The meeting is happening exactly where she said it'd be. Mallory's already there, along with three girls who look mostly around Lianne's age.

"Hi everyone! I'm Lianne. I'm - new."

"Hi Lianne!" people chorus.

Mallory stands up. "It's great that you could make it, Lianne. Have a seat - I guess Kaylee decided not to come?"

She sits down. "Yeah, she's still thinking things through."

She nods. "Why don't we all introduce ourselves? Just your name, and something about yourself. I'll start, then we can go clockwise. My name is Mallory Delvin, and I've been a magical girl for thirteen years. I'm a freelance journalist, and my goal in life is to do everything I can to get rid of witches."

The next girl waves. "Hi! I'm Taylor, I'm a potential, and an eighth grader over at Tomoe Middle School. I haven't decided what I want to wish on yet."

"I'm Sophie, an eleventh grader at Tomoe High. I've been a magical girl for a bit over two years. I want to work as a vet eventually."

"Hey, name's Alex. I've been a magical girl for a while, but I'm new here, too - I'm from about an hour away, decided to see what this thing was all about."

"I'm Lianne! I only just became a magical girl on Tuesday, while being attacked by a witch. It's been - yeah."

Sophie makes a sympathetic noise. "Yeah, that sounds rough. Most witches are fairly easy to take down, though, and you get used to the creepiness."

"I've started sketching them. Some of them are pretty, in a weird way. Like, surrealism or something."

She nods. "I can see that, yeah. So do we team up to hunt witches or something?"

"I think we should have a race at some point, but going as a team sounds fun, too. Like superheroes."

Privately, Lianne thinks a race sounds like a horrible idea. Being a superhero team is in line with what she wants, though, so she smiles at Alex. 

"We should come up with superhero names, then. I'll be the unpowered one on the team for now. The super secret agent type."

"I call Ace of Hearts!"

Sophie laughs. "I'm totally Moon Dragon. Yes I know it's taken, it's cool, okay."

"Gosh - I can be, um, Glimmer?" Since her motif is apparently suns or stars.

"I suppose that makes me the Director? And what are we naming our team?"

"We should totally go with one of those silly super sentai names, since we're magical girls and all - like, Magical Task Force Five? I'm bad at names, though."

"That won't scale well as we add people."

"That can be the joke, or we can change the number as we grow."

Nobody else can come up with something that isn't already taken by a comic book, though they'd still like something else. 

The joking winds down after a while, and Lianne brings up wishes, mentioning that her friend was thinking about wishing for the formula for a vaccine, like for malaria.

"That's a great idea! I'll need something I feel strongly enough about, but there's probably something like that I can do."

They chat for a bit about potential wishes, until they've pretty much exhausted the topic. When the conversation lulls, Mallory changes the topic. "It's great that we're starting to have so many here. Were we planning on hunting together?"

"Sure, I'm in. Should be a fun change of pace."

She nods.

"Yeah, let's. Give our superhero teamwork a spin."

"We'll want to familiarize ourselves some with each other's powers, and plan strategies. I'd suggest practicing a bit at an abandoned field I know for powers testing first, then we can go dowsing. I'll also bring my spare grief seeds, so everyone can have a full gem before we hunt."

Everyone agrees that sounds like a good plan.

"I need to get going. It was fun meeting everyone!"

They all say bye to Taylor, then head out for the abandoned field. Sophie and Lianne both call their parents to let them know they're staying out late. It's a bit of a drive (luckily Mallory's car has plenty of room) and then a hike to test their powers.

Mallory's thing turns out to be guns; she doesn't fire any, but she describes the extent of flexibility she's gotten (a lot; she started with pistols, and now she can make any type in any size she wants). Alexandra's weapon is a bow and arrow - she's figuring out slowly how to do trick arrows that do more damage, and can already do multiple arrows at once - and Sophie's is polearms, mostly halberds. 

They practice a few combinations - Lianne's swords make for really good shields, the others can't get through them - and Lianne figures out how to change the size of her sword, and how to summon multiples.

