The sound of cars passing by in the distance was just barely loud enough to cut through the shell of sound her television put up around her, the noise of daytime TV hosts discussing recipes blending together with the sound of her knife beating a rhythm into her cutting board, Lonnie Ga idly cooking away at her lunch as she let the background noise keep her quiet home full again.

  “...ugh, they always go straight into just baking it, a little seasoning wouldn’t kill ‘em. Dunno why they got a guy allergic to decent food to run a cooking show anyways, the old host at least knew what he was doing…”

  She kept grumbling along as they kept cooking away, occasionally peeking over to look at the state of whatever was being prepared with an expression one third interested and two thirds disappointed.

  “And just… it still looks raw, you didn’t even cook the other one enough! Hell, at least make it look like anyone eats this stuff, now…”

  Her own thoroughly diced ingredients was dumped into a pot, the older woman adjusted the heat as it all floated aimlessly in the broth, spiraling along as the stock slowly began to come to boil within.

  “…there, at least something half decent is getting cooked today. Should be plenty left for if those kids come back by again too. But… hm, maybe I should get something else going then, both of them eat like no one’s ever fed ‘em before…”

  Lonnie sighed, leaning over towards her open kitchen window and blowing a puff of smoke outside before sticking the remains of her current cigarette back between her lips once more.

  “Wonder if they’re both doing okay right now…”

  She stared into empty sky outside for a long few moments, remembering the comforting noise that had filled her house the past couple days, the current silence left behind leaving her alone with memories she’d rather not dredge her way through again.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on slowly floating clouds for ages, only finally pulling free at the sound of a loud banging coming from the front of the house, someone smming against the heavy door loud enough to wake the dead.

  “Fucking hell… coming, y off the door already!”

  Eyebrows raised, Lonnie made her way to her front door, moving somewhat quickly compared to her usual id-back pace, taking a towel with her to scrub the food from her hands before answering.

  “Okay, what’d you-- Alice? Not used to you using the front door kid, something wrong…?”

  Alice had already reared her arm back to bang upon the door once more, barely stopping herself as it opened in front of her, eyes sliding upwards to meet Lonnie’s surprised expression with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow.

  “…kinda, yeah. Mind if I come in for a bit?”

  “Not at all, already said you’re always welcome here.”

  Lonnie pushed the door open wider, Alice sliding in past her before pulling it back shut again behind her.

  She looked around the unassuming house some, the space small but cozy, the kitchen and living room both standing open in front of the entrance, the smell of food and steam tickling her nostrils as it wafted in from the other room.

  “So, uh… you said something’s wrong? You got all your limbs on still, so looks like it’s not quite as bad as it usually is when I find you.”

  “…what made you wanna help me out that first night a couple days ago, Lonnie?”

  “Eh…? I… I dunno, just… I told you, didn’t want someone just scraping you up to use as a science experiment. You looked like you needed some help, is all.”

  “Yeah… yeah, I did. Needed it a couple times now, and you helped a ton, so… yeah, thanks a ton.”

  “Just stopping by to say thanks, or…? Didn’t really take you for the type.”

  Alice sighed, still not looking at her for a bit longer. Eventually, she plunged a hand into her pocket, slowly pulling out the Focus she’d been given before, still looking as gently weathered as it had when Lonnie gave it to her.

  “You, uh… did you mean to give me this…?”

  “…I did, yeah. Magical girls need ‘em to work, right? Thought you may as well take one since I still had it.”

  “I guess, yeah. Gwyn had hers, those dipshit twins had their own… so, then… this thing try to kill you back when you used it, or does it just not like me?”

  “Try to…? The hell are you talking about, they don’t just--”

  “Lonnie, the second I tried to use this fucking thing, it felt like something was inside of it. Ripping into me by the fistful and trying to get real cozy inside my head the whole time I was touching it. Damn near had to snap my arms off just to get it to let go.”

  “That’s… no, no I’d know if it… that doesn’t make sense, it…”

  Alice had expected plenty of different reactions about confronting her about it, but as Lonnie’s eyes went wide, she realized she’d genuinely not expected anything like that from it when she handed it down to her.

  “I… are you okay? It didn’t break anything too hard, did it? I… I didn’t know it would do any of that, it shouldn’t…”

  The older woman seemed genuinely distraught, shuffling backwards until she fell into one of the seats in her living room, Alice stepping forward after her, leaning down to try and comfort her some.

  “Hey, hey, easy now, I’m fine. You should know better than anyone how hard I am to kill, yeah? Deep breaths, come on.”

