#screaming crying rending flesh etc

[nercynorning]

lying supine in the rain in a puddle on the side of the road

[studiodada]

I’m always half tempted to comment on the rants about how AI art is evil. I mean, sure, it’s evil - I guess - but it’s no more evil than any other tool that’s been made since time began. The fear that illustrators will lose jobs is valid but generally the fear that machines will replace anyone is a constant among all fields. The bigger fear, I feel, is that it exposes artists for what they are vs the image they project.

Artists, generally, rely on the last two centuries of myths that have been built around them: Starving, half mad, romantic, visionary, skilled, etc.

They turn that into marketing for their lives and careers. Painters, poets, etc. thrive on mysticism. Sure, maybe God is dead but these people are clued in on the “human experience” in ways you never can even dream of being.

Meanwhile the institution has been chipping away at them with ideologies and market forces.

First with abstraction (“my child could paint that!”), then with conceptualization (“so…it’s just words on a wall?”) and now with reducing realism to a function of the machine.

And having your “skill” replaced with a repeatable function is simply too much for some people. Never mind the fact that their “skill” was trained on repeating whatever their influences were-teachers, idols, theories, etc. You are an AI model making art but you refuse to acknowledge it because…human.

But maybe it’s because I came into art from a computer/cybernetic background that I think this. Anything can be incorporated into a function and repeated. This is the basis for anyone’s career - find your style then sell it then ride that style til you die=>that way anyone who looks at that art of yours will know “hey! That’s a (insert your name here)”

The key is to make just enough to make a living but not too much so you get undervalued. Duchamp said as much when he talked about limiting the quantity of readymades that he made. Tuymans said this as well. Plus a host of others. Renoir like painting in red and black but that didn’t sell as well as his dreamy weird as blues and greens and peachy lush flesh.

Personally, I’d think this would be freeing. It’s liberating to not have to deal with the system. Let the machine run wild so that you can say “fuck it, today I’m going to paint motherfucking little gentleman Guinea Pigs and then maybe a few triangles and a ufo in space”.

But to not be bound in the prison you made for yourself when you started is terror for the majority. The fear of losing your myth, your clout, your prestige, etc. is simply too much and so everything must be railed against. Everything that isn’t your career choice is an enemy.

AI art is evil.

Abstraction is evil

Conceptual art is evil

Machines are evil

Change is evil

Acrylics are evil because they’re not oil

Machine made furniture is evil

Printers are evil

Digital art is evil

Blah blah blah. ad nauseum

Simply put, the bell can’t be unrung. Rend your clothes, cry and scream, rail against the injustices of the machine. None of it matters. AI isn’t the evil rather it’s the system that pits us all against each other. The one that preys on our egos and pocketbooks and forces people into making grandiose declarations for or against it so that they may curry its favor.

So…if you must attack - attack the system that puts fear into us and makes our lives so precarious that we can’t afford even the slightest imbalance in our pecuniary condition and because of this also makes us fight each other and not it. Leave the tools be.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Watching DS9 and paying attention to how Kira’s aesthetic changes as the seasons go on is a horror movie to me

[takerfoxx]

RD Walpurgis Nights 8: Part 2

Then…

In a very short period of time, the freezing girl came to learn several facts about her perilous situation, none of which made her happy.

In addition to her being naked and tied to the face of a gigantic clock tower high in the air in the middle of a rainstorm, she also didn’t seem to be human, or at least something different from most humans. Most of her body seemed to have the standard equipment, all save for her legs. For one, she did not have the usual set of thighs, knees, calves, shins, feet, etc. Instead, she had thin whiplike wires, like the kind used to support a billowing skirt.

Also, she had twelve of them.

The freezing girl was pressed against the exact center of the clock’s face, with each one of her legs stretched out toward one of the hours. They did not reach all the way of course, so they had their lengths increased by being wound around wires attached to the perimeter of the clock.

Barbed wire.

More barbed wire stretched her arms out to either side. Her legs hurt, certainly, but her arms were the worst of it, as they were of pink flesh, with the barbed wire wrapped around her forearms up to the elbow, the points digging into her skin. What was more, there seemed to be yet another wire, thankfully not barbed, pressed against her throat, making even breathing difficult.

She had tried yanking on them, but that just brought tears to her eyes. She had tried screaming for help, but there was no one to hear her cries. She was alone.

Thrashing did no good. In fact, that just made things so much worse, as she quickly found out. Hanging limp was also an agony. It was a nightmare paradox. Nothing she did gave her the slightest relief from the torture she found herself trapped in.

She panicked. Even though it sent burning lances of pain through her body, she again began pulling at her restraints, screaming the whole time. Something had to give, something had to happen, something had to-

Something did.

With a snap, one of her legs came loose and was free. The freezing girl frozen in place. Then, with almost fearful hesitation, she brought her leg up.

Though it was not of flesh of bone, it obeyed anyway, curling up like a snake. She twisted it around and was equally fascinated and horrified by how easy it was. No human limb ought to move like that.

Well, she could figure that out later. For now, she was in kind of a pressing situation.

