1783/Witchful thinking

Witchful thinking
Date of Scene:	23 July 2024
Location:	Plot Room 1
Synopsis:	Following Beryl's defeat, Coco comes up to Amy with a desire for clarifications. Despite the heavy subject, the two of them find the space to hang out.
Cast of Characters:	Amanda Faust, Coco Kiumi

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Amanda Faust has posed:
    It's... sometime in the next couple of days or so after Beryl. During a time when Amy's not out following the others for tourism, just... relaxing in her room in the afternoon or evening. She's been texted ahead to ask if it's a good time, so she's expecting Coco when she answers the door.

    The hotel room is nice, but she didn't care about getting a big one or anything. It's a single, she has almost no stuff (even clothes are conjured), she didn't even bring a computer to set up, having just her phone... Yeah. There's not a lot to do in her room but relax and read or something.

    So she quickly answers the door when Coco knocks, "Come in! Come in." embracing her friend, then closing and latching the door before running over to and leaping on the bed to lie down; Coco can sit on a chair or the bed, or stand, whatever.

    Amy's smiling as she opens with lighter topics first. "So how have you been enjoying vacation so far? Have you ever been to Paris before?" Amy would normally assume no, but: Princess, after all.

Coco Kiumi has posed:
It has been a rather busy time in the first hours following Beryl's defeat. There was a lot of chaos going on, especially with everyone coming back to life, but eventually things had settled down, and everyone was starting to enjoy this little break they had in Paris. Coco was exhausted, and that was probably the case for everyone else too, so she gave everyone their space, only sending out messages unless hangouts were planned and she could join in on them.

Even so, there was a question she had been asked that she couldn't get out of her mind, because that filled her with worry, and she wasn't sure if it was something like a feverish question brought on by the intense fatigue of the moment, or if it was actually the real deal. There was one way to know, and so Coco is heading towards the hotel room of the girl who had asked it to her.

She embraces Amy back when the mermaid is let into the room, offering a smile to the other girl when she sees her in a much better state than what everyone was in right after the battle. "Thank you", the blonde girl says, leaving the bed to the redhead to lay down on and taking a chair for herself.

"I haven't really been to Paris before", Coco confesses. "There were a lot of things that prevented that." Her princess duties for one, and the time of her captivity in Gaito's castle Amy is already aware of. "I am really enjoying the city so far, there are so many splendid things to see. How are you holding up? Do you feel fully rested, and have you been exploring the city too?" she asks, going along with the subject instead of diving on that touchy issue right away.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy raises her eyebrows slightly, having expected to get into it pretty quickly. "I'm sleeping great. I haven't really been exploring, but I've gone out with the others to see stuff sometimes. Other than that and a run to the store to get toiletries and stuff, I've been relaxing here in-between."

    She looks up at the ceiling. "It's kind of weird, honestly. I can't remember the last time I had vacation vacation. No job responsibilities. No school responsibilities. Even last year, like... I had summer homework for fall courses, and also I was, y'know, new to all of this... This year? Seems like courses barely finished before Chiba-san was kidnapped and..." She sighs.

    "I'm gonna go back, and have summer homework and probably more crazy magic stuff, who knows? But right now?" She spreads her arms for emphasis, smiling. "Nothing. Nada. No responsibilities. I haven't had that since high school, the first time I mean. Holidays home from college were stressing about college. And then there was finding a job, and this and that..."

    She hmmms and rubs her chin. "I guess when I went back to America to visit Mom for a week a few years back everything lined up, too. Was that summer 2020, 2019...? No, it wasn't 2020 I don't think. Musta been 2019...?" She shakes her head. "But other than that?" She shakes her head. "There's always been something hanging over me."

    She smiles up at the ceiling. "It's nice."

Coco Kiumi has posed:
Pretty much the same as her, it's nice to see that they are steadily throwing all of it besides them. "That's nice, we do deserve to spoil ourselves right now. If you are in the mood for it, I can show you some of the places I have found later. What do you think?" Coco invites her, fixing her position a bit on the chair.

She laughs slightly when Amy mentions vacations, a crystalline sound free of anything that could be perceives as a mockery. "I am glad you are enjoying yourself, though as far as I am concerned, RHA already is my vacation. Just princess duties, and things like that." Pretty much only her naps were the breaks she got.

"That sounds like it has been tough", she nods in sympathy, even if she wouldn't have had much inkling beforehand of the responsibilities they would have had here on land. "There is always one more thing ready to step on your plate." That much she knew, at least, it was pretty much universal.