  Lonnie trembled slightly in Alice’s hands, her cigarette stump tumbling out of her mouth and into her p as she slowly came back to her sense, the memories bubbling back into her mind making it harder to think until the small woman’s voice pierced through and let her focus again.

  “...sorry, sorry, I… no, I didn’t know it’d do… any of that. I didn’t even think it’d work to begin with, it’s never… I wasn’t even sure it still worked, kid. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything here, Lonnie. Just… it feels like you’re not telling me some stuff here, and I really don’t wanna walk into anything else like that if I don’t have to, yeah? You’re the one that always has to scrape me off the pavement when something happens, so… just talk to me, okay?”

  Lonnie nodded weakly, taking a deep breath as she regained her composure.

  “Sure, kid. Just… ask away. I’ll tell you whatever I can, no hiding anything.”

  As she finally gathered herself up enough to sit without her holding her up, Alice took her own seat across from her, sitting on the couch she’d passed out on the night before as the two of them looked at one another expectantly.

  “Well… guess I should start with the whole reason I came.”

  She held the Focus up once more, the palm-sized tome seeming more like a toy than something that had tried to consume her from the inside out.

  “Was this yours, then? I know you said you’d retired or whatever, but… was it because of this thing?”

  “No. That one wasn’t ever mine. My Focus got busted years ago at this point.”

  “Then whose is it?”

  “…it was my sister’s. My younger sister, Cordelia Ga.”

  Lonnie leaned back as she mentioned her sister, eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling over them both, her breathing slow and heavy.

  “She retired too, then? Or did she just leave her broken old Focus with you, or--”

  “She died.”

  “…oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to… sorry.”

  Lonnie shrugged, still staring upwards at nothing in particur.

  “It’s okay, kid. I… it’s been years, now.”

  Alice rolled the Focus around in her hands a bit, poring over every corner and facet of it, the tiny little thing feeling like it was looking back at her.

  “…she was a magical girl too, then? Like you?”

  “Yeah… yeah, she was. Damn fine one, too. Hell, you’d have thought she was the older one looking at us both, heh. While I was always the one staying back and waiting for instructions on who to teleport where, she was the one out front, getting herself dirty and pulling people out of buildings, running out of the rubble with someone clinging to each shoulder while she dragged ‘em out. Then she’d patch them up all quick and run right back in, never listening to me when I told her to slow down.”

  The corners of Lonnie’s mouth slowly turned upwards some, smiling as she remembered her sister.

  “You remind me of her a lot, kid. Both of you are stubborn little idiots that’d throw yourself in front of a bullet if it’d help someone.”

  Alice couldn’t help smiling a bit as well, watching as memories of her sister warmed Lonnie’s features like the warmth from a firepce.

  “…she was a good magical girl. Damn fine one. And… she deserved a sister and a partner a lot better than I was.”

  Her eyes closed, the older woman sinking into her chair some, her normal air of exhausted competence vanishing as she let herself look tiny and weak and vulnerable for the first time since Alice had wandered into her life.

  “Hey, Lonnie, I’m sure you’re being hard on yourself, don’t--”

  “I didn’t ever tell you why I retired, right? Why I told you and Gwyn not to mention me being around still?”

  “I… you didn’t, no. Is that… reted to your sister, at all?”

  Lonnie nodded, taking a deep, stuttering breath as she sat up.

  “It is.”

  “You don’t have to, if you’d rather not. I ain’t here to make you beat yourself up, Lonnie. You really don’t have to.”

  Lonnie shook her head, pulling another cigarette out of a beaten up box on the coffee table in front of her, trying to light it with shaking hands.

  “No, I… let an old woman get her demons out. I’m tired of remembering it all alone. And if you can’t stand looking at me after, then I can’t bme you for that.”

  Alice leaned back, watching Lonnie struggle with her lighter for a while longer before she finally got the old thing to spark, a silent cloud of smoke slowly coiling upwards.

  “You ever heard about the Astera Incident, kid?”

  “The… right, yeah, I do. Old corporate building all the way downtown, and the whole thing just blew itself to hell one day… hang on, you don’t mean--”

  Lonnie nodded, Alice having already guessed part of where this story went.

  “Back then, the Astera Building was the headquarters for Queen’s Red Industrial. Shiny new building, tallest thing in the whole city at the time. And right there in her office on the very top floor was Reina F. Lase. Head of QRI, and, as the Library had only just learned, the boss of that little band of spiteful, selfish magical girls, Heartbreak.”

  She pulled the cigarette from her lips briefly, just long enough to let a puff of oily smoke zily roll past her lips and crawl aimlessly towards the ceiling above.