Now that she had a tool to work with, she set to work freeing her throat. Fortunately that wire wasn’t actually wrapped around her throat, so all she had to do was seize it with her leg and push out. Surprisingly, whatever was holding it in place was very flexible, and she was able to slip her head under, freeing her neck.

Next came her arms. In another stroke of luck, the barbed wire was just wound around them and not tied, so all she had to was find the end and unwind it.

All she had to do. Ha. Like it was that simple, with the barbs still gouged into her skin and the mind-rending agony every movement brought.

Every loop unwound made her want to die. Heck, she probably ought to have died by now, but if death had no come to claim her yet, then she wasn’t going to let it come for her now. So she let herself cry and gasp and scream, but she kept on unwinding.

Then one arm was free. Her eyes squeezed shut, she immediately cradled it against her chest, afraid to look at the mangled mess it must be. Keeping them closed, she then reached up with her free leg to get to work freeing the other.

Again there was pain, but as horrible as it sounded, she was started to get used to it. She gritted her teeth and kept at her task. Another loop, and then another, and then another, and then another…

Suddenly, her other arm was free, and the worst of the pain was starting to ebb away!

Unfortunately she wasn’t given time to celebrate, as her horrible mistake suddenly became clear.

Though her legs kept her pressed to the face of the clock, it had been her arms keeping her upright. And with them no longer bound, she found her upper body pitching forward. Arms flailing, she screamed.

A moment later the pitching stopped, and she found herself pretty much upside-down, staring at the white of the clock face itself.

The freezing girl shut her eyes.

How long she hung there too scared to move, she had no way of telling, which was kind of ironic considering that she was strapped to a giant clock. However, she couldn’t remain like that forever.

She blinked. Then her eyes reflexively went up, or rather, down.

This proved to be a mistake, and she quickly closed her eyes again.

Keeping them closed, she extended her trembling arms until they touched something hard, cold, and wet. She pushed with her arms and her core, mostly expecting herself to not have the strength to move back upward.

But she did.

The freezing girl would have been surprised had the last hour or so not been packed with one surprise after another. Regardless, she was soon upright again, arms behind her back holding onto the clock hand for dear life.

Though she was still subjected to pain in the ends of her legs and the freezing cold from the elements, at the very least the bulk of the agony was gone as she had some space to think. She wracked her brain, trying to seize upon anything of worth, anything to explain where she was, why she was there, or even who is was to begin with.

To her rising dread, she came up with nothing.

Oh, there were bits of information, flashes of memory, but they didn’t seem to be connected to anything. She was able to pull up general knowledge about…society, pop culture, school subjects, and more of the same nature, but her personal life was a muddled blur. She saw fleeting glimpses of faces, rain coming down on a ruined city, a red-eyed cat…thing, a shattering pink gem, but no context to give them meaning.

Her panic started to return. What about her name? Surely she had a name at least. She dug into the scattered mess of her memory, trying to bring it up.

To her surprise, that was the one question that had a definitive answer. Her name was…

…

Now…

Madoka. Kaname.

Two words that Homulilly had never heard in her life. Two words that meant nothing to her. Two words that ought to be nothing more than gibberish, worthy of nothing more than an askew eyebrow and a look of confusion.

Then why were they tugging at something deep inside her heart, something long forgotten but incredibly important?

Unfortunately she wasn’t given much time to try to figure things out, because that was when the green-haired girl that had identified herself as “Hitomi” rushed over to seize the stupefied Gretchen by the hands.

“I knew I would find you!” Hitomi said as tears ran down her cheeks. “It worked! The wish actually worked!”

“I…uh…” Gretchen stammered. “I-I’m sorry, I don’t really-”

“How did you get here? Do you know a way home? Oh! Is Sayaka here with you? Is she okay?”

“I…who?”

All right, enough was enough. Homulilly seized Hitomi by the shoulder and yanked her away from Gretchen. “Stop it!” she cried. “You’re upsetting her!”

Hitomi looked at Homulilly as if seeing her for the first time. She blinked, and her forehead creased. “Wait…Homura?” she said. “Homura Akemi? Is that you? Are all the disappeared girls here?”

Homulilly felt her insides twitch. Again the strange words Hitomi was saying really didn’t mean anything to her, and yet they did. Only this time it felt even more significant.

But before she could ask for more information, Hitomi so happened to glance down at the skeletal hand that was holding her by the shoulder and the equally skeletal arm it was attached to. Her eyes again went wide, but with terror this time.

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed. She slapped Homulilly’s hand away and tried to run away, but her feet got tangled up beneath her and she fell.

Gretchen instinctively moved to help her, but as Hitomi turned toward her, she finally caught sight of Gretchen’s many wire-legs that were extending out of her skirt, as well as the conspicuous lack of legs and feet between the skirt’s hem and the floor.

Hitomi cried out again and scurried back on her palms, heels, and butt. She thrust one hand out, and there was a flash of green light, and Gretchen found herself stopped by the canopy of an emerald umbrella, which was spread in front of Hitomi like a shield, the handle of which was clutched in Hitomi’s shaking hand.

“What are you?” Hitomi said from behind the umbrella. “Madoka, what happened to you? Where are your legs? Why do you have tentacles?”

