Liese hazarded a different answer "Or they're testing her with people from outside the Officio before giving her responsibility over people actually on your roster."
> Oriana furrows her brow. "That seems... cruel? I don't understand why she would do that."
> "Well, I wouldn't have spent almost a year alone then."
> "…"
Therese's crime, or what she was being blamed for, then, was that of hubris. Hubris in ancient Greek sense - a crime against beauty. This could have been a kind of judgement passed onto her, for being pragmatic rather than spiritual, for staining the noble institution of leadership with ambition. As the Blessed Lady taught of love and compassion, the relationship between a Squad Leader and their girls were a personal one, and shoving politics into it was a mistake. Perhaps that was why Therese lived her life trying to work her way into a hedonistic slump like all the other Magical Girls in Italy.

Incidentally, Oriana herself seemed to follow this philosophy, but her streaks of hedonism mostly consisted of wrapping herself in a blanket and watching Netflix while eating snacks. In comparison to Jordan's hunger for Witch flesh and Emiri's clear psychosomatic addiction to orange juice, this was about as hedonistic as taking the Sunday off.

> "So in a way I am kind of glad that you came along, because it made me realize I am probably not leader material."
> "Which might have been what she wanted to say, but it doesn't help my reputation of a rat now, does it. I have no idea if they'll ever recall me back, either."
> "They probably just forgot that I exist as something other than the Grief Seed form."
> "But enough about my troubles."
Therese sorts out her papers, and coughs to get everyone's attention.
> "So, this is what I got."
> "Alcyone has first turned up here a bit after I came, a little more than half a year ago. She is a Witch of a Venenum from the Tenth, whom Julie here apparently ran into."
> Julie nods. "That's what I thought. How do you know that for sure, though?"
> Liese nods lightly as she listens, cross-comparing the theory with what she recalls reading from the files.
> "The fact that someone from the Tenth is here to investigate is enough."
> "A Venenum, even. You said she didn't want to cooperate with us?"
> Emiri sighs at the mention of the Tenth.
> Julie massages her eye sockets. "I really don't know. I think you guys made her really angry, but more than that, she can't come back with nothing."
> "It might get ugly. We might run into her in the Barrier. She might be able to pull off an ambush or something."
> "Well, if she attacks us, she's fair game. Wouldn't want to make another mistake, though." Julie sighs.

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> "Now, as for who we have, our options." Therese leans back, and wonders how to put it.
> "We have an Eversor that's really difficult to get to here in Julie. She'll also get an edge in longer fights, and can hold off lots of familiars at once."
> "We have another Eversor that's good at getting in and out fast, in Maggie. She's a good scout."
> "We have a really strong option in Miroslava if things go off the hook, but she won't really work in a big crowd, I think."
> The tall girl, apparently named Miroslava, looks down. "Sorry..."
> "If that's the case then keep her in reserve and send her out to plug up the holes in our defense, is that good?" Fuyuki proposes.
> "That's what I had in mind."
> "Well, in me, we have another Eversor that packs a punch. I also will have the easiest time getting out alive, which is kind of sad. I'm also our first available healer."
> "You can work with Oriana on keeping everybody in shape, just a thought."
> "Yes, Oriana is an Eversor too, and she can heal as well. She's also much faster than me, but easier to catch."
> "And then, our SIXTH Eversor is Jordan. She can teleport, which, as I understand, is how we could nail the Barrier to begin with."
> "Six Eversors. That should probably dictate our tactics."
> "We could take it easy if it was six Vindicare, but at least the Witch should be less of a problem this way. Either way, I suggest we blitz it. Now our other options..."
> Now, our most vital piece is Eriko. Eriko is adept at mental magic, so she can apparently protect us from Alcyone's empowered kiss. The way I understood it at first, it would have been another game of protect-the-Callidus, but since there are now ten of us, we can probably afford to be more lenient with that."
> "The other Callidus, Fuyuki, is almost as good as a seventh Eversor. Can you really teleport too? That will probably be really good for backup."

> "Then we have two Vindicare. Liese mostly uses a rifle, and can take lots of abuse, making her a good center. More importantly, though, she can read Witch."
> "So she can navigate us through the Barrier more easily, if there is like a stupid puzzle or something."
> "Lastly, Emiri is the kind of Vindicare that makes big explosions. I think she's also our best shot, though."
> Emiri grins. "I have an idea, sort of. It's more of a backup idea, really, but..."
> "With as many Eversors as we have, I think we can keep Alcyone busy enough to stop her from going after Eriko. Seeing as we have, six and a half eversors," Emi nods to Fuyuki, "What we can do is have them cycle in and out of the fight in groups of three. If a group gets really worn out, they can retreat and have the other group relieve them while they get healed up, rinse and repeat." She motions to Liese, "The vindicares can stay in the back and give some kind of fire support, suppressive fire to cover for retreats or to control where the witch is going. Eriko can act as backup to help anyone who might get Kissed, and Fuyuki could join an eversor group or be fast-acting extraction from the front line."
> Emiri crunches on the last of her lollipop, "Is there another orange one in the pile?"
Though no one would tell Emiri, this was far too complicated for people who just came to know each other. It was clear that Emiri was a former squaddie, used to a formulated plan. In minds of the Eversors, it was going to be enough if people don't get into each other's way, and the Vindicare don't fall too far behind.

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> "I figured that it would be the best to send Maggie ahead, but you can probably help her out. That sounds like a plan." Therese smiles at Jordan.
> Maggie looks at Jordan straight. "Pleased to work with you. This is ironic."
> "Glad we're on the same side this time. This should be fun."
> Jordan nods. "I like the blitz option. We have a clear advantage, we should push it. So, scouting phase, then lightning warfare?"
That seems to be the plan. Therese considers her part done, and attends to the snacks instead, while the girls keep talking. Carton wine mixed with cola as well, in case this didn't feel sufficiently like a sleepover pillow party some fifteen year old schoolgirls might have.

> "That still doesn't explain why multiple Officios would send out a Rookie or two each to deal with this problem. A veteran Kill-Team would get the job done quicker."
> Maggie crushes a cracker between her teeth. "I have a suggestion."
> "If there is, like a really cool spear in the Barrier."
> "Let's completely ignore it."
> "Better, destroy it, and if she comes asking, say it was never there. This holy lance thing is all trouble."
> Fuyuki glances to Liese at the mention of the Spear. Didn't they come to some kind of arrangement with "GreenGreen" on that?
> "Who wants that lance again?"
> Julie doesn't seem to like that. "If it really IS the Lance of Ophelia, then it's Therese's duty to retrieve it, right? It better be."
> Oriana frowns. "While I believe there is no way it can be the real Lance of Ophelia, if it can produce the blood of Saints or what have you, it is worth investigating."

> The black girl sprawls wide on the couch, appearing to be deep in thought. "I heard rumors."
> "They're saying that the Saints are coming to earth soon. Maybe this Witch is also a harbinger of the Walpurgisnacht? Came to bring Ophelia her spear?"
> "The Saints? Like the Shieldmaiden and First Knight?" Liese bites her lower lip lightly.
> "Well, those are crazy people that say that. But we should mention that angle." Juliet gestures.
> "All five will come from a visit. Apparently. People have been having visions. But it's not quite tomorrow."
> She pours herself some mineral water. "Talking to cultists is tiring. They sometimes say intersting things though, like that."
> "Wait, cultists?" Liese perks up, and snaps out of her impassibility.
> "Sanguinists, mainly." Julie says. She seems uncomfortable, despite being in a comfy sofa with snacks and water.
> Therese also appears to twitch at the mention of that name.
> Liese returns to her calm state. "Oh, I see" And like that her interest is lost.
The Sanguinists were technically speaking one of the most common cults, since calling them a cult was about as fitting as calling wicca a religion. They were people interested primarily in fighting, who just happened to take some of the more primordial verses of the Tome of Blood to the heart. It was an open secret that Sanguinists were sprinkled into every Officio, but they practically never organized, since it went against their individualist philosophy.

> "Nasty folk." Julie says, to explain. "Worship the Blood Knight in her primal form."
> Oriana winces, "I'd think there's little of value to learn from them."
> "They're that one kind of a cultist that will stab you when they run into you. But they talk to those cultists that won't stab you, and from those, I heard what their seers are seeing."
> "It's pretty apocalyptic."
> "They could just be making it up, it's not too plausible. And you don't even want to know what they say happens AFTER the holy quintet descends."

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> "Well if only their Seers are having those visions and others elsewhere aren't, doesn't that just mean their visions are somehow biased or tainted?" Liese theorizes.
> Vinnie giggles at that. "I'm pretty sure she just gets bored too often, so she lurks the dumber parts of the internet."
> "That's where you hear that kind of stuff."
> "There are no happenings, Julie. Nothing ever happens."
Much later, when Liese learns to parse her own memories, it would feel a bit striking to her that Julie mentioned 'five of them', and 'Holy Quintet' in this conversation, when everyone knew there were only four saints. At that point, though, she already has some clues as to why that would be. Back in Romania, an entire year and some months before Walpurgisnacht, she had no idea, so she just noted it down under 'cultist conspiracy theories', and listened to the conversation take a turn towards less grim topics.

。。。

If a Magical Girl doesn't want to get drunk, it generally takes far beyond the dose necessary to induce alcohol poisoning, in order to get her drunk by force – but the girls did want to go there. As such, they don't remember much of that night, besides Jordan being suspiciously good at five-finger fillet, beating Therese in an intense match. She was actually nearly as good as the 8th's Callidus Rank Leader, who could do it to the tune of Through the Fire and Flames, and some suspected that she could go harder if people didn't always stop her too early.
(Though, Vinnie claimed that Therese was going to win, and only chopped her little finger off because of Vinnie. You see, Vinnie was considered a very unlucky individual, which was allegedly related to her wish, but it was believed that she suffered from a particular especially horrible curse: Every time she went to the bathroom, something terrible would happen in her absence. The rest of the cell was happy when it was merely a terrorist attack in a country they did not care about.)

Regardless, the girls were able to be up at six, when Therese woke them up, acting like a proper Squad Leader for the first time. A journey into the mountains followed, packing much more lightly than the first one. Alcyone now gave out a signal for dozens of miles, so it was very likely she would turn up at some point within a single day. When she did, she relocated several times, but once the girls got her signature once, they did not lose it.
Sometime in the afternoon, the girls finally catch up in their chase. Now, the Barrier is located in a small valley where two necks of the mountains meet. Jordan determines two possible entrances, and a lot fewer familiars hanging around. As before, one entrance was left exposed, probably for victims.

Therese thinks about it for a while, and then commands to rush the unguarded entrance. She mentions that a Familiar sweep would normally be in order, but that she really doesn't waste any time or power here on unnecessary fights. It was probably going to be her job in the following months, anyway.

Everybody enters. Directly past the entrance is another waiting room, similar to the one before, but this time, more enclosed. Only the stone arch where Liese buried her tracker remains the same. A thick fence that reaches up to the aviary leads the way to a cave, this time unguarded. The girls also note the lack of any Familiars, much like the last time. They only stop for Liese to scribble down some notes from a very interesting tablet she did not see before.

