814/Tea Time at Mami's Episode 814: Bergamot and Red Beans

Tea Time at Mami's Episode 814: Bergamot and Red Beans
Date of Scene:	28 November 2023
Location:	Mitakihara Ward
Synopsis:	Mami invites Amy over for tea and pastries because friends are fun! Amy tells Mami about what she learned from Kyubey recently, and Mami takes it surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that they end up talking about Amy's wish instead.
Cast of Characters:	Mami Tomoe, Amanda Faust

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Mami Tomoe has posed:
Mami Tomoe has been making so many friends lately. Friends are people she can invite over for tea parties. Tea parties are occasions where she can feed people baked goods. She stress-bakes, so it is good when she can get other people to eat some too. You think you can eat pastry forever until you try.

Today she has invited her new friend Amy over a little bit after classes. She rushed home to finish assembling the red bean puff pastries she meant to serve with tea. She'd made the pastry dough the day before, letting it chill overnight. All that was left to do was to assemble the puffs and put them in the oven, with about ten minutes left on the timer when Amy arrives.

Mami hasn't even changed out of her school uniform. She just put an apron on over it.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy is happy to accept an invitation to a tea party! It is a chance to get some socialization in a femake friendship, and also specifically it's a chance to talk to the one other Puella Magi who doesn't hate Kyubey for some reason.

    Well... that might be about to change, she supposes. She'll see.

    This time, Amy remembers that she can magic up a coat (although it only seems to work if the item or outfit is sufficiently cute, meaning she looks like the pink ice climber on her way over) although she dismisses it as she arrives at the door. She reaches for the handle before she realizes that she walked to her old apartment, in the same building, on autopilot, and she was *supposed* to be going to Mami's. Oops. She hurries up the steps and over to the apartment number Mami sent her.

    Amy stands in front of the door in the clothes that came with her transformation, a red pullover sweatshirt and a matching jersey-knit skirt that are both super soft and comfy, with white-and-red sneakers and plain white knee socks. Better suited to now than the heat of summer, certainly.

    She rings the doorbell and calls, "Mami, it's me!" If there's no response, she texts. Perhaps a subtle hint of her age, would others not just go straight to texting?

    When the door opens she smiles, and on a whim holds her arms out to offer a hug, and once she's inside she looks around. "You... live all alone in an apartment by yourself? How do you afford that? ...Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to pry... I was just thinking, that'd be pretty convenient, since I used to live in an apartment too..." wait, did she tell Mami her backstory yet? Uhhhhh this is all getting out of order fast...

Mami Tomoe has posed:
There's no need to text. Mami's right there a moment after the bell rings. She pulls the door open and when Amy opens her arms for a hug, Mami pulls her through the door into one. Her apron is even mostly clean. Just a little bit of flour on it.

"Amy-chan," she says, her voice quiet but full of delight. "I'm so glad you could come over!"

She lets go and steps back and gestures toward the triangular glass table centered on the rug in her main seating area. "If you want to have a seat, I'll bring the tea over. The pastries have about ten minutes left," she says, smiling. She shuts the door and then heads into the kitchen.

"How do you feel about bergamot?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    It's just some flour! Getting stuff on your clothes isn't *that* big a deal, at least, when they were not bought at great expense at a store... Amy's a little surprised at the enthusiasm but it's welcome, and she tries not to dwell on not getting hugged like that for the past quarter-century before hugging back.

    "Hey, I'm happy to visit friends! I haven't gotten to go over to a friend's house in..." Oh wait. "...a long time."

    Released and directed to the seating area, she heads over to the weirdly triangular table. "Is that a kind of tea? Umm, I'll give it a try, sure." She drops down to sit cross-legged on the floor, then on a whim tries to do the sitting position with her knees under her, which is... a lot more doable in a young flexible body, for sure.

    As Mami pours and brings over (presumably) tea, she takes in the room and makes conversation. "So... What do you um... What do you do for fun? Did you have a, um..."