Gretchen slowly backed up, her hands held up, palms forward. “Uh, they’re…not actually tentacles. They’re-”

“Oh. My. God.” Hitomi lowered the umbrella just enough to show her face, which had gone completely pale. “You turned into a witch! That’s why you never came home. You became a witch! But…but that means…”

The trembling got too bad, and the umbrella handle dropped from Hitomi’s hands to clatter on the ground. She curled up into the fetal position, knees drawn up and face buried in her palms as she started crying again.

The caretaker finally snapped out of her stunned stupor and rushed over to her. She knelt down and put her arms around Hitomi. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Calm down. It’s okay.” She then looked up at Homulilly and Gretchen, who were staring in complete bemusement. “I’m so sorry, girls. I’ll…I’ll take care of this. You two better go.”

“Uh, okay,” Gretchen said. “But. But is there something we can…”

Homulilly gently took Gretchen by the hand. “C’mon,” she said, tugging insistently. “We should go.”

Gretchen still looked unsure, but she nodded and let Homulilly lead her away from the sobbing girl and out of the building.

…

The gang was sitting around one of the circular tables in the FIB’s courtyard, waiting for them.

All of Homulilly and Gretchen’s belongings had already been sent to their new home, so now that their dorm had been restored to its neutral state and their keys turned in, there really was nothing left to do but take the final journey from the Freehaven Integration Bureau to the house that they had visited many times but would now be their home. They had anticipated it being a joyful trip, with lots of laughter and excitement. Unfortunately, that rather unexpected encounter in the hallway had pretty much killed the mood.

Their four friends were all chatting merrily, and upon seeing the two of them exit the building, immediately rose.

“And here they are!” Ophelia said as she stood and straightened out her blazer. “Ready to begin the first day of the rest of your lives?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gretchen said. “Sure.” Homulilly said nothing at all.

Immediately the two of them found themselves faced with four nearly identical looks of concern. Well, of course they would pick up on something being wrong.

“Er, everything okay?” Oktavia said as she maneuvered the legs of her mechanical chair around.

“Sure!” Gretchen said, altogether too brightly and too loudly. “Ready to go?”

Homulilly sighed. If there was one thing Gretchen absolutely sucked at, it was lying. Which…kind of was a virtue if you thought about it.

And naturally, nobody bought it. “Okay,” Charlotte said. “What’s wrong?”

Gretchen sighed. “W-Well, I guess there’s no point in pretending it didn’t happen,” she said as she scratched the back of her head. “See, on our way out, we, uh, ran into someone.”

Ophelia and Charlotte both exchanged a look, and their eyes immediately narrowed in exactly the same way.

“Not like that!” Gretchen hastened to say. “Not someone you need to beat up! And…please don’t beat anyone up. But it was a new girl. Someone who, uh, who just died, and only just got here. And she was pretty upset.”

Immediately their faces softened. “Oh, wow, yeah, that would suck,” Ophelia said. “But you must run into people like that all the time here. Why was this one different?”

“I…er…” Gretchen shot Homulilly a pleading look.

Sighing, Homulilly stepped forward. “It’s because she recognized us.”

“Er, what?” Oktavia said. “Like…she had seen you around before, or…?”

Candeloro, who had been silently standing at the back of the group so far, stepped forward then. “Homulilly,” she said. “Do you mean what I think you mean?”

“Wait, hold up,” said Ophelia, her eyes going wide. Charlotte looked at her in askance, only for realization to dawn on her own face.

Homulilly winced. “Yeah. I-I’m pretty sure it was someone who used to know us back, you know, when we were…alive.”

Ophelia stuck her hands into her pockets and let out a low whistle.

“So…was it like when you all recognized each other when you first met?” Charlotte said. “Like that whole déjà vu thing?”

“Um, no,” Gretchen said. “She wasn’t, um, she wasn’t a witch.”

Oktavia slowly breathed out. “Oh, holy shit.” For once she wasn’t scolded for her language.

“She called you by your old names, didn’t she?” Ophelia said.

Gretchen swallowed noisily but said nothing. Homulilly took a deep breath and said, “Yeah. Yeah, she did.” She looked down at the ground and shuffled her feet. “She seemed really surprised to see us. Like she hadn’t known that we were dead and was looking for us or something.” She hesitated, and then said, “Then she saw that we were witches and kind of freaked out.” One hand unconsciously started rubbing the opposite arm.

All four of their friends exchanged equally uncomfortable glances. “Are you two all right?” Candeloro said as she stepped forward.

“We’re fine,” Gretchen said, though unconvincingly. Her hand found Homulilly’s and squeezed it tight. “It was just kind of startling, you know?”

Candeloro moved to embrace them, and the two welcomed the gesture, grabbing onto her in return. “Look, I can’t understand what that must have been like,” she told them as her held them close with her ribbons. “But remember, whatever happens, we’re with you every step of the way.”

Homulilly felt herself getting a little choked up, so she just nodded and whispered, “Thank you.”

“All right, come on,” Candeloro said as she straightened up. She wound a ribbon around one of their hands each. “Let’s go home.”

…

The walk to their new home was far more morose than Homulilly had initially expected, and much, much more silent, with the only consistent sound being their footsteps, the patter of Gretchen’s wire-legs, and the soft hissing from Oktavia’s chair. Occasionally Ophelia would start humming some song or another, but that never lasted long. Everyone seemed to either be lost in thoughts of their own or respectful of those who were.