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> ["...One solution could be to implant such a trait to the Witch, though this is an extremely dangerous endeavor, as it leaves me at the mercy of a stranger. This is not the main flaw of the process, though, the incapability to properly control the subject is much worse. A mind that is supressed will not react in a proper manner to the procedure, and a mind that is not supressed will either actively resist, or cause trouble post-procedure. I can be seen as an alchemist being struck between having ingredients not heated enough to react, and accidentally having her solution explode. Perhaps a contact could be arranged, that could dispose of the vessel afterwards, however. Having the Incubator's support again would be very helpful here."]

And so, the girls enter the Labyrinth proper. Though Liese's file speaks of a cavern complex, what truly follows is not really what anyone expects. They emerge in another place under the voliere, but with less grass and more mountainside. Next to the cavern they come out of is a gigantic nest with a few broken eggs, and a few unbroken ones – many such nests fill the surrounding cliffs, above, beyond, and around. These cliff sides converge into a deep canyon, which Eriko confirms leads into the barrier's center at the very bottom. The troubling part was actually getting there, because the area was confusing to navigate, expansive, and could easily be filled with Familiars from beyond the horizon at a moment's notice. The deeper into the canyon they went, the more vision they would lose, and the spots Familiars were flooding from would be that much more difficult to guess. Now, if the squad was more cohesive, they could have tried to make a run for it, but Eriko for one had no easy way of climbing down.
> "I'm picking up multiple grief seeds signatures," Eriko says.

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Looking around a bit, the girls figure out that there are plenty of the twin-colored birds already, but for now they weren't aware of the intruders. Every single egg, Eriko confirms, has a little Familiar in it, which isn't how avian ovulations work, but Barriers were never known for being realistic.

Eriko straightens up suddenly, hand on her gem.
> "Uh, those seeds I was talking about earlier? They're coming closer."
> "And there's a soul gem mixed up with them."
> A disturbingly familiar figure riding a fanged disc appears on the horizon. Her handwriting is all pretty curves.
> "I guess the trap's already strung then. Let's give them a warm welcome!" Liese practically grins as she tucks her journal away, and snatches her scythe in her right hand, seizing her assault rifle in pistol grip with the left.
> She takes this opportunity to task one of her Ravens to watch over the entrance, especially since they were explicitly expecting trouble.
> Julie looks at the figure with the beaked mask, slightly confused. "That isn't the actual Witch, right?"
> Liese looks up to the returning Wraith and seems like she's about to yell something, but she just coughs violently for a second or two, quickly recovering her composure.
Reading a language is one thing. Speaking it was very different. The runes, which tended to change under one's eyes, were read empathically. There was a technique to getting them out, and Liese wasn't very good at it yet – especially when caught by surprise.

> The cloaked being whispers something more in Witch letters, though it may be difficult to discern even for someone who understands, at this distance. It may be talking to the birds.
> It kneels slightly over the edge of its hover-beast, and extends its clawed hand below. Shadows start swirling at the neck of the canyon.
> [It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.]

Eventually, the shadows form into four figures, similar to the bird-figure itself, but clearly more bound to the material world, much like when the girls had knocked the main one down from its mount. They notice that these figures in the distance seem to be wielding weapons. One has a sledgehammer, the other has a chain and sickle in her hand, third one has a pair of swords, and the fourth has a rapier.
> Therese looks at the figures in disbelief. "Well... that is weird."
> "Wait, Eriko, did you say there was a Soul Gem among them?"
> "I did say that." Eriko nods.
> "That means one of them could be still alive. Oh, by the Lady..."
> "Unless the manipulator is a Magical Girl herself. But you would be able to tell, correct?"
> "I should probably clear this up. These are the remnants of the last squad that went to hunt Alcyone, and failed miserably."
> Oriana gulps. "That is distressing."
> "But I don't think anyone can survive with their Soul Gem clean for more than half a year."
> "That is beyond horrible." Jordan gives her opinion.
> Eriko agrees. "Alcyone is a sick, sick creature."

Jordan has some ideas about preparing the battlefield, primarily to run around the edge, smashing the eggs, so they don't hatch while everyone is fighting. This idea gets overruled.
> "We can't waste any more time, girls." Therese seems to have come to some conclusion.
> "She seems to be leaving those alone. It would be helpful if we could have them immobilized and take a proper look, I think. But if they are really Eversors of the Second still, that's just not going to happen."

Everyone spreads out into a fan of sorts, so that the people who deal with these things don't have to deal with birds at the same time. Julie happily takes the job that Jordan wanted to take, and starts sniping the smaller Familiars. Eriko finds some cover on the other side, hoping to deal with the incoming birds there. That should have still left everyone else at an advantage.

> Jordan watches everyone spread out and form up. So, she hops down, sliding on the rocks down into the nest. She hefts one of eggs up. It's quite large. "They're bigger than I expected."
> She gives it a lick. "Tastes like my career."

> Liese keeps up with the Eversors easily, and takes two snapshots on the immediate hostiles after a short moment of hesitation, still holding her assault rifle in pistol grip. After that, she points her Scythe forwards and up at Alpha Birdo. When she speaks, it's unlike her usual speech, so she may be quoting, reciting, or refering to something.
> [Did we force ourselves on you, or you on us? That which issues from the heart alone, will bend the hearts of others to your own!]
> The Rider spins its spear in the air, and shouts out an answer that only Liese understands.
> [Naught of this genial influence do I know! Within me all is wintry. Frost and snow. I should prefer my dismal path to bound.]
To keep speaking to the spirit, Liese needs to follow onto the soon-to-be-frontlines, after Therese and Maggie. Jordan and most of the other party members stay back, making sure that Eriko is kept from harm. She pulls out her notes, cross-referencing for any useful lines, and finally finds one. Perhaps since she's been actually able to read Goethe in authentic German, that's what made the words come out of her more easily:
> [I see my discourse leaves you cold; dear kids, I do not take offense; recall: the Devil, he is old, grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!]
> The figure hovers higher, twirling its spear on and on, seemingly annoyed.
> [I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be, deserves to perish wretchedly; 'Twere better nothing would begin. Thus everything that your terms, sin, destruction, evil represent. That is my proper element.]

It sends the shadows forth, leaving the girls no more time to think words through. That was a bit disappointing, but Liese is still happy to have made proper contact.

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To explain Liese's project a bit, one has to understand the Warp a bit. Though this is not commonly taught even in the 12th, the Immaterium surrounding Earth bears a taint of humanity's collective unconscious. The 'patterns' one could find were cultural patterns outright, and they were not necessarily patterns that the owner themselves understood – they existed beyond an individual human, imprinted onto the Empyrean by the billions of dreamers. In order to properly interpret a Barrier, it was helpful to understand the patterns it relied on, and in order to communicate with a Witch, one had to adhere to the pattern while speaking.

Within that cultural melting pot, and especially since the Barriers would be based on a young girl's psyche, one would expect popular culture to dominate everything. To a degree, it did. 'Infantile fever dream' was a good description of any given Witch's realm. Yet, some patterns and texts were notably stronger than they should be, occuring commonly despite being relatively obscure to the layman, as if they were throughly ingrained into the human condition, even that of humans who did not know of them. Those were the classics – like Goethe. Now, Liese is not very well read, and at her age, and with her background, she can not hope to interpret things instinctively like a Librarian perhaps could. But with a few pointers, she now has a few pages of useful lines with which she hoped Birdo could explain what the utter heck was going on in this hellhole.

Anyway, the first wings of the screaming birds, and girls find themselves getting picked off their feet – fortunately, most of them are quite resistant to blunt trauma. Jordan takes this opportunity to topple one of the slabs of gren rock onto the nest below, since she does not want to deal with the eggs individually. Seeing that this might be the only chance, Liese proceeds to approach Birdo again.

> The bird person waves her spear around quite decisively, and then points it to Liese, saying something.
> "You speak of faith and love eternal, of a single, overpowering urge - will that really flow so easily from your heart?"
> Liese gave the creature a somewhat bittersweet smile and lowered her Scythe, this time responding with a softer tone: [The world turns gray, the air grows cool, the fog blows in. Only at evening can you really feel home." A bit of a confession, perhaps, but would it be understood?]
> It lowers its weapon as well, and speaks to Liese. It then markedly changes its course, while still making sure it remains out of reasonable reach. [Through reverence, I hope I may subdue the lightness of my nature; true, our course is but a zigzag one.]

The discussion is interrupted again, this time by a blast from Emiri's bow whooshing over Liese's head. The enemies were about to make contact, and she saw Oriana already avoid a weapon one of them had thrown, and trade a few blows. Another was shooting some kind of blast of its own upwards. Birdo itself was hovering far away, and did not seem to want to get involved after the last time.
> "Huh, nice shot." Fuyuki comments on Emiri's aim. Not like she could do something similar, but she's found ways around that.
> Emiri blinks, "Huh? Oh, um. Thanks."
> "Don't mention it." Fuyuki says off-hand as a glob of black gunk flies past them with the Callidus's eyes tracking it back to it's origin. She grips her Blade, taking a deep breath as she steels herself; because this is about to get bumpy.
> Maggie, not wasting any time either, lunges at the figure wielding a single sword, landing far past it. Her strike cleaves it into the ground. It rises wobblily, but clearly took a terrible blow.
> The group of the shadow figures splits: The one with a sword that Maggie hit dashes towards Liese, but seeing it won't be able to reach her on its own, takes cover behind the overturned emerald table.

> Twin-blades jumps towards Oriana, brandishing its weapons at her.
> Finally, the one with a hammer and the one with chain and sickle turn around, and pursue Maggie, catching up to her just as she manages to stand again.
> Twin blades seems to catch Oriana off guard with its tall jump. Its furious onslaught successfully drives her to the ground with two deep cutting wounds.
> This seems to make Therese angry. "Hey, that's my student!"
> Jordan's smug smirk quickly turns into a furious glare. "WHAT THE FUCK. You fucking amateur, that's MY style, and MY squad mate! Bitch, I will fuck you up!" she taunts angrily.
> Meanwhile, Maggie evades the black sickle crackling with power, while the sledge hammer of the other girl very nearly crushes her foot.
> "Fuck! Bad move!"

It did not stick before for some reason, but these things were basically the remnants of a legitimate Eversor squad that mainly did purges, and they did not seem to have lost much of their competence, if any. If it wasn't approached seriously, things were going to turn very bad. The only saving grace would be that they were specialized against Witches, but perhaps weren't so good at dealing with humans.

> Fuyuki launches herself at the reeling Bird-man-thing in a blur of black with her rapid footfalls growing louder as she closes in on the thing. She uses her momentum to shoulder-check the thing into a cliff side, before following up with a vicious stab into its gut, shoving the magically-hardened blade deeper and deeper until the thing stopped moving.
> She doesn't waste time after she's sure it's dead, winking out of existence right after before appearing beside Eriko.
> "What happened? I heard some screaming." The Callidus whispers frantically to her fellow Callidus, peeking around the corner. Good, no one followed her.

