'A witch is a monster made of despair. Cecilia was a magical girl, and she died trying to stop this witch from coming here.'

Sue's sister is dead - assuming this thing isn't lying -

But maybe her parents aren't, maybe magical girls can do anything like in the shows - maybe she can put back the dead, except...

She doesn't think a wish would carry that. Would save everyone. It doesn't feel - it doesn't feel like what a magical girl gets, one wish to fix everything, and if everything can be fixed all at once surely Cecilia would've done that -

"I wish to be strong enough."

To fight this thing off. To save people. To change the world.

'An interesting wish.'

And Kyubey starts to glow.

And the world unfurls before her - the universe - it's hers, it's clay in her hands, it's - everything can change and she WILL change it if she has to fist-fight the universe -

Crashing back to herself is a rather rude feeling. But that high remains, and Sue rides it as her body glows, and wisps of white light settle around her. She's wearing a dress, now, knee-length, pure white with impossibly black accents, entirely made of sharp lines. A jacket snaps into place over it, a gem of pure white metal with blue lightning crackling inside it forms at her throat, and a white bow with a humming blue string materializes in her hand. There's no quiver. She doesn't need one.

She's standing, now, back straight like it's never been. Her sight's better, when she opens her eyes. The chaotically shifting angles behave, now, their geometry sensible to her.

And she can feel the broken pieces of the world around her.

'You need to move quickly, now. The witch will grow stronger the more people it kills.'

"Right."

She grips her bow tighter.

Magic is - more instinctual than she would've thought.

She spins, throwing the door open - her mother's crumpled, bloody - Sue's heart races - she darts past, jumping clear over the blood.

The hallway's not behaving. There's more twists, more space than there should be, all cut up with those spikes. But it's still her house, just chopped up and repeated - 

And her sister's bedroom door, the name 'Cecilia' replaced with something in an odd language Sue can't read, is before her.

Sue kicks it open, and the space becomes something else. Pure, unrelenting white for the ceilings and walls and floor - assuming those exist at all. Black chains rush from all directions, wrapped around a dark figure in the middle, a jittery thing that looks like someone ran a human through a bunch of fun house mirrors then added static for the fun of it.

It shrieks when it sees her, and Sue draws her bow, firing one glowing arrow then another - 

She only just barely catches the whip of a chain out of the corner of an eye. Not fast enough to dodge it.

It throws her into the ground, hard and fast enough to make a sound like boulders colliding, and a crackling black energy surrounds Sue.

She's uninjured. She's warm. She's loved.

She rolls to her feet, and keeps firing.

There's a rising tide in her head, a wailing drowning out the rage, a stubborn thread insisting I'm going to lose and nothing will change - 

But it's quieter than the anger, than the instinct to go out kicking and screaming and fighting if she goes out at all.

Sue's arrows strike like lightning, and the witch falls with a sob, chains going slack and then vanishing, strange room dissolving.

And Sue's left in her sister's room, Cecilia's untouched body sprawled face-down on the floor in front of her, right where the witch had collapsed. Cecilia's wearing a perfect inverse of Sue's outfit, unrelenting black where hers is white, limed in a gleaming white. Her hand's outstretched, just short of a jagged metal sphere wrapped around a black gem. Sue wonders distantly if that's Cecilia's version of Sue's own gem.

Cecilia's dress dissolves back to her normal clothes in a shimmer of black particles.

Sue falls to her knees and screams.

(She wishes God existed so she could kill him for this - )

It's unideal if Magical 90304-NISRV witches this soon. Her maximum usability hasn't yet been attained.

Kyubey places a paw against Sue's leg, then nuzzles her. 'You need to take the grief seed. You used a lot of magic, and it's making you feel bad.'

(Sue isn't close to witching. Sue is close to setting the universe on fire. There's a difference.)

She takes a deep breath. Looks at the gem. "That's not - Cecilia's gem thing?" She has to skirt around Cecilia's body, and she's going to - to find someone whose fault this was - 

There's a thin layer of grime on her gem, that leaps into the grief seed, making it somehow blacker. The wailing voice that Sue's going to fail fades, and Sue realizes she can take on the world.

"...Is anyone still alive?" She needs - needs to call 911, get paramedics...

'It's not a soul gem. A few neighbors survived; they're calling emergency services now. You don't need to worry about it. You did very well, Sue - that was a dangerous witch, who could've caused a lot of problems.'

"What's - what's going on, why wishes, why - why did using magic make me feel bad, what's with the gems - "

She'd leave the room except then she'd have to turn around and look at Cecilia's body.

'Wishes are how magical girls become magical. Magic makes you unhappy because your hope powers your magic. Your soul gem holds your magic, and it grows dark when you're low.'

- She has to - 

She turns, looks - there's no gem, nothing that feels like the thing Sue has. Maybe it's under Cecilia's body. Sue doesn't think she can touch her, and - her father complains about people who mess with crime scenes - (Her father's dead, though.)

"So where's Cecilia's soul gem? I should - I should keep it..."

'Only living magical girls have soul gems. Sue... You should go back to your room and wait for the emergency personnel. It's not good for you, being in here.'

Sue narrows her eyes. "Don't tell me what to do!" she snaps, that sad-angry feeling in her chest flaring. "I - "

"How did Cecilia die anyways - " 

Sue's sister is amazing, is always so far above her, no way a witch someone like Sue took down could've beaten someone like Cecilia - 

'She ran out of magic.'

Sue frowns, but - there's sirens, in the distance, growing louder. She tightens her grip on the grief seed.

'You should dismiss your raiment. Focus on turning back to normal.'

Doing that feels icky, like when you're changing and someone doesn't even bother knocking on the door, just opens it - 

Sue scrunches up her face, but settles back into her (weak) old clothes. Her bow's gone. 

"What now?"

'They won't be able to see me. Only potential and current magical girls can. You can talk to me mentally, by intending for a message to get to me. I'll help you get used to being a magical girl.'

Sue nods, and stands there, staring at her sister's body, until some adult - someone she thinks might've worked with her father, she's seen him before - blocks her line of sight.

"We're here, kid, it's going to be okay - " he says.

(It's not okay. But Sue will make it better - )

The funeral's two days later. Sue doesn't want to go. She doesn't see the point. They're just bodies.

It's big. Her parents and her sister and cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth's family and three separate neighbors' whole families and scattered people at the edges - 

There's a lot of police officers. They keep giving Sue their condolences for her family. Her dad was a very good chief of police, you know. Very fair.

She zones out.

There's a lot of worried chatter. Don't they know it's a funeral? Sue kind of wants to punch them but that'd require moving and then people would stare at her - 

But it's been years and years since this area had one of those mass killings or suicides like you see on the news, and it hardly has any crime at all compared to other places, doesn't it? (Cecilia, Sue thinks, because she's gotten Kyubey to tell her what witches do to people by now. Cecilia kept them safe, and Cecilia's dead now, isn't she?)

"Hey Sue," says a familiar voice from behind her. He sounds quiet. Subdued. Not much like his usual self.