Homulilly sat deeply in the former category. She barely noticed the trip. Her mind was entirely occupied with a handful of strange words, ones that repeated over and over in her head.

Homura. Akemi. Homura. A name that she had technically never heard before until today, but apparently had always belonged to her.

Well, Homura sounded close to Homulilly, so there was that. And it was a nice name, all things considered. Still…Akemi. A family name. And surely a family name must indicate that there was a family attached.

Homulilly thought back to the conversation she and Gretchen had had that morning, about their respective families and what they might be up to. Did that mean that there was a Momma Akemi out there? A Papa Akemi as well? Did she have siblings, older or younger? Grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? Cousins, of varying degrees of separation?

With every block that they passed, the imagined Akemi clan in Homulilly’s head grew a little larger.

“Madoka,” Homulilly heard Gretchen whisper. She glanced over. Gretchen looked just as contemplative as she did.

Madoka. Well, that was also a very nice name. Not as nice as Gretchen, but even so. Homura and Madoka. Homulilly and Gretchen.

It had a nice ring to it, she had to admit.

How close were they though? Back then, she meant. Did they even like each other? Or did they just so happen to be members of the same group? Homulilly couldn’t imagine ever disliking Gretchen, no matter what world they inhabited or what names they went by. Had they actually been close or had they just been teammates? Regardless, it was unlikely that they had actually been in love the same way they were now. More than likely they had just been friends, comrades-in-arms and all that.

Then she was struck by a troubling thought. What if Gretchen had been in love with somebody else back then? A classmate maybe, one of the boys? Some sports star, or local bad boy, or a kind upperclassman?

Or maybe she had already liked girls even then, and had actually been with one of the other members of their group. Maybe she and Candeloro had been a thing, or she and Ophelia, or Oktavia. It wasn’t really likely, but the possibility did exist. Maybe she did have something special with one of the others, something that was cut short by death, and it was only because of chance that she and Homulilly were together now.

Or maybe (and it was this possibility that scared Homulilly the most) it had been Hitomi that Gretchen had once had such a relationship with.

Homulilly suddenly realized that she was doing it again, entertaining self-abusive thoughts about her own worth. She sighed, and fell back onto the mental exercises she often needed to keep from following that destructive rabbit hole.

“Well, here we are,” Ophelia announced suddenly, jarring Homulilly out her musings. “Home sweet home.”

Homulilly looked up in surprise. They really were there. Wow, it felt like no time had passed at all.

“Okay, so, we weren’t expecting things to be so melancholy right about now,” Ophelia said as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. “But we took the liberty of setting things up for you.”

She motioned to the mantle over the fireplace. There, the sword, spear, staff, and gun had been rearranged to make room for Homulilly’s dark violet shield and Gretchen’s pink bow.

“Granted, this kind of seems like bad timing in hindsight,” Ophelia said as she stared at the arrangement. “But…”

“No, it’s great!” Gretchen was quick to reassure her, this time sounding sincere. “It makes it look like we really do belong her.”

“That’s because you do,” Charlotte said, lightly punching her in the shoulder.

Then there came a flapping of wings, and Cheese flew across the room to perch on top of Homulilly’s spider-lily. “Hi!” he declared, and fluffed his feathers.

Homulilly couldn’t help but feel a little better. “Hi yourself,” she said as she stuck her arm up. Cheese climbed onto her radius and tilted his head, inviting her to scratch his neck.

“Fuck blueberries,” Cheese muttered as he happily swiveled his neck around.

Gretchen giggled, and their new housemates sighed. “Leave it to Cheese to kill the tension,” Candeloro said.

“And before you start, he didn’t get that from me,” Ophelia said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I love blueberries.”

…

“And here’s your new room!” Charlotte declared as she flung the door open.

The guest room that had been repurposed for Homulilly and Gretchen’s personal use was roughly around the same size as their old dorm. Upon looking inside, Homulilly couldn’t help but smile.

Most of their belongings were still sitting in a small stack of boxes in the middles of the room, but the furniture and wall decorations were already in place, in more-or-less the same places they had been before.

“Feel free to redecorate if you feel like it,” Charlotte said. “I mean, duh, it’s your room. But we thought we’d at least make it familiar to start.”

“It’s wonderful!” Gretchen said, clasping her hands together. “Thank you so much!” She rushed in and plopped down onto the bed.

She bounced a couple times in her seat and then blinked in surprise. “Uh…water bed?”

“Takes some getting used to,” Candeloro said. “But it is kind of great once you do.”

“And we had to made specially tough,” Ophelia added. “So don’t worry about accidentally poking those legs of yours through.”

“Ooooh.” Gretchen stretched out to her full length, wire-legs dangling over the end. “This is great. Homulilly! Come and try this!”

Homulilly tilted her head, judging the distance. Then she bolted across the room, flipped a cartwheel, and bounded over Gretchen’s horizontal body, landing neatly in her customary space right next to her in a lying position. The mattress immediately starting roiling in response, bouncing them up and down. The two glanced at one another, and then burst into a fit of giggles.