"Hey, my soul gem's running down a bit. How about we wrap this up then head on out? I'll need to be getting back home at some point, too, and I have a long drive ahead of me."

"Works for me."

They all return to their regular clothes, then Mallory passes around the spare grief seed, and they pile into her car to return to the city.

They agree that Lianne should get to practice dowsing, since she's new.

When they get back to the community center and Mallory's parked, Lianne takes a deep breath and starts to search for witches.

It takes her a while.  She's practiced it but never detected an actual witch before, so for a while she's not sure what to look for -

 - but then when she does find one it's pretty unmistakable.  Her despair-sense leads her through a poor part of town, to a disused warehouse.

Yeah that feels... Slimy. Like something dark is dragging its fingers over her grave.

She shudders, lets the others know she found one, and follows the trail until she comes to the warehouse.

"We're here," she says. "Should we transform now?"

It's Alex who shakes her head. "No. Wait until you need to, it's a waste of magic otherwise. C'mon, let's get this thing." And she throws the doors open.

The warehouse is empty, and dark.

The entrance to the barrier is inside, a bit off to one side of the room.  Looking at it is strange: it's just as indistinct as ever, a blurry heat haze in the absence of heat, but somehow much more visually arresting even in the almost pitch black.  Hard to see, but extremely easy to notice.

Deep breath. "Yeah, let's go."

And she leads the others inside.

The other side of the entrance manifests as an ornate wooden door, which swings shut behind them.

The door isn't attached to a wall; it's freestanding, in the middle of a large circular room.  The room is walled with glass cabinets, which display vases and sculptures and jewelry and all manner of other symbols of material wealth.  There are no lights in the room; the objects themselves appear to be radiating light, somehow lighting up the whole room without being too bright to look at.  There's no ceiling either; the walls stretch upward farther than she can see, leading into darkness.

...Is there a way to leave the room? Or anything moving?

Nope.  Nope.

There is, distantly, the sound of a music box.

"We're going to have to jump," Sophie says, transforming and looking up.

"Hah, flying's my favorite part!" Alex poses a bit when she transforms.

Mal sighs, but smiles a bit, and transforms. Her outfit is dark, black with occasional glimpses of other colors. It's less frilly than the others', more of a robe or stately dress.

...Oh, yeah, Kyubey said she could fly now. Lianne transforms, and can't help but grin, both at herself and at the rush of energy. This already feels so much less scary than last time.

Then they can all take flight upwards - though it's more of a soaring jump than flying, bouncing off the walls for added momentum. Lianne takes a few attempts to get it right, and bumps into things more than the others, but she's having fun (it helps that Alex is laughing and goading her on). 

Up, and up, and up and up and up.  The light follows them, somehow, always bright enough to see up and down but never very far.

Eventually their shaft intersects with another one, slanted and steep, cocked at an odd angle for something so artificial-looking.  (As they come to rest in the intersection it becomes a little difficult to tell which shaft is the vertical one.)

Can she tell which way's correct?

Down the slope will take her nearest.

"This way," she mutters, drawing her sword and heading down the slope. She's still a bit clumsy with the 'flying', but she's getting better steadily. 

And down.

At some point during the descent, the shaft becomes vertical, and square instead of circular.  Neither of those changes seem to have happened at any particular moment during their descent, or to have had any intermediate stages.

The wooden backs of the glass cases give way to obscured views of more shafts.  There is the sense of wood-paneled walls in the distance, beyond a grid of two-sided cabinets, but it's impossible to tell how far away they are, or behind how many panes.

A floor approaches.  (Floor?  Ceiling?  Probably floor.)

Yeah the spatial distortion's probably going to be the weirdest part of hunting.

She and the others all go to land.

They are standing, on what is almost certainly a floor.

Her labyrinth-sense tells her that this part of the barrier is horizontal, not vertical.  Through each cabinet is a new chamber of the maze; this way is centerward.  They'll have to get past the glass.

Mal checks whether the cabinet can be simply opened, and then shoots out the glass if it can't (the three girls all back up a bit and draw their weapons). 

No need.  The doors open creakily; vases and sculptures slide out of the way, shelves fold into themselves and vanish.  The far side of the cabinet also opens.

