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It never gets easier.
Some parts of it may, the enemy goes down easy, there are less scars accumulated, less bruises to ice, but the knowledge never fades and so it never gets better.
Kanade glances at the tall girl out of the corner of her eye, her long hair falling in silky sheets to obscure her face; the pain just turns numb.
The 1 am moon shines, beaming over the city built up from mountains of tar. Their shadows loom and arch overlapping as the glare of the streetlights creep around the corners, from the road to the forgotten alley. From the crumpled mass against the wall, dark sludge oozes out and spills around her shoes to hold her body close and reach past it, rolling in waves out to consume all it can within its reaching grasp. The smell of animal insides is pervasive, slipping past her lips to trace the inside of her throat and leave an itch she cannot scratch.
The body, if it could be called that, is lifeless and unmoving like its strings were sliced leaving it to sink down and turn to muck starting from the vague idea of fingertips - sharp points that had curled inwards into the skin of its own palms and possibly further, she can imagine every punch thrown as agonizing, a dog with a shock collar who cannot stop barking.
Amalgamations, they're called. The negative emotions that have seeped from mankind's world and collected into a sentient creature. Enemy of magical girls.
Her shield stands tall and brilliantly blue against the dark city, wings unfurled and dipping into the melting body, patterns like veins etched carefully into the surface like shattered glass mended. It's heavy and solid in a way she isn't used to, only slightly taller than her and wide too, impossible to work around when fully extended. An impenetrable fortress meant only for protection.
Mafuyu's longbow hangs limp in her hand, tipping down to the earth, fingers tight around the smooth surface. It looks like something straight out of a video game or a TV show, the entire thing almost glows, not only reflecting the light but absorbing it and churning it, taking it apart and expelling it out. She hadn’t needed to extend it to its full length, dye it to the full shimmering white enough to brighten the whole sky and any darkened eye.
She watches as Mafuyu approaches the corpse, holes in its chest caving in and filling with bile, her bow and arm guard unfurling back into the ribbons they came from and wrap back around her body, around limbs, her corset clad waist, and to the end of her lone braid among her waves of violet. She crouches down to reach her spindly fingers into the hole in its chest, prying it open gently with pushes of her fingertips. She withdraws, hand shut and the flesh clings to her in strings like saliva.
“Kanade,” Mafuyu says, breaking the silence hovering in the air, “It's your turn.”
“Right.” She exhales shakily, “Sorry. I should have done it.” They take turns when on the job together, who gets the reward. That way there’s no resentment or competition over who deserves it more, who’s worthier. It’s easier this way. She can pretend it’s not something she can control; she has some control over that.
Mafuyu stands to hand it to her, her eyes tracking her own hand as if it does not belong to her but rather to a ghost, Kanade reaches her hand out and she can feel the weight and the pearl-like smoothness of the marble without looking down. Instead she looks up at Mafuyu, the girl towering over her in her heels, thin neutral eyebrows disappearing behind thick bangs, eyelids with no muscles attached, hanging there like a curtain who’ll fall at any second leaving Kanade out like a bug trapped behind glass.
“Would you have?” Mafuyu asks non-maliciously, as gentle and harsh as she always is and while Kanade isn’t offended, it still aches in her chest. Her shield folds back up, wings retreating back into the thin stick of her bo staff so she can clip it back into its place hanging off her belt.
The marble is cold in her hand, her own body heat doing nothing to warm it. Inside there’s a mist that swirls slowly like a whirlpool, the colors toss and turn over themselves like a night sky falling down to the earth. The ripples pull her eyes down, it beckons her to get lost, to walk off the treebranch and never come back, to drown alongside it and the flowers wilting. It promises her nothing, everything she wants.
It doesn’t matter how you break it. Only that you do.
Kanade doesn't need it. She doesn't know what she would use a wish for. Bring her dad's memories back? Would he want to remember it? Remember all the pain she had caused him, the pain that made him work himself to the bone, the pain that was too much for his mind that it was easier to bolt it up than to feel?
She can't do that. She can't hurt him anymore than she already has.
Mafuyu looks at her and Kanade’s not sure if she sees anything at all. Can Mafuru stand the sight of her after Kanade has stolen from her over and over again, right in front of her, taken what she wants for no reason other than she doesn't want her to have it?
She doesn't want Mafuyu to have her wish. She doesn't want her to disappear.
She traces it against her breast plate, scratching down the metal surface. That's how she does it, slowly with her right hand across her chest and over her heart, pressing it down to gunk. It's a worn out sentimentality, repeated over and over, a pattern that's been ground down from use, it doesn't make anything anymore. Pain isn't something you get used to, Kanade’s realized, it's something you become more and more disconnected from, an anchor whose chain is eroding away under the deck and deep under the rolling waves.
Kanade raises it back to her face. She can feel Mafuyu's eyes on her through her own shut, the stench in the air as she places it between her teeth, balancing it between her incisors delicately before tearing in.
It only touches her tongue for a second, less than, before it becomes absorbed by her power, a second of nothing at all and overwhelming… somethingness. The shell that seemed so solid cracked like a wax coating, letting the swirling elixir gush and spill out over her lips to run down her chin and fill her mouth, staining her tongue with a taste so pure in its wrongness she cannot forget it. She cannot forget the urgency to retch without gagging to accompany or the burning chill of negative zero, a second of suspended animation. Stars stolen from the sky collapsing in on themselves behind her eyelids. Even when it's gone the next second, wiped from the world and put back to nothing in a fleeting moment.
She can feel tears prick at the corners of her eyes and threaten to spill over, that weight she’s been carrying for so long around her neck pulling her down even further into the ground. It hurts, immeasurably so.
Mafuyu doesn’t tear her eyes away, scanning Kanade’s face like she’d never seen it before in her life. It’s the same look she’d given her the first time they’d met, when Kanade had no idea what she was doing but had somehow managed to help her out against all odds - when Kanade had decided they should team up and Mafuyu hadn’t had anything to say back. Not stony or blank, warmth melted into her waxy features.
Mafuyu had learned long before Kanade had not to look for luck in a dead end. Kanade still hasn’t learned, it seems, as Mafuyu turns on her heel, telling her that she has to get back home.
Kanade stays a little longer, no one at home waiting on her. The body against the wall has left the ground sodden shops in a couple months some may grow from the cracks in the cement. She lets her costume fall, armor breaking apart back into her tracksuit, heels back to running shoes, short hair back to long and knotted.
The body will keep falling apart until the early morning sun rises, even as she leaves it behind, it is still there, between the buildings, something she cannot see but a smell of death that she cannot wash out.