  “…as soon as Cordelia heard she was there, she and a few others we’d worked with couldn’t shut up about it. She couldn’t stand knowing the person terrorizing her city was just sitting there, waiting, getting to go untouched while we were scrambling to rescue people from the shit she stirred up.”

  Lonnie’s eyes closed again, sighing deeply, old wounds pulling open as she forced herself to remember it all.

  “So we came up with a pn to do something about it. Or, Cordelia came up with it, and I tagged along because I knew she was gonna try something without me otherwise. I could teleport things, and she was still a pretty fresh face, never even managed a transformation or anything, even after helping the Library start making better Focuses for everyone to start using.”

  Alice peered down at the book sitting in her hand like a lead weight, feeling the silent voice inside of it still tapping at the edges of her consciousness, constantly looking for a crack to worm through.

  “It was a pretty straightforward pn. Cordelia had somehow managed to get an appointment with Reina, and no one in QRI or Heartbreak should have recognized her. She never even fought, y’know? She was damn good at healing people and putting ‘em back together, but neither of us were built for taking or throwing a punch, heh. So she was gonna walk right into her office for her meeting, and as soon as she signaled me, I was gonna lock on to her magic imprint and teleport her and Reina both all the way to the parking garage in the basement. We’d toss her in a van and speed off before anyone there knew what happened, toss her in a cell in the Library, and let Heartbreak fall apart without their boss.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the shit the Library would greenlight nowadays.”

  “They didn’t then either. The two of us were flying solo, and we were ready to get yelled at for it ter. But… Cordelia was adamant about it. Said you can’t wait for permission to do the right thing, and… I agreed with her. I always agreed with her, I always did what I could to support her, and… and… I-I couldn’t even…”

  “Hey, hey, easy, it’s okay. Come on, it’s okay, Lonnie--”

  Heavy-set droplets ran across Lonnie’s face, her cigarette trembling between her lips as she struggled to keep speaking, the words pouring out like tears now as she finally let them free again.

  “I got the signal from Cordelia. She’d gotten to her office and sent me the little three-beep code through her communicator, telling me to swap her and everything around her down to the garage. It’d gone perfectly, s-she never even had to message me that there was some complication, no one recognized her the whole time, but… b-but still…”

  Lonnie was leaning forward now, elbows braced against her knees, her head in her hands, eyes fixed on the floor as tears that had been held in for years and years finally started to break free all at once, flooding out of her.

  “…it was a trap. T-The whole thing, they… somehow they must’ve known. They’d known the whole time exactly what was gonna happen. Even when it was just the two of us, we never told anyone what we were gonna do, b-but even still…!”

  “Lonnie, slow down, it’s--”

  “...I did what I had pnned to do. I teleported Cordelia and everything around her down the building. But… but something went wrong. I-I don’t know what happened, but… the next thing I knew, the building just…!”

  She forced herself to look up at Alice, her face drenched, tears having long since snuffed out the pitiful little fme tipping her cigarette as she looked up at Alice with nothing but hopeless, heart-shattering despair in her eyes.

  “I saw the whole thing. The whole building, from the top down, just… j-just ripping itself apart in front of me. Like a bomb going off in slow motion. Every floor, every window, every… every scream from someone inside… I ran as fast as I could, needing to get to Cordelia, b-but… every single scream sounded like hers. Every voice crying out at me, and I… I-I couldn’t even…!”

  “Lonnie, breathe--”

  “I just let her die alone! While I just stood back and watched, even though I knew the whole idea was stupid to begin with! I-I could’ve stopped her, I could’ve forced her to stay, I could’ve gone instead, I… instead I’m the one who just… I let them all die, Alice. I let my sister die…!”

  Her eyes squeezed shut again, head sinking low, fingers tightening around her temples as she tried to maintain her composure to any degree.

  “By the time I got anywhere close, I knew I was too te. There was… there was nothing left there. All of it was gone, the whole building and everything around it, nothing left but a crater full of mud and gss and bodies… I… dug through the muck for her until someone pulled me out, rushing me to safety like I was one of the survivors. Wouldn’t even let go of me while I was kicking and howling about my sister still being back there…”

  “Lonnie…”

  “I tried looking for any trace of her I could feel, and… the only thing left was that. Her broken old Focus, buried underneath everything, nothing else even left of her… so I just… I took it and I ran, a-as far as I could, until it was dark and my legs stopped listening to me, just colpsing in that alley, crying until my body gave out entirely…”

  She did her best to keep speaking, the words flowing out of her the only thing keeping her from breaking down under her own memories again.