Coco rubs her arm, taking a deep breath to release the tension of what she is about to ask. "So, Amy, I don't know how much you remember, but there was something you had asked me during the fight against Beryl. You wanted reassurance you weren't a Witch." She stops to look at her friend's face, worried she is making her uncomfortable. "I am not really sure how to interpret that, if you can tell me."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    The places Coco has found? Amy sits up, still smiling. "Sure!"

    And then we get down to business. "Ah. Right." She scoots back so her back is against a pillow against the headboard. "This is, um. Information to be careful about letting out, but..." She frowns. "...I guess this is going to come as quite a shock, actually, but I already know, and I've known since the Miki-sans re-merged, so I've had time to like... get used to it."

    She takes a breath and thinks about how to say it. She holds her hand out. "If my soul gem is ever fully depleted..." She gets up off the bed and walks over to Coco, holding her hand out to show her name in witch runes on the underside of the ring. "I become a Witch. All Puella Magi do." She watches Coco's face, concerned.

Coco Kiumi has posed:
Amy's hesitation was already a confirmation that her question hadn't been a mistake, that she and the Witches were somehow connected. Probably other Puellae too, even if Amy and Cherry Spear were the only ones she knew. Which... is actually odd, now that she thinks about it. Why all the ones she knew red?

And then Amy confirms her suspicions, with the uncomfortable implications that all the Witches they had purified were no mere youmas, but innocent girls deprived of their lives and forced to become monster. "So, then this Miki-san... she became a Witch. And that's how you found out. You don't die. When your Soul Gem is full", Coco says, stating it, rather than asking it, her tone becoming rigid with repressed anger. There was really only one culprit for this, and it was a white cat with beady red eyes, and a seraphic expression at all times.

She has never been more glad that her songs ran counter to the negative forces that polluted a Soul Gem. "Up until now, we have been attacking and destroying depressed girls when we could have tried to help them instead. I don't get why Kyubey is doing this to you and everyone. That's not something you should have to get used to. What does he gain from... any of it?"

She couldn't believe he could be so evil to take sadistic pleasure from his actions, even though the urge to make an exception and bomb him with Live Stage after Live Stage was strong, despite her duty. She really, really wants to make an exception for him, right now, her aura blooming and expanding with indignant flames.

She forces herself to stay put in the chair, a deep breath to release some of that anger. "What did you mean by Miki-san remerging? Why was she split? And what happened to her after she became a Witch?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy's expression is concerned for how it will hit Coco, until she says they could have helped the Witches. She holds her hand out in a stop/calm down gesture. "There is no known way to save them. But... Madoka and Sayaka-san are collecting the grief seeds instead of us giving them to Kyubey. And Sayaka's connection to Klarissa allowed her to sort of... turn Klarissa into a good Witch she can call out?" Amy shrugs. "That one was pretty weird."

    She sits back on the bed like she was. "You didn't know? Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag now. Klarissa was split off from Sayaka by some weird magic artifact. ...Wait did you actually buy her being a twin sister that suddenly showed up?" She's surprised, but her tone doesn't imply foolishness on Coco's part. "Huh, maybe that story wasn't as suspicious as I thought..."

    "Kyubey says it's to stop the stars from going out. ...Sorry, that's my poetic phrasing. Somehow, the energy of us making wishes, or becoming Witches, or something, is being used to reverse entropy and slow the death of the universe. If he's not lying about that, the current rate of the universe lasting like a trillion years is only if Puella Magi keep being sacrificed. ...He didn't say how long it would last, otherwise."

    "In any case, he's an alien. His mind does not necessarily make sense to us..."

    

Coco Kiumi has posed:
Coco shakes her head when Amy says there is no known way to save Witches. "Ok, we couldn't have saved them then, but we could have at least started looking for a way", she sighs, regretting all the time they kept fixing the wrong problem.

"I am friends with Madoka, but I have never heard of either Sayaka or Klarissa. You are the first person to mention them to me. So, they were passing as twins. How long did it go on for?", she inquires, mostly disregarding that magical artifacts that split you in half exist. She agreed with Amy there, that was indeed weird, even by the standards of magic.

Not as weird as the explanation Amy gives her. "Is that what he is saying? That sacrificing Puellae Magi is the only way to keep the universe going?" Coco frowns, what little, not respect, acknowledgement, she had for Kyubey vanishing like foam. "That makes absolutely no sense to me. Our kingdoms have been around since the past era, and he thinks his little torture project will be what saves us all?", the yellow mermaid scoffs. "I don't really trust he is anywhere close to being right. If he really thinks he is, he is welcome to try and defend his opinion to my kingdom, or others too."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy sighs a little. "We are looking for a way. ...Well, okay, maybe more like keeping our eyes out. What can we do? Kyubey's unreliable, and we can't talk to Witches... okay, Gretchen can, but it turns out they can't really talk, they're not all there... So we don't really have a good source."