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> Miroslava leaps on the small hill, to replace Oriana on her position. Her first strike missing, she follows up with another, which does strike true. The figure rolls away, and reaffirms its stance.
> A stain of blood can be noticed on the ground, which the previous one did not leave.
> Therese follows up close after Miroslava, not wanting to let the fake Magical Girl get a breath. She swings both of her maces in an overhead strike that slams the figure to the ground with a wet crunch audible throughout the whole Barrier.
> She then keeps hitting them while they're down, in rage.
> "Fuck yeah, crush that bitch to a pulp, Therese!" Jordan can be heard shouting from a cliff.

> Suddenly, Therese stops. "Oh. It's blood."
> "Fuck." She turns to Eriko. "IS THIS THE ONE?"
> "...It was the one Fuyuki killed." Eriko lies.
> This makes Jordan very happy. "Good, whack her again, Therese."
> "There's no need for this shit, focus on the ones pinning Maggie!" Therese shouts desperately, but the chirping is deafening.
Emiri actually begins doing this, floating closer in hopes of being far from melee, and takes a few potshots at the two in the back. Liese and Jordan do their best to get into an argument between the sound of Liese's magazines emptying into Familiars, as Liese can very clearly see the bloody mess before her, but Jordan is convinced that they deserve more smacks – they knocked out Oriana, after all.
> A cordon of the fat birds gathers behind Maggie. Reflecting the direction of her previous attack, the combine their screams in the way you have seen once already, and push her nearly off the cliff.
> While this momentarily gets her out of the reach of her foes, she seems to have trouble picking herself up. The attack must have really messed with her.

> Liese slowly relocates forward, unloading a deadly salvo into the closest assailant. With her magazine now almost empty with just 1 round left, and knowing she wouldn't be left time to reload in peace, she let go of her gun and put her second hand on her Scythe, now wielding it primarily.
> Julie gestures at Jordan. "Can't get there in time. I'll protect your wives. You go."
> "Thank you kindly." She gestures her thanks to Julie. Though she might need help protecting 5 girls.
> The Eversor turns the situation over in her head as quickly as she can in the short moment afforded to her, before she has to act. There's no clear solution here, it's going to get messy. And painful.

Therese seemed to prioritize trying to save Oriana's life, Julie was elsewhere, Maggie was dead or dying, and Miroslava was going to take too long to come. Liese was left on the frontlines practically alone, it all depended on how Jordan would reinforce her.

The summoner seems to be having fun, pacing back and forth on the disc.
> ["Aloft strange voices dost thou hear?
> Distant now and now more near?
>Hark! the mountain ridge along,
> Streameth a raving magic-song!"]
> Jordan understands none of that. "Caw caw! Look at me, my brain's smaller than the fucking sunflower seeds I eat!" she taunts one of the birds, which earns her a screaming push down into the grass below.
> The three birds that were backing up the pair against Maggie until now split up, pushing away Miroslava, Fuyuki, and Jordan apiece. Miroslava lands safely on a nest, but Fuyuki takes a bad hit against the mountain side, while Jordan is knocked down a good fifteen meters into the grass.
Beyond the incessant chirping, the canyon was, certainly, singing. Eriko's magic managed to put everyone's mind off it, and besides, there was no time to pay attention to the vista.

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Two of their own were down, but since there were also only two left, Liese is a bit more confident about her chances in melee, and goes for it while she still has elevation advantage. She leaps, bearing her scythe up high, and swings it down onto the hammer-wielding girl, which -
Liese_Brandt rolls 32+1d10=(1)
- gets her weapon stuck in the ground. She would later insist that it was because she was distracted by the cryptic bullshit Birdo was saying, rather than her sad lack of skill. More to the point, this now left her within meters of both the remaining black fighters, of which she was intending to strike one down and then handle the other somehow. Within a second, she catches a hammer to the side, and a few more blows from the kusarigama, getting knocked down also. Perhaps because of the intense irony that her germano-russian blood would be caught between a hammer and a sickle, she manages to stay conscious unlike Oriana, but moving is a no-go.

Jordan is now close enough to fling a few knives at the duo from up above, hoping to distract both of them at once, so they won't finish Liese off. From the other side, Miroslava comes in, creating a bit of space between them and the blonde with a wide swing of her black sword.
More Familiars appear from within the canyon, and begin take potshots at Maggie, who is only barely hodling onto the cliff side with what might be rigor mortis, as far as everybody knows. The fight has to be concluded quickly.

> Emiri silently curses. This situation is becoming too familiar.
> She downs another box of OJ.
> Touching the ground to brace herself, she runs up besides Fuyuki and launches a blast at the sicklebitch, managing to land a hit, and knocking her down.
Fun fact: Emiri has to start rolling against fear when a certain number of her allies are knocked out, which she aced here. Sometimes, she won't, so you may notice various ways of coping.

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> Fuyuki feels the bolt of magic fly past her and strike down one of Liese's assailants, and her body moves on its own accord to make use of the opportunity. She needed to save Liese, she didn't know how, but she had to. She just *had* to. Everything else be damned.
> Therese, apparently done with patching Oriana up for the moment, leaps forward. Thanks to the flank provided by Fuyuki, she swats the last remaining shadow away with her mace, and then kneels over Liese.

Julie and Miroslava provide cleanup of the Familiars, while Maggie and Liese are rescued and brought to something approaching operational state. Oriana and Maggie are fortunately fine, but progressing was not an automatic thing still.

>Liese's breath slowly stabilizes. "Thanks, I needed that... Sorry for the fuck-up, I really should have taken that one out..."
> "It's okay," Therese says, frowning. "I thought you ran out of ammo and went for that instead."
> Eriko breathes a sigh of relief.
> "Mag did run dry, I needed to reload, but didn't have time, I was afraid they'd get the kill on Maggie."
> "Liese, you look terrible." Jordan tells her in an unexpectedly soft voice while approaching her up close. She pulls away some of the hair form her face then gives her a hand to bring her to stand. "You shocked me with that move, but it was cool though. I didn't think our reliable german main battle tank could break down." she force-laughs.
> "All theory is gray, my friend." Liese replies. "But forever green is the tree of life."
As if on cue, she can see the figure up above point the spear at her impatiently. Then, at the canyon.
> [The time has come to prove by deeds that man will not quake before the pit where fantasy condemns itself to tortures of its own creation. When he advances to the narrow passageway about whose mouth infernal flames are blazing, approach the brink serenely, and accept the risk of melting into nothingness.]
That did not sound quite like Goethe.

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> "Good news, there aren't that many more familiars on the way through the canyon."
> Eriko looks around and points to the upper cliffs. "Bad news, they're coming in from there."
> "And will probably come from everywhere else pretty soon."
> "Like the entire barrier's throwing us a welcome party."

While others clean up, Liese begins to loot the bodies, snatching three entire Grief Seeds, while Fuyuki retrieves the Soul Gem from within the bloody mess – to her surprise, because she heard Eriko said it wasn't that one, and the Callidus was just trying to get a seed for herself. The gem is lime-colored, and, shockingly, not too stained. While it is known that powerful Witches can enslave weaker ones, the girls never heard about three people being turned so uniformly, without manifesting their proper forms, or Barriers of their own. For one of them to remain a sparklie for several months, while assuming the same form, is even more absurd. Clearly, this is what Alcyone's song was going to do to those Magical Girls she placed her kiss on, and the same would happen to the party if they did not have Eriko. It must have been closely related to the Barrier's purpose – hopefully the Soul Gem's owner would be able to comment, once an Incubator gave her a new and restored body.
By the way, Liese isn't completely being a bitch here: Snatching ever free Grief Seed she sees is a drawback on her character sheet.

Fuyuki sighs, pulls out her own monthly seed, and applies it to the gem she found. She looks at it against the light coming from beyond the aviary, and finds a symmetrical mark on it – Alyone's Witch Kiss. Oddly enough, there was a mark on the other side, which was different. She could recognize the swirly one from the victims she dealt with in past months, but the other one seems to have come from elsewhere, if it was a Witch Kiss at all.

After finishing the sweep to a sufficient degree, the girls finally begin to descend, a bit spooked by the fact that they still had an entire Witch to fight, and this was just the welcoming committee. Before she follows the others, Jordan picks up one of the eggs, small enough to fit her Inventory. Oriana protests that there is a bird inside and it wouldn't make for a good Witch-Omelette, but Jordan explains that she intends to smuggle it into the states, and raise it as her own. Unfortunately, Oriana cannot physically take it away anymore, so she gives up trying. Jordan also takes the cloaks and masks, because she thinks they are cool, leaving three blackened young female bodies with varying expressions of horror on their faces, and one bloody mess.

On the way, Eriko also notices a slab on which the writing seems to be more organized, and wagers that this might be some of those research notes that Liese is looking for. So, she points it out.
> [ 2.2 The next step is to establish a feedback loop. Please refer to the Evil Nut calculations in 2.1 in regards to Witch power sources, and why letting a subject rely on them would likely create a wrong type of subject. A feedback loop makes the process much more secure and less prone to overloading. The downside is that the result will be reliant on Grief Seed supply if you intend on using it later on, but as established, we want to dispose of them afterwards.]
There are a few formulas following, featuring greek letters among the writing, which Liese attempts to write down as best as she can.
> ["This concludes the theoretical part. The rest will be how to execute it in practice. I will have the next entry be the note the Mental Magic specialist of the 11th, Morrigan Faux, as it kickstarts the process:"]
That's where the slab ends. On the way down, another is noted, and recorded.This slab seems to have more prose, and be quite a bit more resourcesful compare to the others.

> 4.4 The Ethical Implications
The goal of the project is not power, and you can notice that this is the reason why I left the Tenth. I don't wish to usurp the Blood Knight to any degree, nor do I adhere to the old gnostic ideal of transhumanism, the pathetic atheist vision of heaven that exists on earth, that whispers to their ear that they will not have to truly face death, showing them to be exactly as pathetic as everyone they criticise. This is human sentiment, after all, and it can be seen from my research that I have accepted death, and only seek purpose behind it. Rather, the saint's blood is necessary because it is a truly divine thing, that can be invited into the mortal world in the manner I outlined in my thesis - using a forgotten pattern described in the divine text, much like the ritual of baptism. This of course does not mean I am calling the cultists I talked to a few weeks ago to be correct in their assentments. I seek judgement, but not the final judgement. Their intentions are apocalyptic, and so they are very dangerous tools to use - but the only ones I had. The blood presents a divine mandate to right wrongs, and that's all there is to it.
> I do not presume myself to be worthy enough to use it, either. It merely calls the attention of the gods that seem to have abandoned us. If we are truly not meant to brandish the spear, then Ophelia will surely come to retrieve it.

Eriko peeks over Liese's shoulder. She is starting to understand the letters herself, though exposure she never had this much of before. Perhaps that was just an extension of her powers to see the truth of things. It only started with being able to see the bullet points – others just see an odd mishmash of shapes.

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> "Hey, Liese? Who do you think wrote these tablets? The bird girl, or Alcyone?"
> "Well, as I've said earlier, my new friend over there.." the blonde tilted over to the north. "Said something about being forced to be here, so that would suggest it's not her doing." She offered an accurate and logical answer, while omitting the parts she believed not to be allowed to speak of.
> Eriko nods. "So she didn't write them, it was the witch that wrote them. This is the most likely conclusion you arrived at, correct?"
> "That's correct, yes."
It wasn't.