“I think they like it,” Oktavia noted.

“Well, make yourselves comfortable,” Candeloro said. “Not that it’ll be too hard.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Ophelia said. She flicked a switch next to the light switch and then knocked her knuckles against the wall. “This switch activates the sound proofing.”

“Sound proofing?” Homulilly said as she pushed herself up on her elbows.

“Yup.” Ophelia grinned, displaying her prominent canines. “In case, you know, you…want to play music really loud! Or watch holos! Or, uh, feel like engaging in noisy activity-”

“Jesus Christ. Turn it on if you want to have sex,” Charlotte said bluntly. “All of our rooms are set up the same way.” When everyone stared at her, she just rolled her eyes. “Oh, what? What? We’re all adults. Here.” She picked up what looked like a plastic door-hanger. “See? A ‘Do Not Disturb Sign.’ Put this out and flick the switch. We all do the same, so we’ll know to leave you alone. And…if you see one of these hanging out of one of our rooms, don’t knock unless it’s really important. Cool? Cool.”

Another pause, and then Gretchen started laughing softly. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s very considerate of…” Another burst of giggles ate up the rest of her sentence.

“Seriously, get used to the bluntness,” Charlotte said. “If you’re going to be living with this crowd, you’re gonna lose that sensitivity real quick.”

Homulilly cleared her throat. “Um, we never were really…all that sensitive about it. That was mostly you guys.”

“Hey, can’t blame us for playing it safe,” Ophelia said with a shrug. “I mean, you got people that are six years younger than us, ten years older, fifty years older, actually kids, and they all look the same. Where’s the line?”

Charlotte looked at her in amazement. “Ophelia, your ability to take a slightly awkward situation and make it so much worse has never ceased.”

Gretchen let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Guys. Guys. Please. We’re not, you know, we’re not kids anymore. And we’ve been hanging out with you ever since we got here. And we’ve been having sex for the last couple of years. Seriously, you’re the ones making it weird. Stop it.”

“Oh, come on!” Ophelia said. “You guys are like our little sisters or something. Of course it’s going to be a little weird.”

Homulilly rolled her eyes. “Thank you for the privacy switch,” she said in a slow and deliberate manner. “We promise to turn it one so as not to bother the rest of you with our raucous lovemaking.”

“Good to hear,” Ophelia said. “Also, if you promise to wait at least one month before walking around in your underwear, we promise to do the same.”

Homulilly blinked. Well, okay. Their lives really were…different now.

…

“Are you okay?” Gretchen said.

It was late, nearly eleven, and the two had finished cleaning up for bed. It was a little strange not having a bathroom directly connected to their room specifically for their use anymore. Their new house had two bathrooms, one upstairs and one downstairs. Ophelia and Oktavia’s bedroom was downstairs, as Oktavia still had difficulty with stairs, so that bathroom was theirs, while Candeloro and Charlotte’s bedroom was down the hall from Homulilly and Gretchen’s, with what was now their shared bathroom in between. It was larger than the one that the two used to have back at the FIB, with an actual bathtub in addition to the shower, but now that it was being split between the two couples, they suddenly now found themselves faced with having to take turns. That was definitely going to take some getting used to.

But now they lay side-by-side, and it felt like home.

Homulilly turned over onto her side, toward Gretchen. “I…suppose,” she said. “I’m just thinking.”

Gretchen turned toward her, sending small waves across the mattress. “About Hitomi?”

Homulilly sighed. “Yes, that.”

“Me too.” Gretchen stretched an arm out around Homulilly’s shoulders and brought her in close while her legs lightly looped around her girlfriend’s. “It’s just…I don’t know what to think about it. I mean, we used to just have this big blank spot right before we woke up that one day, and I figured it was always going to be that way. But now?”

“Now we have names,” Homulilly said.

“Yeah. Huh.” There was a pause, and then Gretchen said, “Madoka. Sounds…”

“Pretty.”

“Well, I was going to say weird.”

“It’s still pretty.”

“Pretty weird.” Gretchen sighed. “I like yours better. It’s close to your real name too.”

Homulilly nodded. “Homura.” She shook her head. “You know, it’s supposed to be dangerous for us to say them out loud. Or think about them too much.”

“I know, I know,” Gretchen sighed. “But I still can’t help but wonder. It’s interesting, but also kind of scary.”

“Scary?” It wasn’t that Homulilly disagreed, but it was curious that Gretchen felt that was. “Scary how?”

Gretchen shrugged. “Well, we apparently have all this history with her, a whole friendship. She probably knows lots about us. Like, all of our friends’ old names. What our families were like. Maybe even…”

Her voice trailed off, and Homulilly took notice. “Maybe even what?” she pressed.

“Well, it’s silly,” Gretchen said after a moment of hesitation. “But I did start thinking…what if one of us left someone…special behind?”

“Like a boyfriend,” Homulilly said.

“Sure. I mean, it feels super weird to think it, but sure. Or a girlfriend. Then I started thinking…” Gretchen made a face. “Well, what if one of the other girls used to be my girlfriend. Or yours. Like, what if there was this big, steamy romance that we don’t even remember. Then I started thinking-”

“What if you used to date Hitomi?” Homulilly said with a sigh.