    She blinks. "How long? Uhh... a few months I think? Or was it a few weeks? I dunno, I don't have, like, records, I guess I should keep a journal, huh..."

    Amy shrugs. "I dunno how long he's been doing it, but I gather he wasn't active during the Earth and Moon kingdom times, since no one knew about Puella Magi or Witches then and there was no Veil..."

    She shrugs and shakes her head again. "I'm not his advocate. I don't know his deal. Maybe he lied."

    She sighed. "...I'm not some reincarnated princess. I wasn't chosen by a god. For everything he's done... He's the only one who... if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have met you, or anyone, or had friends, or... Gotten to be happy."

    She looks up at the ceiling. "Not that I like him. But it's hard to... To really be mad about becoming a Puella Magi."

Coco Kiumi has posed:
Coco bites her lip at Amy's perspective on her situation, the anger still burning under the understanding of her point. "I get that it must have been hard, to live as you were doing, but Kyubey is hardly the holder of all magic. If not him, somebody else could have helped you", she tries to reassure the redhead. "And I get it, I come from a kingdom of magical things, it's easy for me to say, but there is magic to be found here on land too."

She isn't really sure she is helping her case any though, so she moves in to hug the redhead if allowed. "You don't deserve his trickery, Amy, and that is not up for debate. Finding a way to reverse the bad parts of what he did to you isn't gonna take away what you cherish, and even if it did, I believe so much easier to find a way to replicate it on our own now we are aware of you before going ahead with it."

She goes back, looking at the city unfolding out there. "There is no way I can accept what Kyubey is doing. Not as your friend, and not as a person. I am not sure how, but we can find a way forward in this mess, and let him pay."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Somebody else... "No. You wouldn't have. There must be thousands of people like me out there, and we're not helping them. We don't know how. We can't give out magic. ...Don't worry about it. What's done is done. I expected things to be worse, honestly. But if I've survived this long, maybe I can manage after all. There's no point in... It's not like I can, or would, undo it now. If we find a way to turn a Puella Magi into something else..." She shrugs. "Then we can talk about that.

    She gets off the bed again and stands for a hug. And squeezes Coco back.

    "I've read about what people do in my situation if they don't have magic. You change me back, I forget everything. The Fade, remember? And if magical ways to deal with it were that common... Look, it's been a year and I've not met a single other magical girl in a situation like mine. Nor a magical boy in the reverse."

    "It's okay. We're probably already interfering in his plans. Now we know, and you haven't seen him around in ages, have you? He must be staying away from prospective targets at Radiant Heart. And he's not getting the grief seeds anymore."

Coco Kiumi has posed:
"I know of someone in your situation that got what she needed without relying on Kyubey", Coco says, even if she doesn't feel it is going to change much. Besides, she is not going to say more than that. "It is possible, and there are things like in the underwater world too. Aqua Regina could do it, if we worked on gathering enough ambient energy she lost. She can't dissolve your contract, that's beyond her too, but she could take care of the physical problem, and not actually defeat, but work around the Fade. She has done it once already."

But there is hardly any need to discuss it further when she doesn't have anything conclusive, as much as she wishes she did, freaking Kyubey and his small smile. "I'd like him not to do anything at all, but that's a step forward." He is just so much viler than anyone she knows, she grimaces.

"Want to do anything? Either watch a movie in here, or go for a walk?", Coco suggests, moving their conversation away from Kyubey's crimes.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    "Really?! Who?!" Amy steps back from the hug and looks at Coco curiously, pretty excited to hear she's not alone! Oops. "We'll keep the Queen in mind if I ever find a way to retire, then." As for afterward... "Sure! Either one."

Coco Kiumi has posed:
The princess of the South Pacific passes a hand through her hair, keeping her name for herself. "Sorry, Amy, but that's not really up to me to say, you know? I just wanted you to know it is possible."

Taking out her phone, she walks over next to Amy, making the screen available for both of them. "Let's choose from here then", she smiles at her friend, bringing up a list of their options.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks. She can't help but be disappointed, but... "I understand. ...You can tell her about me, though."

    And then she moves on to happier thoughts, looking at the phone. "Hmmm..."