Straight on will take them nearer the witch.  The room beyond is empty; in the next beyond that, something is stumbling around.

They proceed cautiously, weapons out, Lianne and Sophie in front.

In the next room they get a clearer picture of it.  It's mottled green, like a child's idea of a troll, tall and hunched, with an extra right arm and clublike fists, or possibly fist-shaped lumps of flesh.  It is immaculately dressed in an old-fashioned schoolboy's uniform.  Its back is to them, and it doesn't seem to have noticed them yet.  It may hear them when they open the next cabinet.

Lianne and Sophie exchange a look, then Lianne kicks the cabinet open and they charge it, Sophie extending her halberd once they're through. They almost immediately separate a bit, going to circle it.

Mallory and Alex both shoot at it once they've got a clear shot.

It's clumsy: its fists are larger than its head and it doesn't seem to know how to balance accounting for its extra arm.  It roars when the cabinet opens, but vacillates for a moment between going after Lianne or Sophie, and when the shots hit it groans and stumbles.  It aims a swing at Lianne with both of its right arms, using the way it stumbles to add momentum.

She dodges wide then swings, going for its arms even as Sophie aims her spear at its back. 

Arms come off.  It roars again when the spear pierces it, and staggers forward, aiming to shove Lianne into the glass behind her.

Lianne dodges, overshoots a bit, corrects, then makes her sword really big and swings at its center (Sophie jumps back a bit, but not before a parting swipe). 

After it's cut in half, it shatters violently like a dropped vase.  Green and black shards fly through the air, narrowly missing Lianne and the other girls.

Eep!

...Is it dead-dead? (She stays ready just in case, remembering Mallory's words of caution earlier).

It seems to be.  The shards, once they hit the ground, are inert.

Yeah but is the maze fading like last time, can she still sense a witch? Or was that a familiar?

No such luck.  Seems it was only a familiar.

Yeesh. Well, luckily there's the team, and it was fairly easy.

They continue on towards the witch, keeping an eye on the shards until they're past them.

Shards remain inert.

The cabinets continue to admit visitors to pass through them.  The chambers get bigger.  The path to the witch winds nonsensically, turning right or left without warning, sometimes doubling back.

Then, after some time, they come upon a room in which all four paths, including back the way they came, lead to chambers with familiars in them.

If the familiars aren't reacting yet, the girls move to stand back-to-back, then each points at one of the familiars, picking their targets. Mallory then summons eight large machine guns, two per familiar, and fires them in a short burst, additionally shooting her main pistol at her chosen target, while Alex fires as many arrows as she can (three at a time, every other second), and Lianne and Sophie both ready their weapons and brace themselves, Sophie preparing to spear the familiar on a charge, Lianne preparing to swing.

Bullets pierce the panes of glass, and they shatter into minute shards that billow out in clouds and then ease to a stop, suspended in midair.  Vases and sculptures explode, opaque fragments of glass and ceramic fly like shrapnel.  There is a high distant scream of inarticulate rage.

The familiars, irregular assemblages of limbs and heads and mouths, roar and charge through the clouds of suspended glass without fear or hesitation.

Alex's goes down quickly; Mallory's, the largest, charges forward heedless of the bullets, bounding forward on one-and-a-half legs, readying its five arms to grab her in a bear-hug.

Lianne's familiar is just an enormous three-elbowed arm emerging from a pair of legs, big enough to crush her head in its fist.  It staggers forward, half running and half falling, graceless but purposeful.

Alex jumps forward a bit, then turns to fire arrows in Mallory's attacker's back.

She drops and rolls away.

Lianne's barely noticing the others' fights; she swings, aiming to cut off her attacker's arm, while Sophie's halberd develops a cross-beam like a boar spear as she angles for her familiar to impale itself. 

Mallory escapes, and five-arms stumbles forward, growling its rage, catching itself on its one good leg and two arms before it collapses.  Arrows strike its torso, and it screams, hobbling toward Alex like a gorilla.

