Chapter Text
You have been a magical girl being for twenty years. And currently you’re pretty fucking sick of it.
Your power hadn’t quite plateaued like you thought it would after the first few months of combat. Rather, it got more streamlined, more refined. And, as it turns out, pulling influence from actual armor manuals helped to refine some of your skills. Different kinds of weapons, bigger ones that could fill multiple roles. You started with a falchion, but your arsenal expanded to fit more needs, more roles.
Your wife’s much the same way. Polearms became halberds became glaives became pikes and needles and grappling hooks. Both of you have learned to create better armor, better uniforms for different situations.
And right now, you’re putting that practice to good use.
You are a flash of blue and gold, and your armor’s long since grown past any kind of old video game you might have played ages before. Your cape is white, an intricate flash of glimmering gold patterns dancing from top to bottom. Your chestplate looks like the finest work of Henry VIIIth’s craftsmen, and honestly you could not be prouder. Your sabatons clash against the floor, blue leather boots underneath scraping against a technicolor flash of light and sound. In your right hand is a falchion, in your left a folding kite shield.
Then a gigantic fist comes careening towards your head.
You flash your shield up. The fingertips scrape just overhead, your shield against stone forearm as the weight of a freight train squeals just over your scalp. You cackle as the hand tumbles through the air before pivoting your feet against the floor. Your heel stays in place as you stretch your off-leg forward. You tilt the shield, and suddenly the entire disembodied arm crashes to the ground.
The dust flickers all around you, gigantic, jittering stones among the landscape as the buildings fold and unfold around you, and in the center is a stop-motion statue. A towering image of Venus, arms gone, head held by a thread. Fishing lines shimmer faintly over your head as you flick the shield around.
The strap breaks, only for the shield to compact itself. There’s a clank and a hiss as it compresses just enough to cover your torso; there’s no need for the rest of it right now.
The head grinds against the neck stump, the blank eyes of a Roman statue glancing towards you as you run across an impossibly large canvas. The ground bends beneath you as you run, and another hand drags its fingers across the canvas in an attempt to strike you.
A nice attempt. But that’s just it, an attempt. You whip yourself around, slip your falchion into a scabbard on your waist, and punch the shield. It extends into a kite before a second hit turns it into a tower with little merlons just over the top, giving it the impression of a castle turret. You plunge the base of the tower into the canvas, tearing a hole in its fabric.
The hand then strikes your shield. Your forearms shatter, but it’s nothing a little bit of magic can’t fix, and this is exactly what you thought would happen. The canvas underneath is torn asunder, the fabric ripped apart, paint thrown into the sky as you slide across oil that’s been layered far, far too thick. The momentum carries you backwards and the hand stops, as though the Witch has realized exactly what it did. The eyes keep watch over the new hole in the canvas as you’re thrown backwards at high speed, right past a piece of wiry, flipping fishing wire.
Perfect.
Your forearms take just a second to heal (one of the reasons you wear armor) and you quickly whip the falchion right out, pulling the handle as it forms a perfect grip. You smack into the fishing wire, the handle pulls itself shut, and you whip wildly around the handle and slide at high speed across the rainbow sky.
The witch bends, bust over legs under head as it screams in agony. You ruined her painting! You ruined her magnum opus! She drags her finger in rage across the surface before tearing the entire frame apart in a frenzy.
But all the while she hasn’t noticed you sliding at high speed towards her torso. You unhook your blade and quickly flip.
The arm snips right off the fishing wire, and what was once a flexing, moving hand suddenly freezes, now turned to stone. The hand collapses through another painting, and the witch takes notice of the ant running up her shoulder. She whips another hand around, palm open, fingers splayed, ready to take you out.
Except now you leap. The hand whooshes beneath you as you throw your shield into the air.
It flies open, first to a kite, then to tower. You whip your falchion around before plunging it into the base of your shield. There’s a click, then a whirrrrrr, then a flash of light. The tip of your sword flicks out of the base of the shield,as the mechanisms elongate the entire thing. The hilt of your falchion twists outwards before stretching out perfectly, forming an enormous, hideously sized curved sword.
The witch has no time to react as you suddenly crash into the torso, blade biting into stone. The crack ruuuuuns through the witch at the speed of sound, cleaving the torso in twain and causing little chunks of stone to fly into the air. The witch makes a sound that you almost think is analogous to swearing, and at the center, as a perfect sphere of obsidian, is the heart, just a little bit smaller than your head.
You waste no time as you grip the core of the witch and crush.
The stone shatters, and then so does the witch, first with a series of cracks before dissolving to powder. The Labyrinth vanishes around you before the grief seed, a mutated, half-baked thing, hits the ground. Three seeds, all haphazardly slammed together, fused by a twisted, warped cage.
“Another Walpurgis,” you mutter. They’ve been appearing more frequently. You suspect that it’s probably related to how you and your wife have messed with the Incubators’ systems. That tends to happen when you tell them to fuck off.
You are Miki Sayaka. You are one of the oldest magical girls in Japan, and probably the world. Twenty years ago, you killed one of the worst witches the world had ever seen. Nine years ago, you stopped aging. Your kid is now 14 years old.
Your armor dissolves in the alleyway (and honestly it’s for the best; you don’t want to look like a cosplay today) and you flick your hair around. You kept your bob cut; honestly, you quite like it that way, and you think 14-year-old you had the right idea. It’s a damn fine haircut. You are currently dressed in a suit. A very, very fancy suit with gold trim, a blue necktie, and a black undershirt. You have two rings on your hand, some very, very subtle eyeliner and some dark blue lipstick.