  “I woke up the next day. The sound of sirens was still everywhere at once, and my entire body ached… I just… wandered, for hours and hours, unsure where I even was. There was a TV people were crowded around eventually, and I just… stared at it with them all, just looking for anything at all.”

  There was a long, heavy pause, Lonnie’s entire body trembling.

  “…it was a news station reporting casualties. Just an unending scroll of names, everyone they’d found injured or… worse. And after a while of standing there, they said it. ‘Cordelia and Leona Ga. Presumed dead.’ Just unimportant names in the middle of it all before they moved on.”

  Alice remained deathly silent, not muttering a single word while she listened.

  “…I was as dead as my sister was now. And I… accepted it. I’d failed to protect her, and… a-and maybe that’s what I deserved. I took the only thing I had left of her, and ran. Changed my name to Lonnie, stayed out of sight, just… hid from everything. I… I never even gave Cordelia a proper funeral. I just let her die, and I couldn’t even give her that much…!”

  She tried her best to keep herself steady, memories she’d relived a million times still hurting her just as much as they had a million times before, trying her best to hold herself together as she bared herself for the first time since it had all happened.

  “I… tried to leave it all behind me. I was scared, and… and I couldn’t let myself cause that all again. But then, years ter, I turn on my TV, and I see some kid that looks just like my sister fighting for her goddamn life… how the hell am I supposed to just sit back and watch her die again…?”

  Lonnie felt a hand push into her shoulder, forcing her upright all at once. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, waiting to feel Alice’s fist across her cheek, knowing she deserved at least that much for spending her life as a coward for all this time.

  Two arms wrapped around her, a second warm body pressing against hers, squeezing her as tightly as someone could, not a single word needing to be uttered as she hugged the older woman to her heart.

  A dam that had stood silent and alone for an eternity finally broke, and Lonnie Ga finally wept.

  Alice held her for as long as it took, not letting go until the tears staining her clothes finally slowed, Lonnie trembling like a scared child even then, just clinging to her close and tight.

  Eventually, she managed to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, leaning back against her seat as Alice finally stepped back again, offering her the tiniest smile, Lonnie doing her best to return it.

  “Feeling better?”

  “…yeah. Thank you, Alice.”

  “Least I could do after you put yourself out so much for some stupid kid, yeah? Eye’s gone, but my ears still work fine.”

  Alice ruffled her hair some, helping her shakily get to her feet again.

  “Let’s get some food in you, you look like shit.”

  “And here I thought you’d learned some manners finally, heh.”

  The two of them slowly walked to the kitchen, the steady beep of the stove signaling that her stew had finished cooking already, the TV still adding its own background noise alongside it.

  “—gan only minutes ago, but the scene is already a mess, making this two subsequent days with major attacks taking pce in the city.”

  “Eh? Shit, what’s happening now?”

  “Again…?”

  Lonnie went to check on the stew as Alice took a seat next to the screen to wait, idly watching the ongoing news report.

  “While we’ve been unable to get much live footage of the scene, several wireless camera feeds in the area have been connected, and we’re doing our best to report on the scene as rapidly as we can.”

  The screen cut from the reporter superimposed next to different still shots they’d managed to get, instead scrolling between several seemingly live camera feeds, presumably a few minutes behind at best.

  What they showed looked like a disaster scene, everything in the area ripped apart and picked clean, like a pgue of locusts had swept through the street, wounded civilians attempting to run or limp or crawl to safety as fast as they could.

  “Based on previously incidents, the culprit of this attack is believed to be known as ‘Belle’, and has a long-standing record of terrorizing Grace City numerous times in the st several years.”

  One of the feeds finally reached the woman, tall and wiry, her stature perfectly refined as she strode along through the chaos, idly directing some manner of cloud around herself, shredding through whatever it happened to brush against.

  “While response to this incident has been slow, luckily we have identified that a magical girl has already arrived before we even began receiving footage of the scene.”

  “Oh, it’s probably those fucking twins, then. I’m sure they’ll handle the whole thing and do their shitty little poses for the camera. Nothing to--”

  Lonnie had scooped two big bowls of stew for them both, turning to watch the TV along with Alice as she sat down with them, both of them nearly jumping out of their seats as the slow camera feed finally panned over to the other end of the street.

  Familiar shades of pink and white popped into view, stained by glittery debris and glistening blood, a lone girl standing there as she clearly struggled to stay standing.

  “One of Grace City’s newest magical girls, Sugar Free, has responded to the scene and already engaged the culprit alone.”