The hole leading through the canyon's bottom feels a little different from other entrances between different parts of a Barrier. While the song becomes a bit louder, the area is somehow dull and boring. Climbing down, the girls have trouble imagining how the birds could fit through an entrance through such a narrow hole. As Eriko can confirm, they don't – none of them in sight. Eventually, faint light comes from below, and Maggie, who is climbing first, finds herself entering a tiny, relatively speaking very normal room. In one of the corners of the room is a hole which continues deeper down below, but the room was certainly worth everyone's attention.

Most of it is taken by a sizeable machine that glows and hums, but there is also a spinning chair, a table with a bunch of books and notebooks, some lockers, and a functioning mini-fridge of all things. The walls of the room are entirely fitted by bulletin boards and laminated tables one might see in an office, a factory, or most probably, a lab. The language of writing is japanese, sometimes english, and only very rarely the one you would expect in a Barrier.

Liese begins to inspect all the things, in spite of not knowing moon runes. She quickly moves over to the table, from which she snatches a research journal, and begins reading it. Others are more busy either taking a break after the climb, not being there at all (Julie needed to finish the cigar she's lit while fighting), or trying to figure out exactly what this room was, seeing as it was completely out of place.

> "You'd expect there to be, like, an operating table or something", Maggie complains. "Sure would be nice."
> Liese curses lightly as she realizes her inventory is for the most part quite full and she needs to make some space before looting anything. She thus takes out some of her magazines and strap them to her utility belt... is that a 100-round double-drum?

The fridge is about half-filled with yogurt and pudding. There are also some vegetables, cheese, and eggs. Jordan seizes a gas burner from one of the lockers, as well as laboratory equipment.
> "Hmm, I'll save the eggs for training montages. Looks like there's only rabbit food in here. Ah well, beggars can't be choosers." She grabs a thing of yogurt and some carrots."
Others mostly stare at her in bewilderment.
>"...Why is there a fridge here?" Eriko asks.
> "Because when you're working on something, you don't want to have to go far away for a quick snack when you're hungry." Liese muses.
> Jordan waves her hand, having eaten more suspicious ingredients. "I have no idea, Eriko, but I'm not going to question it or where the electricity is coming from."

Eriko sits down on the sole chair in this room to think about this, while others make do with the ground. The space is quite packed, especially because of the giant machine, and it has a particular elongated shape that the machine had for the most part covered, and uneven ceiling with padded walls. It might all be a caravan or a wagon of some sort. Furthermore, it was known that the contents of one's inventory could sometimes be located in their Barrier – especially things such as Grief Seeds would not easily disappear. But thinking about it logically, this was simply the extension of what Liese's mission apparently was. This Venenum's research reflected itself in the Barrier, already, on the stone slabs, there was nothing strange about her lab being literally contained in it. A garage-sized Inventory was not THAT rare, either. This person clearly just existed within this room, and simply put it down on the lawn whenever she needed me time. Perhaps there was even a bed, before the machine moved in.

There is something simultaneously incredibly cool and incredibly pathetic about it. A girl should have been able to live better than this.

Liese eventually approaches her with the research journal, which is in moon runes, and asks her to translate it. It's mostly a research journal. Quite rich in information. Eriko and Liese are having trouble having figuring out what the goal of this project actually is, though. The entries are dated, the first one starting two years ago, and no doubt connecting to a previous journal.

The first two entries concern some musings about gluemaking and interpretation of dreams. You notice the word 'dickbutt' being used a lot while skimming through it. About half a year later, the researcher starts mentioning 'freezers', which catches the girls' attention. There is a lot of words and terms in there they don't understand, like 'Haydes-Pattern Maerorus' being used a lot.

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About half a year later still, the journal seems to concern itself with the matter of 'Witch-shaping', and describes encounters with cultists. This is quite the dramatic change, and the writing becomes notably less coherent typograficaly, while also concerning itself with more practical matters. The entries are more in the style of
> 'met (name), she promises to bring (name) next time'
> 'must remember to read up on soul gem rewiring process to understand witch-shaping more in detail, she seemed to like Japanese oysters - where do I get one now?'
This basically continues until the end, with the writing becoming a little more deranged, but still not quite crazy ravings. The girls simply don't really have the knowledge to decipher most of it. The last entry does not mention anything about Witching out, but rather seems to concern a meeting with 'the green sage', who is apparently also a Rank Leader. It also says something about wanting to arrange a fail-safe, and that she needs someone to operate the 'Freezer' she brought, in order to secure the highest possible chance to execute the entire process correctly.

In the meantime, Jordan creates a makeshift pan from a pair of scales, becoming possibly the first person in history to have done this, and begins to make an omelette. Fuyuki, being able to read them, attends to the notice boards, under the room's singular LED light at the ceiling, which was somehow also powered. She determines that they were written by someone with a very scattered mind, who forgot a lot, but she also doesn't really know where to look. A standout one is an English-written flier on a lecture on 'Knowledge of the True Jade', in Bangladesh, performed by Mitsuko Tomoe, MG. Another catches her attention more, though, and she brings it up with Liese:

> The note, as can be translated easily, reads "Weird sounds in Freezer Eight the time I left. Shame I can't investigate it from the Tenth anymore. Was she Witching out?
> "Freezer?" Eriko muses.
> "And people think -we're- bad because of the turnout rate." Liese complains. "This is pretty much implying they imprisoned girls in freezers and just waited and watched..."
> "Venez obtenir votre omelette!" Jordan announces behind them, and pushes the first of the omelettes onto a large lid made into a plate.

Eriko walks over to the machine, pointing out what the letters on it read.
> "...Freezer number 34," she announces.
It looks nothing like a freezer. Within it is an empty space, but also enough for machinery. The girls ask Eriko to open it, but it doesn't open without the specific kind of screwdriver that you never have around. Instead, Fuyuki sticks her sword into the front panel, peeks through the hole she has created, searches for a toolbox in the lockers until she finds it, and finally unscrews the damn thing. She reveals a glowing screen that announces that the battery is at 26%, that it is early afternoon, the container is empty, the design is copyrighted by Librarius Umika Misaki, and that unqualified personnel is not allowed to manipulate any expensive property of the Tenth Officio.
> Jordan plates more omelettes and hands them off to other girls. She's down to using stirring rods as makeshift chopsticks. The ones she gives to her squad are heart shaped.

Eriko searches the rest of the lockers out of boredom. She finds a bowl of weird black things, which did not have a signature on her ping, so she is very confused about this. Staring at those, the Callidus feels a brief moment of some weird influence in her mind, that she quickly rids herself of. As she shudders, Therese walks over, picking one up.
> "These are actually a bit weird. There is a Ying-Yang pattern on them. Are those Grief Seeds?"
> "Dunno, but I suggest not eating them." Eriko smirks.

Unworried of offending oriental's sensibilities with her poor spelling, Therese brings out her Soul Gem, apparently wondering if these can be used to cleanse her seed. Eriko gets a curious feeling, wrestles it away from Therese, shoves it to the bowl, throws the bowl into the locker, and slams the locker, not quite shut.
> "Okay! This thing just tried to mess with my brain!"

In response, Therese shoves Eriko aside, leaps towards the basket, and clinks one of the nuts against the Soul Gem, and subsquently collapses onto the ground, apparently stunned.
> "Ahhh shit." Eriko staggers back on her feet.
Therese's Soul Gem now lies on the ground. The girls notice a black mark on it, while Therese's body rises from the ground, having now grown claws.
> Jordan looks up, dropping the makeshift pan. "Hey, hey, HEY, what the fuck?"
> "Eriko." Fuyuki pleads, not wanting to fight in the enclosed space. "You remember how I feel about your powers? Now might be a good time to forget that."
Fuyuki guesses that Therese is not in control, and this thing will be easy to cheat. She feints an attack, but disappears from sight mid-swing, and instead stabs from a position step and half to the side that the space can afford. Therese's costume still being in place, she finds herself not able to quite bring the Squad leader down, and gets clawed for her troubles. The monster decides to go for Liese next, but Jordan trips it up, entering in close contact. This was Jordan's expertise, after all, and Therese is quickly tackled down in a choke-hold.

> Eriko empowers her voice with magic, lowering her weapon as she pleads, "Therese? Therese, please stop fighting and come back to us. Please."
> The Squad Leader limps, only gritting her teeth."Sorry. It's hard to fight it."
> "Eriko, h-how long can you hold this? It m-might be better to just shoot off my joints or something."
> "...A while."
> "This must be what happened to those girls." She looks over to the gem. "If somebody here can dispel enchantments like that, n-now's a good time."
That kind of thing, unfortunately, was going to require a Culexus. Perhaps one could be deployed on short notice, but definitely not here and now.
> Liese tilts her head to think about it for a moment. "Well, in all likelihood, they probably followed the same path as us. They blazed through the familiars, ended up here... but weren't as lucky."
> Therese reaches over to take a look. "T-that mark on my gem, it's the same."
> "It looks the same as those damn nuts, too. I-I'm so fucking retarded." She curses, uncharacteristically.
> Miroslava, Maggie, and Julie descend down into the room, having heard the violence that took place within. Maggie looks at Therese with popping eyes, and asks "What the fuck happened here?"

Things are explained to the best of everyone's ability, as Eriko fumes that SOMEBODY will have to take responsibility for this. Therese is fairly certain that her gem is decaying relatively rapidly, and if she is to live, everyone was on a timer. It was going to be the best to immobilize her somehow, or take her own gem along. Eriko takes the nuts from the locker, since she is able to resist the enchantment, and stashes them away, so that they don't hurt anyone else.
> Therese looks into her inventory, fishes out a Grief Seed, and pitches it to Oriana with her now very limited motor ability.
> "You should finish the healing before you go fight her. You can do it, right, kid?"

While everyone kind of stands around stumped or has their scratches cleaned out, Maggie begins climbing down to scout out the center, before something else horrible has the chance to happen.
> "Man, something STINKS down there." the girls can hear from the tunnel.
> "You mean apart from this entire damned Operation?" Fuyuki shouts back.
> "No, like, there is a stench coming from down there. Like someone is cooking a corpse."

There was not much point in tying Therese up, since she was going to break out of basically anything, so the girls assure her she'll be alright. Before going on, they do a final check-up on everyone's Soul Gem, which Emiri deftly dodges several times through various conversational loops, until it is revealed her gem is mostly black, and she has to have it cleaned by force. Meanwhile, Maggie reports her findings:

> "So I think we have a clear way to the Witch now. She is down there, cooking something. Getting to her will probably be a bit difficult, since the entrance is like a thousand feet above the surface."
> "We can probably slide down there, though. I think. There's a few burning books down there, and she seems to be cooking on those burning books. Beats me if I understand all this Witch shit."
> "Great. The smell is probably from the cooking pot, by the way. She's got to be cooking some potion, like she's in Hogwarts or something. Also, you remember the song? It's pretty strong down there."
> "Would probably fuck me in the head if the kind Callidus here didn't help with that."
>Eriko beams.
> "Isn't she great?" Jordan pats the detective.
> "Yeah. I don't even mind the Debbie thing anymore, really."