Lianne's sword gets halfway through her familiar's arm, and then it's stuck in the bone.  Its legs thrash, and it begins to slide down the blade towards her.

Sophie's familiar impales itself, its tiny ineffectual arms grasping desperately at the air, trying and failing to reach her.

The scream continues.  It sounds more like a rant, now, though they can't make out any words.

Mallory raises herself into a kneeling position, summons a high-powered riffle, braces herself, and shoots five-arms in the back as many times as she can, while Alex skips backwards some. 

Yeah Sophie's halberd can develop spikes, how about that. 

Lianne lets go of her sword, has an idea, screams "Down!" and then summons the largest sword that'll fit in the room, backing into the center and spinning as hard as she can, aiming so her own familiar will be hit last. The other girls all hit the floor, Sophie immediately summoning a second spear and stabbing up at whichever nearest familiar remains standing.

There is a great deal of flying ex-familiar ceramic.  It may hit someone.  Lianne, for example, in the arm.

Screamed invective continues, impossible volume balanced by impossible distance.

There is a rhythmic, high, chaotic sound, getting steadily closer.  Shattering glass, perhaps.

Lianne shakes her head a bit, heals herself, and glances to make sure that the familiars are all dead and no one else is injured (they can heal themselves, but still).

Familiars are dead.

Healing herself is unpleasant.  The shard seems to twist and writhe as the regrowing flesh pushes it out.  It skitters a bit when it hits the ground, but then falls still.

No one else is injured.  But the sound of rhythmic shattering glass is getting closer, and suspended clouds of glass still block their way.

"Wait here until we know what it's doing?"

The others nod. Lianne tries experimentally to push aside some of the suspended glass with her (now more reasonably sized) sword.

She succeeds; the shards stay put when nothing's touching them, but the sword can move them just fine.

Crash.

Crash.

Crash.

Crash crash crash crash - 

Every pane of glass around them, floor to invisibly distant ceiling, shatters, every piece rockets through the air towards a whirling cyclone of shards.  Protrusions like arms or tentacles extend, slowly, curling and grasping through the air towards them.

(It is crystal clear to Lianne's magic senses that this phenomenon is not the witch.)

Multiple kinds of familiar, okay then.

They move to surround it, Sophie stabbing at its center, Lianne going to cut off its arm-tentacles, Alex and Mallory firing up into it.

Ha ha ha, nope.

...Is it slow enough they can just run past it.

Well, past it, in the direction it came, is away from the center.  But if they're really fast about opening the cabinet doors they can probably keep ahead of it and still be heading in the right direction.

Lianne bats at it with the flat of her sword, aiming to push some of the shards away from it, shouts "Run for the center, it'll vanish when we kill the witch!" She waits until the others have gone in the right direction, continually trying to disrupt the whirlwind, and then goes out last.

Glass panels shatter around them, or as they leave a chamber.  The cyclone matches their speed, shards of glass shrieking against each other, screaming a storm of indistinct invective.

A few of the chambers have familiars in them, lumbering things with two heads or one eye, or tiny top-heavy creatures whose torsos are just enormous upward-facing jaws.  Some of them lunge toward Lianne and the others as they pass, but they all seem just as afraid of the cyclone as they are: they're fleeing in mad terror, stumbling and swaying clumsily.  Glass tendrils descend on them and shred them to bits as the cyclone passes.

And then, eventually, the next cabinet they reach is locked.  The cyclone is only a few rooms behind, and gaining rapidly.

Sophie, Mal, and Lianne all drop barriers as they run (Sophie can form her spears into umbrella-like things, which she props behind her; Lianne starts turning her swords into shield-like things sized for each door; Mal can form actual shimmering magical barriers, that should slow down the main bulk of the cyclone). 

Mal shoots out the glass of the next cabinet, and Lianne immediately bats aside any hovering shards with her sword. 

Much good may it do them.

The shards aren't suspended in midair, this time, they shoot right for the cyclone.  The shattered glass provokes renewed, more vicious shrieking and ranting.

The hail of glass is not kind to exposed skin.

They're magical girls, they can heal (Lianne's healing noticeably faster and easier than the others, now that they're all injured at once). 

