The door quietly closed behind Willow as he exited the conference hall, being given a few peaceful moments to remain that way before it was all but kicked open, smming into the wall beside it hard as a particurly peeved Alice stormed out after him, an expectedly sheepish Gwyn following immediately behind her as she attempted to soothe the raging beast whatsoever.

  “Oy, I’m not fucking done talking to you, get the fuck--”

  “Alice, p-please try to calm down, Mr. Willow is v-very busy, and I’m sure he d-didn’t mean anything by--”

  “Bullshit, I know a sanctimonious prick when I see ‘em, and-- gah, hey!”

  Grabbing her tightly by one arm, Gwyn pulled the tiny hellion of a woman out of the center of the hall, making way for several people running past from the other direction, the voices as hurried as their pace was.

  She regained her bance just in time to not colpse down to the floor in a heap for a third time since she’d gotten here, the jolt to her senses enough to finally pull her singur focus away from the unrepentant asswipe they’d been speaking with just earlier, and direct her attention to the rest of the situation around them.

  The hallway which earlier had felt endlessly rge was now hopeless cramped and busy, people racing past in either direction, doors that had remained motionless and silent before now opening and closing constantly as those rushing about slipping in and out of the side rooms beyond them, an air of sudden arm filling what little space was left around them.

  “Eh? What’s going on, something happen?”

  “I-It usually only gets busy like this if… oh no, I-I hope it’s not that…”

  Further down the hall, Willow was already preparing for work, pointing several of the rushing staff towards different rooms, cool and collected amidst the storm of people swarming about him.

  “Can someone get me a situation report?”

  “Ah, I was just looking for you, Mr. Willow.”

  The woman who had so rudely greeted Alice earlier strode through the chaos effortlessly, adjusting her gsses carefully before reaching to take Willow’s mountain of paperwork for him, instead offering him a much more compact sheaf of paper which he accepted immediately.

  “Ms. Paige, as timely as ever. Let’s see… ah, another attack?”

  “In Sector 65, yes, so squarely in the midst of the downtown area.”

  “And the perpetrators?”

  “Currently unclear, we’re awaiting clearer reports but the methods of attack seem retively new.”

  “And those methods would be?”

  “Indirect assault via multiple mechanical constructs. Though it would seem the one orchestrating the attack is in fact also present.”

  “Anyone with a record of past attacks?”

  “Nothing I’ve been able to find thus far, no. But judging from the openness of the attack, I believe it’s safe to assume it’s Heartbreak.”

  The pair traded notes rapidly, the conversation difficult to parse from outside and decidedly unhelped by the commotion separating the two groups, though from what little could be heard through the fog of noise, Alice and Gwyn were both able to hear two important tidbits.

  Currently, there were some number of robots rampaging through part of the city, and the one responsible for them was right there with them all.

  The sea of bodies flooding the tightly packed hallway was parted, Alice bowling through the river of oncomers like a ship carelessly plowing straight through the port, Gwyn firing off cannonades of apologies to those unfortunate enough to be in front of them both, doing her best to keep pace with her companion as best she could.

  “Hmm, they’ve been quite active recently, no? I wonder if something is causing them to… ah, Ms. Decaras, the exit would be the fifth door on your right there. But judging by your haste, I assume you mean to address this little issue we’ve run into…?”

  “Yeah, I do, so if you’re gonna tell me to stay out of the way, you can go ahead and shove it up your--”

  “Our members work primarily independently and I wouldn’t dare tell them what incidents they may or may not respond to. Though I do believe I only just earlier requested you avoid working alongside other members too publicly…?”

  His gaze slid slowly towards Gwyn as he spoke, though he made no effort to address her directly on the matter.

  “So don’t fucking follow me, then!”

  Alice snarled back at him before continuing past, their eyes meeting only briefly as the pair raced on past him, Willow managed an exasperated sigh before returning to formuting a proper response to the situation with Ms. Paige.

  Storming onwards, the two of them finally reached the exit, yet another circur room lined with multiple raised ptforms, other magical girls slipping past to climb onto them, punching in commands into the computer consoles set into them all before slowly fading out the same way Alice and Gwyn had been transported in when they first arrived.

  Wasting no time trying to request instruction on operating the exit pads, Alice cmbered up onto an unoccupied one, spping the side of the console’s screen impatiently until it finally stirred to life, fingers racing over lines of text as she tried to make sense of it.

  “It’s uh… ‘Relocate’ probably? Nothing else here sounds right, yeah. Okay let’s see… relocate to…? I don’t fucking remember where they said it was, shit.”

  “…um, i-it was Sector 65, they said…”

  “Right! Yeah, thanks, I can just… okay there it is, punch that in as destination, and… okay, we’re good to go! I think!”

  Needlessly proud of her ability to parse the extremely user-friendly console in only four times the time anyone else rushing through had needed to use it, she turned back towards Gwyn, her earlier wrathful expression softened significantly, now burning with spiteful excitement.

  “C’mon, let’s go and… eh? Something wrong?”

  Gwyn stood several steps back from the transport pad as Alice prepared to leave, eyes fixed on the floor below rather than meeting the adrenaline-fueled gaze turned towards her, making no motion to join her.

  “W-Well… we were just told n-not to be seen with you… and l-like Mr. Willow said, about all I’m good for is just looking pretty, ehe… so… I wouldn’t wanna g-get in the way while you’re-- ah?!”

  Her self-deprecation was met with another flick to the forehead, her eyes snapping up and away from the polished sheen of the floor tiles as she was snapped back to attention.

  “Ow… t-that hurts, y’know!”