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Maggie has described the center of the Barrier pretty well. What she has not explained, however, or noticed, is that the bottom of the Barrier was an inversion of the Labyrinth. The girls came out of a stone ceiling, from which there was a long and dangerously smooth pillar leading all the way down to a net, that consisted the floor, with endless sky beyond. Considering the giant boiling cauldron that sat on that net pretty easily, the girls could give the Witch the benefit of doubt that the net was not going to simply tear up and let them fall through, but it was still going to be very poor terrain to fight in.

Alcyone herself was, as Liese's file had said, a bird skeleton of some kind, missing a head, wings, and honestly most of everything besides ribs and a spine. Still, there was some kind of a character to that being, as it hovered in the air, singing its song that Liese was twenty years away from remotely understanding – but she could try. She saw the letters, now.
> [The ignorant man... outside him and in the offing, on which he ... himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself ...... impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight .... cancel this situation of unfreedom ... and thought.]

> Julie inspects the surroundings. "We can probably slide down to her on this pillar down here, if you're feeling brave."
> Miroslava seems as unexcited as ever. "I... don't really have... a way to get over there... aside of just jumping down..."
> "Oh. Look over there." Julie points to something floating on the other side of the cavern ceiling.
> "It's your friend, Liese."
Birdo seemed to find its way down there too. This was, after all, where it had wanted the girls. Aside of it, some Familiars were hiding between the ceiling's texture, laying in ambush, but it wasn't going to be as big a swarm as there was in the labyrinth.

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> Maggie points downward. "Well, if we're sliding down, better watch out for that book down there."
> Eriko smiles slowly and points to Jordan. "Remember how you said you could transport multiple people?"
> Liese nods, recalling that too. "Four including herself, if I remember correctly."
> "Yeah, but that's booooring. I was thinking we all jump in at once and slide down different pillars. And then a few of us just jump straight down in the middle. Then we all pose!"
> "Just two trips then. I can make my own way down." Fuyuki replies, making a quick head-count.
> "Not really intent on jumping one hundred meters right now." Liese shakes her head."
> Jordan gestures back at her. "But it's a net! You can just bounce up and do a flip!"
> "It's also a Barrier. Remember, logic needs not apply."
> "We could teleport in quietly. Then announce ourselves with posing on cue." Eriko proposes.
> Miroslava fidgets. "That would be... really cool..."

Maggie says she can go down on her own, so the girls have more angles to attack from. Liese asks to go in the second haul, but really, she is intent to translating more of the song, which is mostly obscured by smoke:
> [The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through,]
> [and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter;]
> [in the same way when the fruit comes,]
> [the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant's existence,]
> [for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom.]
> [The ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes these stages moments of an organic unity,]
> [where they not merely do not contradict one another,]
> [but where one is as necessary as the other;]
> [and constitutes thereby the life of the whole.]

> Oriana squints her eyes at the letters, which have a weird floral shape. "Is she singing about flowers?"
> "She might as well be speaking Swahili for all I care, can't understand a damn thing." Fuyuki fusses.

> Julie rises her hand. "Bring me down, Scotty."
> "Wait, I fucked up that reference."
> ""Eversors first. Alright, Julie, Mira, and Ori. You're up!"

The first batch arrives down in front of the cauldron, and are quickly engaged by Familiars, who have been waiting behind the pillars. That was largely within the confines of the plan – they were resilient, and would have given more space to the others who would rush down the Witch. On that cue, Maggie begins to slide down the pillar, looking for a good angle for an attack, and Fuyuki fades out, reappearing on the other side of the hall, behind the Witch. As Jordan brings down the second batch (Liese, Eriko, and Emiri), the master of the Barrier finally notices them. Her song becomes less fluid, and the Witch seemingly begins to improvise.
> Fuyuki tightens her grip as she stares down at the Witch below, the being that was the reason she was here in the first place, that she hoped to sneak up on. She takes a deep breath to try and calm herself even as her hands start to shake; hoping that she'd come out of this in one piece.
> The birdy figure spins her spear once again, taking notice of Fuyuki after a while, and says something brief.
> [If I wasn't a devil myself, I'd give me up to the Devil this very minute.]
It arms itself with its fan of five spears, apparently intent on fighting the party. It is a bit of a let down that it would not simply let them kill the Witch despite clearly being a different person, but it was a part of the Barrier after all. Liese, for one, seems rather irritated at the Entity's behavior.
> [Who holds the Reaper, let her hold her well, because she will hardly be caught a second time!]

> "Lots of familiars." Eriko notes.
> Liese shakes her gun, pointing it at the Witch on the other side of the pot. "You guys take care of them, I only have so many armor-piercing bullets and they have Alcyone's name on them."

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> Both the bird with the spears and Alcyone herself turn towards Fuyuki standing high above. She also takes notice of this.
> Fuyuki felt a cold feeling running down her back which prompts her to look down. The... the fucking thing was looking at *her*. She doesn't even hesitate to think as she immediately vanishes from view, gripping the pillar for dear life and sliding down a bit further along it; her lithe form obscured by the column and the smoke.
> The disc rider chases after Fuyuki into the smoke, flinging several spears after all. She has great trouble locating her, though, and all the shots go wide. Frustrated, she throws a few towards the rest of the party, and they all go wide as well.
> The Callidus hugs the pillar close as something fast whizzes by her head. She looks up, seeing the bird-thing toss one of its spears at the rest of the girls. Right then and there, the Callidus hated being proven right about the bird-thing.
> Suddenly, the figure of the Witch, now massively large, comes out of the smoke, and the girl's brain appears to be feathers. She sees the faces of her companions, and her previous interactions with them. The Witch seems to be browsing her memories.
> She appears to be picking among them, and takes special interest in Eriko and Liese in particular. Fuyuki's temples are throbbing, and she only clings to the pillar through grit alone. This is probably the most painful thing she has ever experienced.

Some time later, Fuyuki received a lecture from Eriko about this. Apparently, there were three commonly recognized mechanisms of mental magic. The first was observation, simply looking at the makeup of one's mind, and attempting to interpret their surface thoughts. This was generally harmless, unless you considered your privacy to be harmed.

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The second was insertion, which was most of what Eriko did: you tried to put something into the mind that did not belong there. It could mess with things sometimes, but a mind was a natural machine with a tendency to grind down and push out things that did not belong into it over time.
The third was extraction: To reach into someone's mind, and locate something deep inside, perhaps in their memory, or a secret they are meant to not tell, and then carry it out of there. This was akin to sticking a pithing needle into their brain. The machine may lose a gear in the process, and never work again. This was what Alcyone did now, and fortunately it only caused Fuyuki headaches for a month.
Eriko figured that it was actually lucky that Fuyuki thought about her friends a lot, and was never taught anything about mental defenses, so Alcyone instantly got what she wanted. Otherwise, this technique was used to extract intel out of prisoners, and tended to turn people into vegetable.

> "N-no... No! No! Get out of my head! Get out! GET! OUT!" Fuyuki shrieks from within, a violating feeling comes down on her, except many times worse than what Eriko had ever done.
> Those standing on the ground notice a sprinkling of colorful feathers falling from above, but cannot actually see what is going on very well through the smoke.
> Fuyuki could feel shame and grief coming to the fore, the words 'disgrace', 'unwanted', 'orphan' repeatedly hammering against her psyche.

> Seeing combat begin, Maggie lunges forwad to help Fuyuki. She ignores Birdo, wary of the spears flying about, and instead nearly cuts the Bird thing's mount in half. Emi busied herself with the Familiars, since she did not exactly feel comfortable entering the smoke, and so she joins Julie and Miroslava in their own onslaught in the opposite direction, keeping Liese and Eriko safe.
> "Oh, that was fast." Jordan comments at Maggie's attack, and seeing Eriko's signal, preps herself for her introduction.
> "DEATH FROM ABOVE! THANK YOU! FUCK YOU! The star is here!" she shouts, "Gooooooood morrrrrning Alcapone! This is not a drill; it's time to rock and roll! Time to rock it from the cieling to the DLZ!"
> "First up on my shit list, motherfucking Birdo. Don't think I didn't just see what you did, cunt!"
> Jordan snap-crackle-pops over to Birdo's flying waffle and runs it through with her knife, "Where do you keep getting these?"
I can only imagine Jordan's player is very embarrassed about those lines right now, five years later. But it's *authentic*.

> Maggie, already above Alcyone, ignores the recovering bird-shadow and goes straight for the Witch. She goes for her rib-arm, and cuts off a solid chunk. She appears to botch her landing, though, perhaps due to Alcyone's magics at play, and falls into the net like a rag doll.
Liese glares deep into the Witch's headless self. Her larger rifle thunders, eyes glowing faintly. This time, with her extremely unstable state, fueled by that same rage, her words are different.
> [God help you, for your sins are many, and your life will be short."]

Birdo withdraws behind Alcyone, letting her deal with the onslaught. This moves the disc closer to a wave of birds, who summarily knock Jordan off the living vehicle, and into mid-air.

> Fuyuki peers through the smoke. She could hurt, or she could take it out on the thing that made her hurt in the first place. Through her throbbing head and her shaking limbs, she leaps forward and swings wildly at Alcyone; her weapon gleaming menacingly as it attempted to communicate its owner's hatred.
> Jordan, flying, now falling, sees Fuyuki appear behind, Alcyone and stab her in the back. She's also way out front and in critical danger on the front lines clearly over extended. They grow up so fast.
> All of sudden, Alcyone disappears from her position, and Fuyuki's blade only slices through a cloud of rainbow feathers. Instead, She appears at the top of the room, summoning a whirlwind of feathers around Liese. This doesn't seem to be doing much, but the wind slowly intensifies into a tornado that lifts her off the ground.

Eriko manages to escape the whirlwind, though she is near by. She tries to figure out what the hell is going on, as some things she has concluded recently did not make a whole lot of sense. For one, now that she saw Alcyone and Birdo next to each other, she knew that their Grief Seed signature was the exact same, which was nonsense, unless they shared a seed somehow – but clearly, there were two signals. Even more worryingly, Liese's Soul Gem's signature was mysteriously becoming jumbled. If Alcyone could pry into Fuyuki's mind, perhaps she could do something of that sort as well, and it would probably be better to never find out what she had in store.

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> Jordan is about to launch her attack, when her target disappears all of a sudden. A quick glance around reveals that Alcyone decided to jump straight into the fray...and... "Woah woah woah what the fuck are you doing with my girl you fucking BITCH!?"
> Fuyuki finds herself only more incensed by the sudden revelation, using the column she landed on as a springboard to launch herself at the Witch once more. "Get your hands off Liese and Eriko, you freak!"
> Picking up on some kind of fuckery with Liese's gem, Eriko takes a deep breath and screams a magically enhanced command: "LIESE! SNAP OUT OF IT! DON'T LET HER FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD! DON'T LET HER FUCK WITH #YOU#!" in an attempt to bolster her against Alcyone's influence.
> Liese braces herself, the Witch surges right in front of her. The Witch is attempting to indirectly wrestle her into inaction. She feels a slight headache, but her voice remains normal. "Fat chance you drecksau."
> The Witch, seemingly uncaring for Eriko anymore, points one of its rib-hands towards liese while she is being moved. From a look at Liese's soul, and its present state, it bubbles a few words in excitement.