Gretchen let out a small laugh. “You were thinking the same thing?”

“Pretty much. I guess we think a lot alike.”

“Well, sort of, but I was actually worried that she used to date you.”

Homulilly snorted. “Fat chance. She was happy to see you, remember?”

“I guess so. I hope that isn’t the case.”

“Me too.”

Another silence fell, the two of them musing on many of the same thoughts. Then Gretchen said, “You know, this is going to sound dirty, but I always kind of wondered why the others split off into pairs instead of, um, you know…”

“All four of them hooking up?” Homulilly felt a small smile start to form.

“I guess. I mean, I’ve heard that other Walpurgisnachts do that sometimes.”

Homulilly thought of some of the larger Walpurgisnachts she had read about, with some of them having over twenty individuals. She thought of the relationship she had with Gretchen, and then tried to picture having that sort of intimacy with so many people and found her head starting to hurt.

“You know, you kind of sound like you wish that’s what they did,” Homulilly said as she sat up enough to look Gretchen in the eye. “Do you also wish that they let us in on that too?”

Even in the dark Homulilly could see Gretchen’s blush. “No! No, that’s not what I mean! I mean…” Gretchen slapped a hand over her eyes. “Augh!”

Homulilly snickered and leaned in to kiss Gretchen’s cheek. “You know, we still don’t know what made them witch out. Or us, for that matter. Maybe we could have ended up all part of the same Walpurgisnacht. Then maybe that would have happened.” One of her fingers started to slowly slide up and down Gretchen’s stomach. Meanwhile, she put her mouth close to Gretchen’s ear and whispered, “All of us naked in one big bed, trading kisses and gentle touches. Candeloro’s ribbons tying your arms together while four pairs of hands stroke-”

Gretchen clamped a hand firmly over Homulilly’s mouth. “Okay, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! I’m sorry I brought it up! Jeez, you’re getting Ophelia levels of dirty!”

Laughing, Homulilly lay back and looked up at the ceiling. Then her thoughts returned to Hitomi and her good mood withered and died.

After a moment she said, “You know what I wish though?”

“Hmmm?”

“I wish we never met her.”

“Huh? Who? Hitomi?”

Homulilly nodded. “It’s just…this was supposed to be a happy day. Our graduation. When we finally get to go out and start our lives for real. Then by sheer coincidence she shows up and now everything’s all confusing.”

There was a pause, and then Gretchen said, “That’s not really fair. I mean, it’s not her fault.”

Homulilly sighed. Of course Gretchen would stick up for her. She had a very kind heart, after all. It’s one of the things Homulilly loved about her, but now really wasn’t the time. “I know, I know.”

“I mean, she’s lost her home, her family, her friends, and everything. And dying had to have been terrible. She has to be scared out of her mind.”

Well, that much was for certain.

“You want to help her,” Homulilly said. It wasn’t a question.

Gretchen swallowed noisily. “Kind of.”

“Even though you know how dangerous that would be. Remember what we learned about witch names and old names and-”

“I know, I know,” Gretchen sighed. “But there has to be something!”

“She’s with the FIB,” Homulilly pointed out. “That’s the best help she can get.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You feel sorry for her.”

“Well, yeah. Don’t you?”

Homulilly frowned. “Maybe. A little. But…”

She thought for a moment. Then she said, “All right, I’m going to change my wish. I wish…I wish that she never took a contract. That she stayed a normal girl, that after we disappeared she was sad for a while but eventually got over it, that she grew up, got her dream job and earned a lot of money, married some nice guy who also had a lot of money, and had long and happy life that never had anything to do with magic or aliens. Better?”

Gretchen laughed. “Yeah, I guess that would probably be for the best. But that’s not what happened.”

“Yeah, I know,” Homulilly sighed.

The two fell silent again. Homulilly stared up at the ceiling. Back at the FIB, whenever she had something on her mind (which was often), she would lie awake and stare up at the patterns in the ceiling. Now that she was presented with a completely different ceiling with unfamiliar patterns, she was finding it difficult to settle back into her old rhythm. She supposed that she would get used to it in time, but she would have vastly preferred that life had waited until she had done that before throwing something of this magnitude at her.

Relax, she told herself. Just relax. It’s not your problem to solve. There are trained professionals handling it. You don’t have to do anything. Just let them do their thing, and concentrate on living your life. Nope, that wasn’t working. Fine. Okay, one calliope, two calliopes, three calliopes…

Then she heard the door open.

Confused, Homulilly raised her head to see. No one was at the door, but two of Gretchen’s legs had extended themselves all the way across the room, one of them gripping the door handle and the other fiddling with something outside.

“Gretchen?” she said in confusion.

“Sorry. Just putting the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign out,” Gretchen said.

“Huh?”

Gretchen’s legs closed the door, and one turned the lock. Then, after a moment of deliberate hesitation, one snaked over to where the soundproofing switch was and nudged it on.

“This is our first night in our new life,” Gretchen said. Then she rolled over onto Homulilly. “I’m not going to spend it worrying about something I can’t control.”

Homulilly blinked. The view of the unfamiliar ceiling was now blocked by the very familiar view of Gretchen’s softly glowing pink eyes and coy little smile. Oh yeah. This was so much better.