  She looked up in mild annoyance at her assaint, Alice staring back at her softly, her expression having shed most of the anger pumping through it earlier as she sighed.

  “I’ll learn to not do it as hard if you learn to stop giving yourself so much shit all the time, sound like a deal?”

  Alice stood expectantly on the ptform, not budging at all as she waited with the first show of patience Gwyn had ever seen her manage.

  “Mmm… e-even if I wanna help you, he did just tell me that you can’t be--”

  “I don’t give two shits what flowerboy said. And I’m not dragging you along behind me either. I just wanna know what you wanna do, Gwyn.”

  “I… I-I dunno. But… I d-don’t wanna just stay behind doing nothing…”

  A hand extended outwards towards her, most of the blood caked up on it wiped off onto her jacket beforehand.

  “Now that sounds better, you’re getting somewhere already!”

  A smile melted its way out from her frozen heart, gingerly reaching out to accept the offered hand in front of her.

  “You… Y-You’re sure you want me to come with you…? I could just g-get in your way, or…”

  “You sure you wanna hang out with the big scary blood and meat dy?”

  “…you’re not scary…”

  “Oh I’m not, huh? Guess I’ll need to try harder then, yeah?”

  Alice pulled her up onto the ptform with her in one motion, the other girl stumbling forward as she was pulled in, both of them pressing tightly together as Gwyn struggled to right herself again.

  “O-Oh, um, that’s not… I-I-I didn’t mean like that just, um, u-uh…”

  She tripped over her own tongue as she tried to expin herself, face beet-red as she stammered helplessly, the two of them squeezed in together as Alice held her companion close enough to fit on the pad with her, not helping with Gwyn’s embarrassment in the slightest.

  And before letting her finish forming a coherent thought again, the smaller girl smmed her hand down into the awaiting console below, their destination already set, shards of light wrapping themselves around the pair before whisking them off and away.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  They arrived as tightly packed as they’d been when they left, the two of them being deposited into a trash-filled clearing at the end of an alleyway as they emerged from the fsh of magical light.

  Gwyn scrambled backwards the millisecond her feet returned to solid ground, looking anywhere but at Alice as she tried to focus on determining where they’d been spat back out at.

  Alice on the other hand directed all her efforts at staying standing, the mildly disorienting effects of the translocation still amplified to an arming degree on her newly hypersensitive nervous system, her eyes spinning as she stumbled drunkenly in pce.

  “I… guh, I think I prefer the bus…”

  “U-Um, Sector 65, so we’re… uh… r-right, yeah, we should be right between the bank, and… actually I-I’m not sure what that one is…”

  “Eh…? Don’t tell me I sent us to-- urk --the wrong pce…”

  “No no, I-I think this is the right pce… I think!”

  While Alice remained doubled over with her hands braced on her knees, Gwyn continued peeking around their destination for confirmation they’d nded in the right pce at all.

  Luckily however, that confirmation was happy to provide itself, the rush of panicked screaming mixed with sounds of rending metal and scraping asphalt finally meeting both of their dazed ears, several people scrambling away past the opening of the alleyway in front of them.

  “…I-I think this is the pce, yeah!”

  “Great, fantastic, lemme just… just get my bearings, fuck…”

  While Alice attempted to calm her churning organs and throbbing head, Gwyn excitedly dug into her bag, pulling her Focus out into the daylight, the surface neatly polished and spotless as she looked over it, eyes twinkling expectantly.

  “Ok, y-you’ve got this Gwyn, everything’s gonna go g-great this time…!”

  She made a half-hearted attempt at psyching herself up, inhaling long and slow, forcing her breathing to steady itself amidst the sounds of commotion from nearby.

  And with a single quick exhation, she collected herself just enough to thrust it proudly overhead once more, motions perfectly rehearsed in front of her mirror as the Focus sprung open once more.

  “Hearts beat free! Sugar Change!”

  Light spooled outwards like cotton candy once again, cascading from the spread pages as it poured over her, clothes being repced and overid by her familiar uniform, every thread of it etched perfectly into her memory as she transformed into her proper magical girl attire once more.

  And with a spin and flourish to cap it off, she posed proudly, her painstakingly practiced transformation just as impeccable as ever.

  Her only witness, having finally overcome their extreme case of motion sickness, cpped politely at the impromptu performance, striking Gwyn with a wave of embarrassment as all-encompassing as the light of her transformation.

  “H-Hey, don’t just… i-it’s important to get it right, o-okay?!”

  “Pff, I’m sure, I’m sure. Lot nicer looking than my shit, at least.”

  “…oh, d-didn’t you get your own Focus? You should p-probably transform too!”

  “Eh? Look, I don’t need the frills and shit to fight, I’m fi--”

  “But it h-helps with channeling your magic too, and makes it easier to f-focus your abilities and stuff!”

  “I… guh…”

  “I can s-show you how to use it, even, it’s super simple! You just gotta--”

  Before she could take more than a single excited step closer to her prospective pupil, the deafening noise of metal against metal rang out loud enough to drown out the alleyway’s occupants even, followed shortly after by an explosion that lit the street ahead like a second sun rising in a fraction of a second.

  And by the time that burst of blinding light cleared, Alice had already rushed past her friend, storming towards the end of the alley, calling out over her shoulder back towards her as she remained standing there.

  “You can show me that shit after work, okay?”

  “H-Hey, but… right, c-coming…!”

  Flustered as she was snapped back to their current situation, Gwyn stood there stunned for a moment longer before her legs started working again, knees quivering slightly from the sound of the explosion from so nearby, still forcing herself to move forward, eyes fixed on Alice as she chased after her.