> [MY FIST IS DIVINE BREATH!]
> "You don't -have- fists you dipshit." Liese shouts through the feathers.

Bit by bit, the Witch's intention becomes obvious. The bones are falling off the body, and becoming a part of the whirlwind, which slowly moves towards the cauldron. The girls are uncertain as to how to stop it, besides destroying the remnants of the body that still hover above it.
> Jordanteleports in to land on Alcyone's shoulder. She spikes her knife straight into the top bone and pushes it in to the handle. Her building rage giving extra strength into her attack.
> Fuyuki burns holes into Alcyone's back with her glare as she barely misses the Witch, barely clinging to the column as she misses one of its ribs with a one-handed swing.
> "Get Liese out of there!" Fuyuki shouts. "It's going for her and Eriko!"

> "Get Liese out of there!" Fuyuki shouts. "It's going for her and Eriko!"
> Liese remains steady despite the literal whirlwind raging all around her and the monster staring her down with the apparent intention to boil her alive. She does not panic, however, remaining professional, and another grievous volley finds its way to the monster's boney torso.
> Oriana exhales and channels her magic into her feet. The dust around them picks up, and she inhales again. With a cry, the holy warrior launches herself through the air, opens her fan wide, and slashes Alcyone. Her momentum carries her to one of the support pillars, which she catches with her fan and swings around and to a stop.
> The Witch, now nearly cut in half, struggles to recover, and a shower of bones falls into the net below. However, the tornado around Liese does not disperse, instead being replaced by a sudden appearance of the flying disc. It appears that your familiar bird-friend is taking over the tornado now.

> "Fuck yeah! Nice job Ori!"
> Fuyuki smirks with far too much satisfaction as Oriana tears Alcyone asunder, turning to the birdman as she prepares to jump. "Now onto that double-crossing freak!"
> "Hahaha!" Jordan shouts. "Better beat it, Black Bird Bitch, your bone bimbo over there got blasted!"
> It is kind of worrying, however, that after apparently defeating the owner of the Barrier, it's structural integrity is not damaged in the slightest.
> "Hurry up and focus back on her! it's not collapsing!"
> Emiri meanwhile focuses on attempting to keep the group from getting overrun A fresh, sizeable wave of birds attack the grounded group's flank. Miroslava and Julie seem to be fully focused on batting attacks going towards the cauldron somewhere else, not even having time to engage the attackers.

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> The other wing, full of the rather more loud specimen, start gathering around the rainbow wind squall. Fuyuki, who stands too close, gets lifted of her pillar, and somewhat painfully hits another, before entering freefall.
> Fuyuki finds herself blasted off the pillar, boucing off another with an audible *SMACK*, before feeling the wind fly past her as she falls. She shuts her eyes, taking a deep breath...
> The figure known to you as Birdo nears the whirlwind, extending its hand toward it. It increases in intensity, and flings Liese just about above the cauldron, possibly to submerge her slowly.
> It says a few words, as if to continue Alcyone's song.

> [BLOOM, FALLEN SEED, AND REVEAL YOUR TRUE POWER!]

> Liese's eyes widen with hesitation. She realizes that if she shoots the damned thing dead, its spell might break and just drop her in nonetheless. This is not exactly how she planned to die...
> She makes a decision to shoot in the spur of the moment. If she's going to die here after all, then it will be doing her duty, not cowering, too afraid about what might come next. She attempts to finish off the Entity, but as Jordan appears, she holds her fire.
> Jordan flashes down beside Birdo. With a shout, she lunges forward, tackling the Witch and keeping her momentum going, in hopes of pushing the both of them off the platform and down after Liese.

The plan works. Jordan and the bird-person tumble down, towards the pot. Jordan spots Liese, and knocks her out of the way, while Fuyuki gets her breath back. She appears above Jordan, cleaving deep into the figure in a wide overhead swing. Since she begun her movement by leaping off the pillar, this knocks both of their bodies out of the whirlwind, leaving Liese and Jordan in.
Everything dims. The Witch extends her birdy hand toward Fuyuki, and some blood starts materializing in the air, but you can tell that she won't be able to finish her job even with the rest of her Witch form still technically intact.

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Time stops, with everyone suspended in the air above the cauldron, though it feels as if someone is missing. The song ends, and a shattering sound resounds through the Barrier in its stead. In the darkness, the girls see pale bones being eaten by shadow, before everything fades to black.

。。。

The girls are unceremoniously dumped into the valley grass. Oddly, it is not day anymore, even though it does not feel like the run took all that long, even including the break. Not only is it night, it's full moon outside.

Besides them, a black-robed figure appears nearby, and falls into the grass with a sound thud. They mumble something to themselves, hastily take the bird mask off, revealing a fittingly nerdy face, with a terrible haircut, a bit of a forebite, and pitch black eyes. They try to run, and instantly grab their shoulder, hissing in pain. It bears the same wound that the Fuyuki inflicted onto Birdo moments ago. With that revelation, they seat themselves on a rock.
> "You ruined it, you dumb fucks."

We have a decent chunk to go, and I'll have to hammer out the last segment in real time. So, last break.

>>76641327
You're a trooper, posting this much stuff.

Man this shit brings me back.

It feels like it's been a while since I've seen a big story time like this.
Thanks OP, makes me feel like /tg/ isn't doomed to always be a shithole.

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> Eriko snorts. "From what I found? It, and you, needed to be stopped."
> Fuyuki slams onto the ground, the only thing keeping her from finishing the job was the fact that her limbs felt like lead and that her Weapon was nowhere to be found.
> "Do I give a fuck? No I don't." Fuyuki hisses back venomously in Japanese, as soon as she can stand.
> "Do you have some kind of a vendetta against progress?" she says in accented english. "Did progress molest you as a kid?" She pulls of one of her gloves in a hurry, to look at her hand.
> "Oh, so I did - COUGH – turn."
> "Actually, right now I just kind of really want to know what exactly you did, what just happened, and what you were planning to do." Liesesays this straight-faced, with no sarcasm.
>"Does she need a grief seed?" Eriko scrutinizes the girl. "I'd rather not fight Alcyone again."
> "I am a motherfucking Grief Seed, bitch." the black-eyed woman helpfully explains.

> "If 'Progress' means standing on a mountain of my friends corpses, then I'd rather be a luddite." Fuyuki chuckles harshly, her usual impeccable English slurred from barely-restrained fury.
> Liese takes a look to try to locate said Grief Seed. "Wait, are you telling me you.. you were making experiments on trying to merge Witches and magical girls."
> Eriko retches. "How the hell does any of that help anyone? Besides you, I mean."
> The woman shakes her head. "Well, if you let me FUCKING FINISH, -COUGH- we could have gotten somewhere. Make lots of blood of saints. Good for -COUGH- medicine, yeah."
> "Or she could just not fucking care either way, as long as she gets what she wants." Fuyuki adds alongside Eriko, long past giving a damn about what some sociopathic researcher thinks.
> "Or you could have fucking explained yourself in the first place instead of talking in riddles." Eriko seethes. "I don't trust her anyway."

> The woman tries to think of something else to win the party over with. "Well, I'm totally not a Witch anymore. That's an interesting revelation, right? Wouldn't you want to be able to turn back?" She seems pretty resigned. "It's old news though. Been happening for a long time. Really risky, though."
> Eriko tilts her head, able to see the truth of things. "No, you kind of still are one."
> "Actually, yeah... you said you were a Grief Seed now, so you -aren't- actually fully turned back."
> Eriko folds her arms, dusting herself off in the cold mountain air. "I can see inside you. What's in there isn't normal for a human or magical girl."
> "Not to mention you're trading someone else's life for your own." Fuyuki stands up, wobbling unsteadily before leaning on Eriko for support.

> "Girl, you haven't been human ever since you made that wish." She looks among you, inquisitively.
> "Oh. Now that's interesting." she seems to notice something.
> Eriko pats Fuyuki's head. "Maybe it's because I'm not a scientist, but I don't see how what you did is anything more than mass murder while jotting down notes."
> "I guess that happened." the woman nods. "Would you at least allow me, in the name of scientific progress, to pull a spear out of that girl over there?" She points toward Jordan. "Since the deed is already done. It's just that the ritual didn't finish properly. It's fixable. Getting it right in the first place is a big success."
> Eriko adamantly shakes her head. "Fuck. No. This stops here."

Some of the others at least help Jordan up, which is surprisingly difficult. For the most part she is tarred in black goo. Once it is cleaned up, it becomes apparent that there is something very wrong with her eyes, too.

> "Is this what I think it is?" Liese leans over with interest.
> "Jordan?"
> Eriko shakes Jordan's shoulder.
> "JORDAN!"
> "Kinda weird that happened and I didn't pull it out, whatever, it's probably still inside." the Venenum shrugs.
> Eriko feels gears turn inside her head. She notices that a group of people are approaching from over a nearby hill, but can't pay it attention over what just happened.
> Liese has all sorts of mixed feelings right now
> Eriko screams a command: "JORDAN, PLEASE DON'T GIVE IN TO IT! I WANT MY JORDAN BACK!"
The last command was for herself, perhaps.

>Liese then turns back to Mitsuko. "So, is she going to become like you or something?"
> Eriko hugs her girlfriend close and starts bawling her eyes out.
> The sciencist watches, trying to hide her amusement. "Well, she's the same thing as me. You know how Witches and Magical Girls are two sides of the same coin? Well, think that I made her into a Chinese coin. Stabbed a hole right through."
> Liese nods lightly in agreement at the first part. "So what, are we going to have to fight her to get her back too?"
> "Well, you obviously don't have to fight me. Fucked me up good." She coughs up some more of the black blood in her lungs.
> Jordan rocks her head to the side opening and closing her hands on a knife that isn't there. She groans low and long sounding like someone who really doesn't want to get out of bed
> Mitsuko massages her face that has not bathed in about a year. "Basically, the lance is something inherent in the Law of Cycles. It's like a linchpin, I guess, but now it's useless for it to be there..." she explains, then stops.
> "Well, sorry for being rude, but this fucking hurts. I'm normally more eloquent."
> "Just get to the fucking point." Fuyuki growls.
> "Like, how to turn her back into a Magical Girl?"
> "Yes. Without any trace of Witch when that happens." Fuyuki nods.

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> Jordan weakly squirms in Eriko's embrace, her arms come up to try to pull Eriko's away, "...mmbmbr..." she protests intelligently.
> "Well, fuck. " the Venenum swears again. "There's another type of a Maerorus, surgical - Maerorus is what you call this, by the way - and that form is known to Witch out and then unwitch sometimes."
> "It happened like... twice in all of recorded history of science. And then they are both a Witch and a magical girl, properly. Fat chance that happens now, though."
> "Because, like everything we do in the Tenth, this Maerorus, and me, are a little crappier."
> "Basically, when she wakes up, try to keep her out of the loop. Accidents can happen if you don't."