They jump into the next room, weapons ready.

It's not fun.  The glass twists inside their flesh, trying to resist being pushed out.

The next room has five sides, all at right angles to each other, which is disorienting.  The path to the center is still straight(?) away from the cyclone.

She's starting to get used to this. 

They head for the center.

More locked doors, more shattered glass, more painful healing.  Five- and six- and seven-sided square rooms give way to crosshatched hallways, with ordinary wood-backed glass cabinets like the ones in the entrance room.  Familiars stumble and stagger through the hallways, occasionally colliding with a wall of glass and shattering it, provoking more furious screeching.

They're getting close, and with no doors in the way, they can put more distance between themselves and the cyclone.

Every so often, they notice an especially huge familiar with a glass display case embedded in its chest, cradling some vase or sculpture or jewel in red velvet.

She's really glad they all topped off their soul gems before coming out here.

Mallory points out the larger familiars as they run past. "Those are the ones at risk of escaping and eventually becoming new witches; we'll need to immediately canvas the area after destroying this witch, to try and catch any fleeing ones."

The center nears.

They come upon a room like the entrance hall but twice as large: vast and circular and endlessly high.  There is an enormous music box in the center, the size of a monument; the spinning figurine of a ballerina in the center is twice as large as a human.  It spots them, and stops spinning; the figurine cracks around its joints, fractures spiderwebbing up and down its limbs, like it's breaking itself free of its dance.

The sound of the music box is so loud and piercing that Lianne can feel it rattling her teeth.

Cracks spread across the figure's face, shards rearrange the beatific smile into a snarl.  Its hands and fingers crumble entirely into ceramic shards.  It floats gently away from the music box and alights on the ground in front of them.

This is the witch.

Mallory summons six truly massive guns (she's really stretching the definition of the word 'gun' here), which all fire a single shell that explodes on contact.

Sophie starts summoning and throwing enormous spears.

Alex dodges to the left, then enlarges her bow until it's too big to fire vertically. She starts firing arrows as fast as she can, some of them glowing faintly or trailing wisps of fire. 

Lianne: does not have a ranged weapon, and she doesn't want to jump at the witch through everyone's attacks.

...Throwing her sword can't be that much different from a discus, can it? Especially since its properties always seem to be convenient.

She separates a bit from the others, spins, and flings her sword as hard as she can, aiming the blade at the witch's knees, then summons another sword and braces herself.

Shells explode, take out chunks of its torso and part of its left arm.  Spears and arrows stick inside it or spin off it or blast straight through and leave gaping, cracked holes.

Lianne's sword spins through the air and cleaves the witch's left leg in half.

Every single shard of ceramic separated from the witch's body shoots straight at the attacker and buries itself in their flesh.

Mallory draws her pistol, which suddenly grows almost comically large, and fires at its face. 

Alex backs up a bit and in a smooth, practiced motion, touches a grief seed to her soul gem. She tosses it to Sophie, then, who'd switched to a more defensive position after being hit. Sophie clears her soul gem as well, then braces herself to react to the witch's movements.

Alex draws her bow, focuses, and greats a single large, crackling arrow, which she aims at the witch's center. 

Lianne is healing herself almost without noticing it. She flings a second sword at the witch's remaining leg. 

The witch's head is vaporized.  Alex's arrow blows an enormous hole in its center, which reorganizes into a shard-toothed maw.

Its left leg is chopped cleanly up, and the shards that used to compose it start whirling around what remains of its body.

It lunges toward Alex, newly-created maw agape.

Mallory keeps firing.

Sophie, having caught her breath, starts flinging spears at the witch again, while Alex leaps back and away from the witch, firing another few arrows.

Lianne flings a third sword, aiming for the mouth.

The more damage is done to the witch, the less it looks like a broken figurine: by now it's a swarm of jagged ceramic shards in the shape of a three-legged predator.  Fragments are blown aside by Mallory's shots, spears and arrows are chewed up by whirling shards.  It screeches, and vases and statues from the display cases on the walls rush toward it and explode, adding to its bulk, extending its limbs, widening its mouth.