    She looks down at the floor awkwardly. "I was gonna say, what do you wanna do when you graduate, but that feels weird to say when we have life-and-death fights like every week. I'm bad at smalltalk. Was, um. Was it different when you were on your own, before all these newer Puella Magi showed up? Kyubey... I mean, the way everybody is, all the others I mean, are suspicious of him, is that... yeah it's probably different than you thought it was gonna be. Like if you were imagining finding more would go like a magical girl show all happy team mates. It's good we have Madoka around with calm mind and high spirits... gah, sorry, you probably don't wanna talk about work... although, um, there *is* something you should probably know..."

    Amanda slumps. "Geeze. I really *am* out of practice just like... going to a friend's house and talking to them, huh? I'm sorry I'm making such a conversational mess of this." u_u;

Mami Tomoe has posed:
"It's actually a kind of orange," Mami says, as she walks over to her tea cupboard. An entire cupboard just devoted to her tea collection. "They extract the essential oil from the peels and use that to flavor black tea. You might have heard of Earl Grey? The bergamot flavor goes nicely with the red bean paste in the pastries."

She grabs the tea out of the cupboard, puts it in a teapot, and then grabs the already-boiling electric kettle and pours the water in over them. The kettle is put back on it's base and the lid is put on the teapot, then she brings an entire tray of tea service over to the table, setting it down before sitting down herself. She sits on her heels too.

She just lets Amy talk while she sets saucers with empty teacups and little teaspoons in front of both of them. Then she just looks at Amy with a smile as the other girl talks. She's a very observant girl, and this is the perfect opportunity to make observations about Amy. Her mannerisms. Her fashion choices. Her intense redness. All the while she smiles.

"That's easy to fix. You just need to come over for tea more often," Mami says with a laugh. "I stress bake. Baking is fun for me though, so I think you could say I bake for fun," she says, glancing toward the kitchen timer. Five minutes left. "As for what I want to do when I graduate? This. We're Puella Magi, it's not a side hustle."

She doesn't mention how she's also getting paid to be a Puella Magi now. Amy will surely find out eventually, but it would be silly to volunteer that she started working for Obsidian.

Another minute passes on the timer and Mami, reaches for the teapot, pouring it into the cups. There's a little well of sugar with a spoon in it on the tray.

"So what was it you wanted to tell me?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Orange flavor oil in tea? "Yeah, that sounds like it could be good..."

> That's easy to fix ... not a side hustle.
    "I'd like that." Amy smiles. "Coming over for tea more often, I mean. I... y-yeah. I need... yeah." She looks away awkwardly. "Going over to friends' houses when you all have the same school schedule and don't have a job or something -- well, a 9-to-5 anyway -- is something you don't have the chance to do forever."

> So, what did you want to tell me?
    Amy lifts her gaze to meet Mami's, as she has another realization. "...You know what I meant, before. When we hit a certain age, we can't remember magic anymore. Although there are certainly a number of practical concerns about how 'retiring' would work for us..."

    She takes a breath, and watches Mami's face closely. "You must have noticed this, and yet you plan to do this after we graduate. What did you notice? Do we not age, or something?" And if Mami retains a poker face, her eyes widen at another thought. "Or... do you already know what I'm about to tell you?!" she voices in shock.

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Mami Tomoe looks at Amy for a moment when she makes that comment about going over to friends houses. Her head cants to one side and she says, "A peculiar thing to say, really. I remember my parents telling me not to want to grow up so fast, that I'll only be a kid once." Still true, it's just an adult human is not what she'll mature into. But she doesn't know that!

The rest, though, that is indeed met with a poker face. "I'm not sure what you mean. I made my wish, and now I fight witches. That's how it works. Kyubey never said anything about losing my magic." She looks thoughtful for a moment, and then adds, "Until I met Teresia, I was the oldest Puella I knew. But honestly, I don't understand how getting older would get rid of my soul gem."