“Good idea,” she said, tilting her head to that theirs touched. Her hands slid up Gretchen’s sides to meet behind her back, tracing her body beneath her pajamas.

Gretchen started moving her body against her. One of Homulilly’s hands traveled up to the back of Gretchen’s head, gripping a handful of her hair and pushing her into a deeper kiss, while the other trailed downward toward her thighs. That much was familiar territory for them, but the way the water mattress gently rocked and bounced beneath was moving their bodies together in…interesting ways. She wondered if their friends had gotten it for them with that very reason in mind. Knowing them, they probably had.

Then they parted just long enough to catch their breath. Homulilly’s breath had quickened, as had her illusionary pulse.

“Yeah,” she panted. “This is so much better.”

Then she pushed Gretchen back down into her.

…

Charlotte pressed her ear to the Gretchen and Homulilly’s door. As expected (and hoped), she heard absolutely nothing: no voices, footsteps, no furniture creaking, nothing. That, coupled with the sign hanging from the doorknob, told her everything she needed to know.

Good.

She headed back downstairs. There, everyone was hanging out, relaxing. Ophelia was seated at the far end of the couch, playing with her phone. Oktavia was stretched across the couch’s length, her head in Ophelia’s lap, an oceanography book in her hands. Candeloro was in her easy chair, reading a book.

“So the kids are going to be, um, occupied for the rest of the night,” Charlotte announced as she entered the room.

“Did’ja hook up a camera in their rooms, you freaking voyeur?” Ophelia remarked.

“Ah, ha. No.” Charlotte glanced around the room. “So…are we going to talk about it?”

Everyone looked up at her then. “Talk about it?” Oktavia said. “About what?”

“You know what.”

Sighing, Oktavia sat up and turned around so that she was sitting straight. Candeloro put her book down. “Do you really think that it’s that serious?” Candeloro said.

Charlotte sat down in her own chair. “I think that a mysterious possible sixth member of your old supergroup just showed up. And unlike any of us, this one probably has all the answers to every question you ever had about your past, but those answers come with a very strong chance of damaging your mental and spiritual health. Hell, Gretchen and Homulilly probably got a little twisted up already. So yes, I think this is very serious.”

Everyone exchanged an uneasy look. “You really think she was part of our Puella Magi group?” Oktavia said.

Charlotte took a deep breath. “No idea. But, seeing how she is, in fact, a freaking Puella Magi or else she wouldn’t even be here, and seeing how she knew Gretchen and Homulilly by sight and name, I’d say that that’s a possibility we can’t ignore.”

Ophelia sighed. “Jesus, and this was supposed to be a happy day.”

“Did we ever get a name for her?” Candeloro said.

“No,” Charlotte said. “Should we?”

“Might not be a good idea. We’re kind of playing with fire here,” Ophelia said. “Only…in this case none of us are fireproof. This is pretty dangerous. Who’s to say that even just her name can’t screw us up? To say nothing of our own names. I mean, we all saw how upset they were.”

“Yeah, and speaking of which, what do we do about that?” Oktavia said. “I mean, this is kind of outside our wheelhouse.”

“What we do is be there for Gretchen and Homulilly in any way we can,” Candeloro answered. “Things were already confusing enough for them as it was. This is just going to make things worse.”

“Okay,” Oktavia said. “But I was kind of hoping for something a little more specific.”

Ophelia shook her head. “Look, we’re kind of being idiots here. We don’t have to do much specific, okay? Be there for Homulilly and Gretchen? Yeah. Definitely. But this new kid is in the hands of literal professionals. They handle this kind of thing all the time. And hey, if the kids are somehow affected by what went down earlier, then we take them to said professionals, or some other professionals.”

“Good point,” Charlotte said.

“It is sort of weird to think about,” Oktavia remarked. “I mean, they now know their old names. Chances are, this new girl knows all of ours too.”

Well, most of them anyway. “Bad idea,” Charlotte said. “Come on, we all took the classes. We know how dangerous that it.”

“I guess. But even so, aren’t you at least a little curious?”

“No. I probably wasn’t part of the supergroup, remember? So she wouldn’t know me.”

“I don’t know,” Oktavia said. “I mean, she might. We don’t know how long she knew us or how you figured in. I mean, you still might have just been a late addition, so there’s still a chance she met you.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think so though. Call it a hunch.”

A beat went by, and then Candeloro spoke. “You know, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. This new girl, I mean.”

“Yeah. That must suck,” said Ophelia. “I mean, watching all your friends turn into witches? Hell, she probably helped Homulilly and Gretchen take us down, and then had to take down them when they witched out. So after all that, you end up getting killed, wind up in some kind of freak show instead of Heaven or whatever, and then all of a sudden there’s your friends again, except that they still kind of look like the witches you killed and don’t even remember you.”

Yeah. That was…definitely a sobering thought. “Well, yeah, really blows,” Charlotte said. “But on the upside, Oktavia’s right: she ended up in the best possible place, and now she’s with the most qualified people to help her. I think we should just let them.”

…

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

No. No, no, no! This was all wrong! Nothing made sense, nothing was right.