When Lianne throws her third sword the witch catches it in its mouth and swallows it whole.

"Get clear!" Mallory shouts, refreshes her soul gem with a grief seed, then summons two dozen massive guns, in a wide semi-circle in front of her. They're almost humming with energy, and each looks incredibly ornate (her soul gem dims noticeably, about a third of the way). 

They're barely even aimed, all pointing explosive shells at the witch's center-mass. 

The other girls all back off a good bit, though Alex fires off another large, crackling arrow. 

(The goal here is pulverization. The area around the witch might also get blown up some.)

That's when the glass cyclone catches up with them.

As the shells go off, the girls are momentarily blinded.  At the same moment, approximately every shard of glass in the world rains down out of the air above them.

The smoke clears; the witch is gone, not a single shard remaining, the floor where it was standing charred black.

The labyrinth shimmers out of existence.  A handful of display-case familiars are huddled in the corners of the warehouse.

"No kill like overkill, I guess," Lianne mutters, picking a glass shard out of her arm. It doesn't hurt like it should. "So we fight the familiars now?"

Mallory calmly starts healing herself and nods. "Though take this, you've been using a lot of magic. Doesn't hurt to be cautious." She hands Lianne a grief seed, then almost idly picks her targets from among the familiars, preparing to fire. "We'll need to move fast so none escape."

And the fight can start again.

Alex takes aim and fires a single large arrow at one of them, while Sophie prepares her boar spears in a circle around her, Lianne clears her soul gem and then steps forward and prepares a swing, and Mallory fires her pistol several times in quick succession. 

The familiars seem more interested in running than fighting.

Mallory's targets go down.  So do Alex's and Lianne's.  After the battle with the witch it feels a bit anticlimactic.

One slips past them, though, sprinting for the door.  These ones seem less clumsy than the weaker ones.

Yeah Lianne's not gonna let them go and kill more people.

She's in track, she's magic - she sprints as fast as she can, aiming to beat the familiar to the door and plant herself in front of it.

(Seeing that they aren't charging, Sophie switches to throwing spears, joining Alex and Mallory in shooting the fleeing familiars in the back.)

She succeeds.  Her familiar, now the last one remaining, stops and glances behind itself, then charges her.

Well then it can meet her sword, how about that.

It shatters.

Does Mallory sense any other familiars?

Not a one.

"We're clear. Good work, girls. That was... A harder fight than usual."

Lianne takes a deep breath and lowers her sword, then dismisses her transformation entirely and sits down. 

"You're telling me," Alex says, de-transforming. "I couldn't have handled that on my own. It was great working with everyone, though."

Sophie, meanwhile, quietly returns to her normal clothes and begins looking for the witch's grief seed.

It's not hard to find, even in the dark, just like the entrance.

"We should all top ourselves off," Sophie says, clearing the small bit of dinginess from her gem before passing the seed around. Hopefully it'll be large enough to clear all of them, they all kinda used a lot of magic, even with the additional clearing midway through.

A more powerful witch means a more effective grief seed, for reasons that magical girls are not typically in a position to understand.  It heals them all up easily.

Mallory will take it if it's full, or give it to Alex (who used one of her own spares during the fight) if it still has some capacity left. 

Once they're all healed and walking back to the community center: "Next week we should spend some time discussing this fight, including the mistakes we made. It's late for now, though, so I can drive everyone home."

Alex, it turns out, had also parked at the community center, but Sophie lives just far enough to appreciate the lift.

The grief seed still has a bit of space left for healing.

Then it can go to Alex, who thanks her before heading out.

Lianne, of course, lives all the way out in the suburbs. She gets everyone's phone numbers before they split up, then once they're in the car asks Mallory to drop her off at the bus stop, thanks her for everything, and heads home, where she spins a story about hanging out with her new friends. Once her mom's satisfied, she has dinner, then goes to collapse into bed with a groan.

She really hopes future witches aren't as hard to kill. (She'll need Kyubey, she thinks, to identify ones she can take on her own. She does not want to stumble across something like - that - without backup.)

That'll be a problem for another day, though.