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Aside from a complete LACK of poker face at 'only be a kid once', Amy's expression returns to more neutral. "Ah. I see. So you just figured we're the exception to whatever it is that makes no adults able to learn about magic."


    "...I guess that might be true." Amy closes her eyes and takes a breath, shifting her legs under her slightly. She opens her eyes again, and her hand is suddenly holding her soul gem in its 'egg' form as she sets it down on the table in front of her, eyes looking at it with curiousity as she starts to pull her hand away, hesitates, then taps it gently, as if she thinks something might happen, then pulls her hand away. "Mami-san, um." She lifts her eyes to the other girl's, again. She splays her hand against her own chest. "Do you know that this machine of flesh and bone isn't 'you'?" She then lifts it to point at the side of her head. "The real you is wrinkly grey matter wrapped around a few pounds of fragile jell-o, or rather... the software running on that hardware, the electrochemical impulses and connections running a program, an *experience*, receiving signals from your eyes, your skin, and everything else and sending out signals to muscles." Or, well, that *was* true. She's getting to it. One giant step at a time!

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Just as Amy is finishing her explanation of what the real Mami is, the oven timer goes off. Ding!

"Biology has never been my best subject," Mami says, as she rises up from the table. "But I do know that our bodies are rather amazing. It sounds like you know a lot more about how they work than I do!" She walks into the kitchen and grabs a hotpad, then opens the oven and pulls a half-sheet out, setting it on a trivet on the counter. "I'm not sure what that has to do with soul gems, though."

She carefully moves each pastry from the pan to a serving plate, and then brings that plate over to the table. There's nine little puffs of flaky, red bean goodness. "I do hope you like these. It's the first time I've made the red bean paste." Don't people usually buy that?

She sits down, grabs a pastry, and takes a bite, looking to Amy. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
> It sounds like you know a lot more about this subject than I do.
    Amy rubs the back of her neck and mutters, "Yeah, well, there's a reason for that..."

> Red bean paste!
    "You made it? Huh. Was it difficult? I still wanted to try red bean rice..." Wait, no, stay on topic, Amanda:

> What are you trying to tell me?
    Amy takes a breath. "We just found out. That, uh *was* true..." she speeds up for an aside, "or maybe we have souls since magic is real, hell if I know how *that* works" and then her speech slows down to normal again:

    "The software isn't up here anymore." She lowers her hand to point at the gem. "It's in here. Our bodies are remote-controlled. We found out when..." wait, how does she explain, "...Lulu's soul gem was cracked and we weren't sure how to fix it and Katarina took it to stop her from transforming and getting hurt and it's kinda repaired now but hopefully there's a way to properly fix it, but the point is that when Katarina got too far away from Lulu she just..."

    Amy mimes cutting strings above her head and then lets her upper body go limp and sag to the side for a second before resuming upright posture.

    She watches Mami, concerned.

    "...Kyubey says we have about a hundred-meter range."

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Mami takes a sip of tea, and has several thoughts in quick succession.

First, she thinks of Takashi telling her about Linker Cores. She'd asked if her Soul Gem was her Linker Core, because it sure sounded like it. What Amy was saying did not make it sound any less like it.

Second, she recalls when her now-boyfriend Takashi tried to steal her kohai Kyouko's Soul Gem. He didn't get anywhere close to 100 meters because she stopped him. Kyubey never said anything about why she needed to stop him from stealing the Soul Gem, just that it was bad. She'd not asked any more questions. He never did volunteer information, did he.

Third, she empathizes with Kyubey. Teenaged girls are difficult to deal with before you mix in the magic. Not everyone is going to understand. It makes sense that he doesn't volunteer information.

"So what you're saying," she says, as she sets her cup back down. "Is that this," her ring vanishes and her Soul Gem appears in her hand, "is actually me."

She seems to be taking this remarkably well.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy nods.

    "I mean, physically speaking, it's the seat of consciousness, and the matter that needs to remain in an... in a precise and ordered state for our lives to continue."