> Fuyuki can barely reign in her own darker urges to just end the woman in front of her, but hearing Eriko's grieving steadies her (proverbial) blade."But do you need Jordan for it? Her in particular?"
> "Well obviously I'm not getting that now, am I?"
> "The spear is made. My job is done."
> Liese nods to herself. "So basically, she has to acclimate and take it easy?"
> "Some people like me exist, so I guess you can get used to it."

A few paces away, Emiri rises from the grass, having dealt with added vertigo of previously flying.
> "I WILL FUCKING END YOU!" She dashes forth and dives at the girl.
> "Well, she's now a VIP, so I'm sure a Dickbu-"
> Liese moves in to intercept Emiri, standing in the way. "She's our best and only source of information on how ot help Jordan right now. You don't want to do that."
> "FUCK OFF! I WONT LET THESE FUCKING TENTH SCUM TAKE ANOTHER ONE AWAY FROM ME!"
"Technically, I'm not in the Tenth anymore", the sciencist excuses herself.
> "So, anything interesting happen the last year? I think it's a year. This looks like a summer night."
She does not get an answer, as the source of the footsteps comes into view. It is GreenGreen, with a bunch of men in tow.

The two Venenum have a quick shouting exchange. Green shouts that Dickbutt was going to forgive Mitsuko if she comes back into the Officio, provided she is in one piece. The others, who were too battered to participate in the arguing, begin to pick themselves up, since they were all a bit miffed about what happened here today. The Tenth would have to reclaim its property by force. Eriko begins tugging onto Jordan saying that she needed to take them all, and teleport them into town, but the freshly reborn Maerorus is far too dizzy to make sense of the requests.
>Jordan_Ramses slowly tries to lift herself up. "God damn, feels like someone punched a hole right through me. What's got Emi so worked up?""
>Eriko helps up Jordan, her attention torn between her girlfriend and the new threat.
> Emiri pulls out her revolver and unloads as quickly as she can on the woman over Liese's shoulder, all of her shots going wide, then tosses her gun at her.

> "Shit, boys" the Venenum says. "Guess you'll be needing those pills after all."
The man eat 'pills'. Eriko recognizes them as the same thing that caused Therese to be in her present state, the 'nuts' they found in the lab. While Therese was already immobilized, this was a power equalizer for the thugs.

> "I can't teleport us all at once." Jordan finally makes sense of Eriko's words.
> "Them first, I'll hold the rear or something." Liese proposes.
> Emiri gets up beside her, and quickly realizes what's happening, then draws her bow, "Let me stay."
> "I have unfinished business."

GreenGreen tosses something from her hand, which explodes in front of Mitsuko, creating a cloud of thick gas. She dashes into it, to have a quick chat, while the rapidly turning men distract the party.
> Mitsuko Tomoe, or whatever she became, waves at her in dismissal. "Can't even summon my weapon. Or heal myself. You might have trouble doing that too, just ignore me. Think they probably killed the main Witch, so that would be the reason."

> "Are you sure we have to fight?" Liese shouts into the smoke. "I'd kinda want to work with you guys at some point in the future and killing people might put bad blood in the mix."
> Eriko gestures to the hill on the other side. "She's confident, because there's another magical girl or two circling around behind us."
> "Isn't that right?"
> "There's... what?" The dark haired girls are confused momentarily.
> Since Eriko looks worried about it, they choose to interpret it as a good thing. "Guess the dickbut must have sent backup. That about wraps it up."
> "Well, if she failed to get the spear, that would be one thing. But apparently, we can still get it. So, you haven't been complete cunts to me, but defend yourselves!"
The smoke clears, revealing the two Venenum, as well as the four thugs, now mostly bent over in pain. These pills weren't medicine.
> The wounded scientist sneers at these thugs. "This is really dangerous, you know. There's four of them, and if you picked really bad ones, you'll have to deal with them in the end."
> "These guys are handpicked. Hope they're enough. I'm really not used to this." She extends her hand, and more incensed smoke starts coming out of an intricate glove that is a part of the costume, styled after an onmyouji.
Near them, the men start turning into the shadowy forms already seen in the Barrier. The leftmost one grows thin, it's arms merging into a single limb, almost like a two-legged and two-headed snake. The one next to him instead grows bulky, becomes a more classic, clawed form you have seen before. The third one, curiously, doesn't change much from his human form, and seems to draw his shotgun from his coat calmly. The last one grows a large mane of spikes, almost becoming a hedgehog.

> Emiri for one begins to agree with Eriko, in that all criminals are the same. "I'LL KILL ALL OF YOU!" she shouts, and pulls the bow, taking careful aim.
> Eriko tries to sort her out a bit. "Emiri, we need Tomoe alive."

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> Liese takes a deep breath, trying to remains composed. She fails. "WILL YOU GET YOUR GOTTCURSED BLUTLUST UNDER CONTROL YOU FUCKING FOTZE."
> Jordan has no idea what's going on, but for once in her life, she feels pretty spent. "Green, I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, but holy shit are you fucking up. I don't have a beef with you or anything, so if you would like to recon-"
As the girls prepare to receive an incoming charge, all of sudden, Jordan stumbles with a crash. There is a huge hole in her head now, but she doesn't have trouble getting up. There is a long shard of green stone stuck in the ground next to where she fell, quickly turning into fine diamond dust.

> "Who. Did that." Eriko spares a look into the far distance, genuinely baffled. Even she can't locate the sniper. Two processes run in her mind at once – who was it that dared touch Jordan, and who was it that managed to escape her gaze?
> Jordan cranks the thing out of her head. "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WHO JUST EARNED A TICKET TO HELL?"
> Fuyuki doesn't even turn around to check on Jordan as she disappears, lunging at one of the freakish thugs. Her blow whiffs, a testament to how out-of-her-depth she was right now.
> Oriana sees the telltale sparkle of magic accumulating around a mook's feet, and knows what's coming next. "Oh no you don't!" she shouts as she steps up behind Liese and Jordan, and swings her fan up between them. The blade crunches into the half-man's sternum and sends him flying.

> "Jesus fucking christ. There's someone hiding in the field down there." Eriko instead traces the coordinates of the ballistic curve's origin, after the residual green dust it seemed to leave in the air. "Fifty meters south is where our sniper is sitting, and... someone else is coming slowly. About a hundred yards away from us. And..."
> She looks at Green angrily. "You know what's about to happen, right?"

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> Eriko pours magic into her words, and drowns Green in her command. "Your objective, and your friend's life, is jeopardy as long as you keep fighting us. And there's hostiles incoming, that aren't on either person's side. You know you can't stop us, or get what you're after, on your own - your best bet is to help us take care of those two ambushers before you even consider fighting us."
> Upon some consideration, and not a small bit of persuasion from Eriko's side, the Venenum throws her smoke ball on the side of the field that the rock spike shot came from. It does not obscure vision much, but it helps partition the balltefield.

> Meanwhile, the mobster which grew a mane of spikes approaches from the side, and unleashes a volley of black bolts upon the party's entire side of the battlefield. They don't hurt much, but cause some damage to everyone, and even Liese catches a few along the way.
> Liese seems rather unimpressed by the wide blast that just scorched the party, barely scratched. She surges forward at what she believe to be the biggest threat; the opposing gunner! In her charge, she swings her scythe as she rushes, the obsidian blade biting flesh and inflicting a GRIEVOUS blow, but it is not quite enough, so as she turns around, she catches the battle rifle hanging from a strap and fires a short burst in its back, further mauling it.

> Julie steps off to the side, in faith she has the biggest chance to do something about the sniper right now. She slashes through the grass with her purple blade, creating crop circles that will no doubt leave sciencists dumbfounded.
> With the last slash, you hear a yell, and a figure clad in black becomes visible all of you - It's Vinnie, of all the people.
> "Cut it out, will ya! I didn't shoot that! Just came to back you up."

> "Back up who?"
> Julie looks incredibly confused.
> "You dumb fucks! Couldn't come to the Barrier with you, so I tailed that bitch."
> "You know I use a fuck gun, right, Julie? Couldn't have shot that."
Though the girls did not know what exactly 'fuck gun' was, they could assume it was the M1911 in Vinnie's hand. Therefore their sniper was on the other position – down below to the south. Unfortunately, it did not occur to Eriko that others could not determine south instinctively.

> The last shadow man, left unattended, dives into the crowd, cutting Oriana and Emiri with the wild swings of its claws. It then, for whatever reason, decides that Eriko is really tasty.
> Miroslava, already prepared, steps into its way, and bats it away with a swing of her blade. efore she shakes it off, takes a minor bite for her trouble.
> Emiri dives away a bit too late, receiving a gash in her side but doesn't let it phase her. She puts some distance between herself and the mooks, then fires a blast at the man, engulging him in an explosion.
> Jordan tries to steady herself. Her head throbs threatening to black her out, but she forces herself to focus through the pain making her Officio proud, when she blinks straight to the spiked thug. She lands a decent hit on him, though she's slowing down considerably.

> Just as Julie turns around to face the sniper, she gets hit by another green shard, which throws her a few good meters. She's not getting up. Everyone can hear Vinnie curse loudly from the opposite direction.

> The Venenum of Tenth, leaving the party to their own devices, calmly walks through the cloud of gas to the south, apparently immune. She throws another puff of smoke forward, extending the area of effect. She is doing a good job approaching to the sniper's position, but at the same time, made it a litle difficult for everyone to see them through the smoke.
> The wounded Witch-woman yells after her. "Woah! You got mindfucked, you know this, right?"

> Now that she is out of danger, Eriko points away, describing the exact location of the sniper. "It's a blonde in a green dress and a black dress with a magic wand," she calls out. Of course, this is probably going to get her painted as a target, so she goes for cover.
> The wounded mane-man turns around to Jordan, who stabbed him, and unleashes another volley of thorns. Jordan, who is the nearest, does not take it well. She tries to shout back an invective, but shouts blood instead and falls to the ground
> In fact, something inside Jordan is bent near to breaking.
> Liese doesn't take the hit as well as last time, but she manages to shrug it off, silently cursing her slowness. She notices Jordan falling down and immediately tries to rally everyone that was still standing. "Keep it together Eriko! You've seen us go down a lot of times already, but she'll be back up in no time with some care!"
> Fuyuki grits her teeth. The barbs pierce through her outfit, sinking into her skin, and she sees red when she witnesses Jordan fall. The Callidus disappears for a moment, re-appearing at the maned-freak's flank, her blade slamming into it on one side before bloodily erupting out the other. She twists, yanking the blade free, before swinging down on the goon's head with a two-handed blow; lopping it clean off.
> "That's for Jordan, you freak."

> Oriana winds up, her wounds closing even as she brings the fan back. With a loud "CRACK!" she slams it against the last mook's skull, knocking him off his feet.

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> Vinnie stops aiming her gun at the last moving target, since she sees Oriana finish the job, and runs to Eriko, crouching over Julie. You hear Julie say something weakly.
> "Eh, no way." Vinnie says. "She couldn't."
> "What?" Eriko asks.
> "Julie has trust issues. Let's just go after that sniper bitch now."