First her best friend disappears, then the city gets hit with the biggest storm in decades, and then her other best friend disappears as well! And in very short order, apparently magic exists, monsters exists, and her friends had been magical girls like Sailor Moon fighting monsters and maybe that’s why they disappeared and if she made a contract with the strange cat…rabbit…mouse…thing, then she would have magic too and be able to find them and bring them home.

But then she fought her first monster and…and she died. It had been a towering thing that looked like an oak tree with street lights, and she didn’t know what she was doing, and it had knocked her senseless with one blow, followed by another blow, and then another blow, and then she was in more pain than she had ever been in her life and was just screaming for help, begging for someone to come save her but help never came, and Kyubey was just there watching her die, and the blows kept coming and coming and coming until it stopped hurting.

And then all of a sudden she wakes up in a strange room, and she thinks that she’s been saved, that she’s in a hospital room, except that it’s not, she’s alone and there’s pictures of Madoka and Sayaka all over the walls with red lines connecting them and weird gibberish scribbled everywhere like they had been written by a crazy person, and she had found her umbrella nearby and ran, ran, ran so far, calling out for help, calling for anyone.

And then someone did come, but they were in an honest-to-God spaceship, and they told her that she was dead, she was dead and this was the afterlife and-

“Hitomi?”

Hitomi involuntarily tensed up. She slowly turned to peek over her shoulder.

Dr. Jazmine was there, standing at the door to the room that they had given her. She was a blonde Caucasian girl who didn’t look like she was even two years older than Hitomi, and she was a doctor. Apparently she was forty-seven. It didn’t make any sense.

“Y-Yes?” Hitomi said, her voice cracking.

“I looked up that name you asked me about. Sayaka Miki?” She shook her head. “There was nothing. I’m sorry.”

Hitomi stared. Nothing there? How could there be nothing there? Madoka was here! Madoka and Homura Akemi! She had seen them! “Are you sure?” she said, scooting around on the bed so that she was fully facing Dr. Jazmine. “She has to be here! She’s, um, about this tall, with short blue hair and blue eyes.”

Dr. Jazmine shook her head. “I’m sorry, but there’s no one by that name anywhere in Freehaven’s records.” She hesitated, and then said, “You said that there was a few weeks between her and your friend Madoka disappearing, right? Then maybe Sayaka ended up in a different place.”

“Place? Different?” Hitomi inhaled sharply. “You mean, like Hell?”

“Er, no. I mean a different city.”

“Oh.” Cities in the afterlife. It made no sense.

“I can call around if you like,” Dr. Jazmine suggested.

Hitomi nodded. “Okay. Thank you. But, um…”

“Yes?”

“Can I…speak with her? Madoka, I mean.”

Dr. Jazmine sighed. “Hitomi, that isn’t a good idea. She isn’t-”

“Please!” Hitomi hopped off the bed and ran over to grab Dr. Jazmine’s hands. “Please! I need to talk to her!”

“Hitomi, you-”

“I do anything, anything at all! Just please, please just let me talk to her!”

“You don’t-”

“She doesn’t want to see me? Is that it? It’s because she’s a witch, isn’t it? Does she hate me now?”

“Hitomi, listen!” Dr. Jazmine grabbed her by the wrists. She wasn’t rough, but it was definitely firm and attention-grabbing. “It’s very dangerous for a witch to talk to someone she used to know!”

“Dangerous?” Hitomi blinked. “Why?”

“We’re still not sure why, but witches don’t remember their old lives. Not their family, not their friends, not even their own names. There is a faint recognition when they meet someone they once knew, but that’s it. Talking to her won’t do any good, because I promise you she won’t recall anything you want to talk about.”

It felt like someone had stabbed her in the gut and twisted the knife. “But…”

“What’s more, hearing their old name does actually hurt witches,” Dr. Jazmine said. “And before you ask, no. It is impossible to make a witch remember anything, no matter how hard you try to jog her memory. But their old names do cause them mental stress, and saying it to them to much can do actual psychological damage.”

Tears started to trickle down Homulilly’s cheeks. “So you’re telling me that I can’t even see her? That’s so cruel! I died trying to find her!”

“I understand, and-”

“How could you?” Hitomi all but spat. “How could you understand what it’s like? I feel like my whole world won’t stop spinning, and every time I start to get used to things, something comes along to kick it again!”

“Because it happened to me too! Everything you’re experiencing right now, everything you’re feeling, I went through it as well. Yes. Even meeting someone I used to know and not having her even know her own name. I went through it too, Hitomi. And it hurt me just as much as it hurts you.”

Hitomi gaped at her. Her throat seized up, and, with her wrists still in Dr. Jazmine’s hands, she collapsed to her knees.

She almost didn’t notice Dr. Jazmine kneeling next to her or how she gently placed her arms around Hitomi’s shoulders. She just knew that she was crying into the older girl’s shoulder, her own arms gripping her as if holding on for dear life.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Dr. Jazmine murmured, one hand gently stroking Hitomi’s hair. “You’re all right.”

Hitomi miserably shook her head. “No. I’m not.”

...

I’ve been writing PMMM fanfiction for almost a decade, and this is the first time I’ve included Hitomi at all. Does that seem right to you?

Until next time, everyone.