You look extremely handsome and more than a little gay. Which is exactly what you wanted. You don’t usually dress up this much but...yeah, that’s right, you were going to meet up with Kyouko for a date. An anniversary date.
She’s pretty low-maintenance. She can do whatever, whenever. But you? You like to spoil her. When you can afford to, of course.
But this is special. Twenty years together, and you had a very specific place in mind. You check your phone. A glance says it’s fifteen minutes.
Cool. You can make that. You spread your stance just a little bit and you take a step forwards at a hundred kilometers per hour.
You’ve never needed a car in your life, nor will you ever. You make a soaring leap into the air and kick off of a nearby concrete skyscraper. The momentum carries you into the air past rippling glass and the occasional surprised onlooker. You’ve never cared that much; anyone who’d remember already knows who you are, and those that didn’t? They’ll forget in an hour.
Your feet touch a lamp post and you kick off of it. The thing wobbles as your weight passes by, taking great care not to topple them onto the cars passing below you. To your right, at the end of the twenty-lane superhighway that runs in the center of Mitakihara, is a massive statue. A gigantic black grief seed, easily the size of your old school. Everyone thinks of it as a strange art exhibit.
You know that it’s what’s left of Walpurgisnacht.
You slide between a pair of buildings. You stretch your hand out and grab someone’s balcony railing. There’s a couple making out at the edge, two boys who don’t seem to notice you. The railing creaks as your hand slides across the metal, and you swing right around the balcony towards the next street over.
Your eyes scan the road below as you run across a nearby wall. There are a few cars here and there, but for the most part, Mitakihara is run by trains. And speaking of, you can see one right now on a rail that hangs fifteen meters over the city. You leap to the side and onto a slow maglev as it drifts past buildings and right towards exactly where you wanted to go.
It’s an old mall; the former record holder for the largest mall in the world, beaten out by one that was only fifty kilometers away on the other side of town. You leap off the train, put your feet to a nearby rail, and let it griiiiiiiiind your way towards the floor. You hit the concrete hard, but a quick roll takes care of that. You flip forwards, right onto your feet, cracking your knuckles and rolling your neck.
You could probably just hit the ground and crack concrete, but honestly that’s just a pain for everyone involved. Standing by the automatic doorway is an old friend of yours with an orange tank top and a messy, mane-like head of bright red. She glances towards you, muscular arms folded over her chest, before giving you a smirk. “Been here for the past twenty minutes!”
“Nice.” You give Akane a thumbs-up and walk past her. “Where’s your husband?”
“He’s home.” She gives you a grin. “Oh, and if you were wondering-”
“I wasn’t.” You nod. “Thanks for keeping the peace.”
“Hey, I ain’t gonna let anyone interrupt your anniversary.” She gives you a pat on the back. “Oh and she ain’t here yet. Buuuuuuut if you wanna surprise her~”
Yeah, of course she’s late. “Heh, honestly? I was hoping she’d be late.” You walk by her. “Gives me time to pose.” You start past her, only for Akane to stop you again with a grab of your shoulder.
“Oh, one more thing!” She pulls out a single rose, blue and red. The perfect blue and red.
You stare at her, then at the rose, then back at her. And then you slooooooowly grin. “...you’re amazing.”
You take the rose and she gives you a nod as you rush inside. The entire mall is filled to bursting with people from all over the district, and you weave and dodge past a sea of bodies. Through a hallway, under an escalator, by an elevator, and then finally, at the oldest part of the mall, you find it.
You stick the rose in your teeth and lean against a DDR machine...and you wait...and you wait…
And you wait…
You check your phone. It’s now five minutes past the agreed time.
Honestly, you kind of expected that.
Another minute...and finally, you see a mane of red hair in the crowd.
“Get the fuck out of the way!” A woman in a long, glimmering red dress pushes through the crowd. She’s wearing black shoes (she wouldn’t be caught dead in stilettos) with a backless halter top. She’s only an inch taller than you, but without sleeves, she shows what years of being a magical girl can do to your tone. She pushes past crowds of people and finally she stands in front of you, fake-panting in an exaggerated way.
She stretches her arms, lets out a loud, bellowing laugh, and grins. “Ta-fuckin’-da!”
You give her a few small golf claps. You wanna say something witty, but right now, you have a rose in your mouth. And honestly it’s probably for the best.
She takes a few long steps towards you and you pull the rose out from your mouth. “Hey Ko-”
Kyouko doesn’t let you say any more before she grabs the back of your head and gives you a long, messy kiss on the lips. Her lipstick’s smeared against yours before she lets you go. “Hey, Saya.” Her lips are a little bit blue now.
“Happy anniversary.” You give her a grin.
“You know, it’s funny.” She glances behind you. “I didn’t think I was actually gonna find you in the arcade.”
“Well, I mean, I almost tried dancing on the DDR machine.” You wave your hand. “But yeah. Felt appropriate. Twenty years in, the place we met~”
“Too bad the old machine broke.” She sighs before tracing a hand on your cheek. “And well, it’s been a while since we played in the arcade. God, I can't believe I found you here."
"Well, what can I say?" you giggle like you're fourteen again, "if I were any sappier I'd be a maple factory."
Yeah, you know what you’re doing for the next hour. Your kid’s at their friend’s place, and you let them know you’d be out for a little while. So yeah, you’re going to play some video games. You don’t usually get a chance to these days.
Between your job and being a magical girl, you don't get that much of a chance to relax.
And god forbid you do, when you have the most potent grief seed in the world just waiting in your backyard.