While everyone is a little more comfortable about no longer being in immediate melee, they took their eyes of Emi, who heads straight towards the smoke.
> "EAT SHIT, TENTHSCUM!" And with that, Emiri lets loose a shot into the smoke
> "WHAT IN THE HÖLLE ARE YOU DOING!?" Liese yells.
> "Emiri what the FUCK?!" Eriko can't help but add. Emiri had a solid chance of ruining her spell just now.
> "She's the only thing between us and the fucking sniper and you--" Eriko 's voice starts to crack.
> "YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT THE LIFE OF SOME PIECE OF DIRT?"
> "JORDAN IS NOT DIRT!" Eriko screams, eyes wild.
> "I'M NOT SHOOTING JORDAN, YOU IDIOT!"
> "YOU'RE SHOOTING THE THING BETWEEN JORDAN AND THE ASSHOLE WHO SHOT HER!"
> Eriko starts violently coughing.
> Eriko starts violently crying.
> Emiri hears nothing, and replies back through the sobs. "YES, AND THEN WE GO KILL THE ONE WHO SHOT HER!"
> "WE KILL EVERY ONE OF THEM!"
> "Keep it together girls!" Liese tries to maintain a semblance of order. "There's only one hostile left! WE CAN'T BREAK UP NOW!"

In case you did not figure out something of the sort is in play yet, Emiri has Hatred: Tenth, which gives her +2 Emotion. So, she is actually pretty strong at this moment for what it's worth, but risks corruption (faster decay rate in the future) if she goes much further.

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The smoke begins dissipating, revealing Green on the ground with burns and green rock spikes still sticking out of her. It appears that she was drawing the sniper's attention, and Emiri blew her up completely, from behind.
Oriana dives for cover behind the rock and begins healing herself and Jordan, leaving Liese the only person capable of maintaining a charge. Miroslava tries to follow her, but she has trouble, with the nasty bite wound on her leg. In the distance, now a bit away from the others, Liese hears something somewhat odd, that she has heard just moments before, on the other side of the battlefield.

A stomp.

The kind of stomp that Oriana would have made before making one of those big attacks that broke Witch spines. In a split second, the sniper appears before her, having chosen her position as the leap's destination.
> "Think fast!"
> A barrage of razor-sharp emerald stones explodes from her wand, covering Liese entirely. The blonde is pelted and smitten by this shotgun-like blast.
> Eriko gets a look at the offender that just downed Liese.
> "...It's Debbie. Fucking Debbie." Eriko can't even laugh.

Liese stumbles back, and falls down to one knee. She spits blood on the ground and chuckles dryly. "When I said I wished I could see you again, that is not what I had in mind, you know..."
> Debbie kicks Liese's gun away, circling around warily.
> "I kinda fucked this up already." she muses, watching for who could come after the blonde. "At least I didn't kill anyone this time."
An approaching pillar of air precedes the next attack. Oriana flies past, not having found the right piece of yellow among the grass, and has to land further away, on top of a tree.
> "You'd have a hard time killing me. If I hadn't taken attacks earlier, you'd be swiss cheese by now."
> "Couldn't go easy on you. Thought you'd be the first kill."

> "DEBBIE!" Eriko roars at the cheating bitch, having cleaned her gem in the meantime, partially to salvage her state of mind. "GET ON THE GROUND AND START BEGGING FOR MY FORGIVENESS RIGHT NOW, BECAUSE YOU FUCKED UP REALLY BAD!"

It was truly unfortunate that Eriko has never seen what Debbie's Soul Gem looked like before. The air is filled with static, and only peering into the blonde a bit, Eriko finds herself caught in some sort of an upheaval of overwhelming misfortune. As if going through an entire nervous breakdown was not enough, her Soul Gem begins filling with darkness again. Everyone near by feels humming in the air, while Eriko's magic goes haywire on the extremely corrupted Soul Gem.
> After a while, though, Debbie, still keeping a hold of the wand starts walking towards the rest of you, who are standing among the bodies.
> She crouches, and apologizes in Eriko's direction.

Contrary to everyone's expactations, that she would just squat and be done with it, she took a little while. Enough to open an opportunity – but Fuyuki misjudges the distance, appearing a few meters above ground, and has to recover.
> Jordan stands up again unsteadily, wiping the blood from her mouth. Her stomach twists into a knot as a fire burns through her chest, and she nearly loses herself to her own frustration and anger, but she holds on to her sanity. Her allies need her right now, and she needs to stay lucid. "I am tired of these motherfucking backstabbers on this motherfucking mountain!" she cries out, then teleports in a flash of light followed by a bang.
> Without a pause, she brings her knife down hard into the prostrating traitor. Hard. But not hard enough.
> Emiri crouches, and lifts off into the air. She lets gravity start to take over, and fires a sinking, crackling shot at Debbie, cursing the Tenth at the top of her lungs.
> Debbie takes both hits, which would send her down the mountain after Oriana, if Jordan wasn't holding her firmly.

> "Oh, it's you." she looks up at Jordan, speaking with ragged breath. "It's a shame I need that girl over there to pull it out."
> "Not gonna -cough- make it anymore, huh."
> "Get. Fucked." Jordan barks into her ear.
> "Hey, you wi-" She relaxes, or possibly something in her body breaks and takes the strength out of it, preventing her from taunting you any further.

Miroslava arrives to the area, as the final bit of backup, and Oriana makes her way back up the mountain also... Though they won, the girls would remember the sheer physical and psychological annihilation of this moment for a long time. Eriko is bawling on the ground, Emiri is looking like she wants to shoot up Debbie some more, Liese is not certain exactly which emotion to hold onto, and Jordan has basically zero understanding of her circumstances on top of what everyone else already does not understand.
> Vinnie comes close to the bodypile, canceling her concealment, and holstering her gun.
> "Holy shit. It really is her. What the fuck. Julie was right."
> She pulls out a phone, and dials up a number.

> "Give.. give me one good reason I should not kill her right now."
> "If it's not enough, she gets a shot for each of my dead friends before I crush her gem."
> Jordan is fortunately lucid enough to prevent that from happening. She wants answers. About everything.
> Liese reasons from the ground, while being treated with the trickle of power that Oriana has to spare. "If she wanted to kill us, we would be dead. She could have shot our gems just as easily she shot our faces. She could have broke Jordan's gem from the very start."

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> "Hello, this is Callidus Operative Vincenza Vagh. I'd like to speak with Hachibei." Vinnie talks into the phone, in an uncool tone that is quite unlike her.
> "Yeah it's kind of an emergency."
> She walks around on the spot for a while, nervous.
> Then, she perks up. "Oh, hi boss. This is Vinnie. We've got a rat over here in Romania."
> "No, I don't mean another incubator. The Vanus you stationed here, Debbie, just attacked us during a really important operation here. Think she's a cultist."
> She is then silent for a while.
> "...Wait, what?"
> "The Vanus stationed here. Debbie... I don't know her full name. Fuck. Debbie, what's your full name?" She does not get it, as Debbie has passed out.
> "Seems out of - oh, what?"
> "No fucking way. She was here for, like, a whole fucking year, boss."
> "Huh."
> "What do you mean why'd a Vanus be in a cell? I'm pretty sure she did our paperwork. It must all have her name on it. Did nobody find it suspicious?"
> "Oh. Okay. Can you also bring a Culexus?"
> "Thanks boss. We'll meet up with you later then. Might have to prevent these chicks here from murdering her before that, though."

Some more mentally exhausting things happened after that, including Emiri snatching Debbie's gem and boasting she was going to smash it. She is, fortunately, talked out of this, mainly once she realizes she is much thirstier than she is mad.

However, nobody protests when Jordan approaches the wounded Maerorus resting on the rock later, and unceremoniously carves her body to pieces. Or, when Liese retrieves her Seed. The scraps are left behind on the mountain, as the worthless garbage most of the girls considered them to be, less an Incubator got it into their heads to help her run another 'experiment'.

Within ten minutes, Oriana gets a call from Pius. Therese is to be taken to the American cell, so is the rogue cultist. The Venenum from the Tenth should be treated, and let go after Eightball asks her some questions. For now, it is recommended that everybody goes to sleep, and comes visit the cell in Bucharesti in the morning.

The girls return home mostly in blessed silence, each ruminating over their own thing, but sharing some kind of unity within despair.

。。。

> Jordan wakes up in a sea of aches and pains with an intensity she didn't think was possible. Her head still thumps despite Oriana's best efforts, but this seems to be the only big source of pain. The rest of her body has healed up much nicer than expected. She opens her eyes to see Eriko and immediately forgets about the pain.
> Finding Eriko aslee in the kitchen, she mumbles a comment so incoherent, she doesn't know what she was trying to say.
> Eriko shifts a little, her sleeping face distressed.
> Jordan_Ramses reaches over and caresses Eriko's face planting a kiss on her forehead for good measure.
> Eriko 's fidgeting slows to a stop. Normally, though, she's up early. The Alcyone case really took a lot out of her.
> Jordan grabs a glass and heads for the bathroom. Tasting dirt is getting really old.
> It's been a long time since she's felt truly tired in the morning. That fight, or rather, those series of fights really took it out of her, an almost alien feeling for the girl so used to bouncing back after a night of rest.
> Jordan fills her cup, swishes, spits, repeats a few times. Then flicks the light to get a good look at herself in the mirror.
> And then, she drops the glass. It breaks easily.
> Eriko wakes with a startled yelp.
> Jordan is frozen stiff at the sight of that creepy but still kind of good looking and all too familiar girl in the mirror. She waits for her reflection to react first.

> Eriko rushes into the bathroom. "What happened?"
> "E-Eriko..." she stutters through a shaking mouth. She points at that corrupted figure in the mirror.
> "My eyes...w-what's wrong with my eyes?"
> Eriko opens her mouth. And shuts it. She doesn't know how to tell her.
> "They're just like...her's."
> "She... she did something to you," Eriko admits, and shakes her head. "It's... it's complicated. Even I don't understand all of it."
> "How did she even...I didn't even get hit in that fight with her, when did I even get hit?"
> "Did you fall in the vat?" Eriko tries to cue her in, hoping it's not the wrong course of action.
> "No, I threw Birdo in when I grabbed Liese and threw her away, then I...uh"
> Jordanholds her forehead while she tries to recall what happened next.
> "Then I...woke up? Covered in...oh."
> Eriko gently embraces Jordan.
> "That fucking black ooze got in my eye."
> "Fuck."

The conversation has several shifts and turns, which Eriko carefully navigates, about how unfair it all was, about how Jordan would never allow someone like Mitsuko to walk earth again. All goes well, until Jordan idly wonders whether she should cleanse her gem, and takes a Grief Seed out. This confuses her profoundly. Eriko decides to act before something breaks.

> "You're Jordan Ramses," she assures her. "Ace Breaker, Eversor, girlfriend."
> Jordan's expression relaxes steadily as Eriko works her magic. Finally her head hangs in silence for a minute.
> Eriko strokes Jordan's hair. It's still dirty.

On the morning train to Bucarest, Eriko prays she can get the Incubator and the Culexus to give her advice of any kind.