    "...Philosophically speaking, who and what you are is, like, I don't think most people would say you are a colorful rock for all intents and purposes save medical."

    "Oh, um, so... we can regenerate anything, I guess, if we have enough magic, but Kyubey didn't say how much is needed if we lose a body. And he said brain damage is probably still bad. We might be, we might still need a brain to actually run consciousness on, and if we lose that in battle, even if we can unconsciously regenerate it I suppose that would leave the body a sitting duck in the meantime, you know?"

    Amy takes a deep breath and lets it out. "Phhhew. The others reacted... not as well, but I figured if anyone might take it better, it was you."

    She looks down at her own soul gem, filled with that red glow with but a little darkness near the top.

    "...I probably took it better because, in a manner of speaking, this is the future I always hoped for. It's just not, uh, how, or *when*, I expected to reach it, if I ever did."

    "What about you? Why d'you think you're taking this better than the other girls? ...Is it because... you almost died once...?"

Mami Tomoe has posed:
"I knew I could heal myself, though have you met Magda-chan? She can heal others! I got skewered by a witch a couple weeks ago, and she had me all patched up in just a few seconds with her magic," she says. Then she frowns. "I'd say maybe she could fix a broken Soul Gem, but if Lulu and Katarina were already stumped, they'd surely already asked her." They were all in a team together, after all.

"Have you considered that maybe we aren't the weird ones for taking it well? Who were these other girls? Maybe you should be asking why they took it poorly," she says. Sayaka, for example, surely would not take this news well. She hoped Sayaka wasn't one of the other girls, for Sayaka's sake.

"But really, if you think about it, it makes sense. It's called a Soul Gem, after all," she says. Then she picks up her pastry and takes another bite.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy shakes her head. "Magda couldn't fix it. Teresia kind of... glued it, somehow. But I don't... know how good or permanent of a solution that is?"

    "Yeah, it's called a soul gem, but it's... it's not like he called it a phylactery. It would not be... it would be quite a jump to go from there to 'my soul has been removed from my body and put in this."

    Amanda takes a breath and exhales. "No. We're the weird ones. I wouldn't have known that a few months ago, but it turns out most people are actually quite attached to their bodies, and find the thought of being in another one horrific."

    Beat.

    Another realization.

    "...Would you... rather be something else, then?"

    Wait. Waaaaaaaaait. Could it be...?

    She stares at Mami. "Was your original body... something very different?"

Mami Tomoe has posed:
"Of course he didn't explain it that way, Amy-chan, how many girls--" Mami stops herself and then laughs. "Okay, point taken. We are the weird ones then."

She quirks a brow at Amy's line of questioning there. "No, I'm just me, and I've always been me. All I got from my wish was to live. If I get to keep on having tomorrows that turn into todays where I get to live? I'm not particularly fussed about the details."

She takes a sip of her tea and sets it down. "So, was your original body something very different, then?"

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Ah. You didn't think about what an obvious, normal response to that question would be.

    Amy looks a bit shocked, then looks away awkwardly. "It's not really... I mean now I know it's nothing to be ashamed of, It's just... for what are about to be obvious reasons, I feel like I'm gonna be judged for it. But everyone I've told has been nice so far, I don't want to keep secrets from my comrades, and you've been pretty level-headed so far, so..."

    She takes a breath.

    "I grew up in the 90's and early oughts." She looks away, looking increasingly ashamed as she goes on, "In America, but we didn't know about trans people then. I just figured I must be scientifically curious and open-minded, surely *any* guy who was those things would wonder what it was like to be a girl, and vice versa. I didn't think about how thinking about that *every day* might be a bit much."

    She recovers composure and continues, somberly, "I was introduced to the science-fiction idea of brain uploading around 2010 or so. That, since we're patterns in brains, if technology advanced enough, one day we could upload ourselves into computers, and then download into new, bespoke bodies, or just have the experience replicated by a virtual avatar that feels real, in an entirely virtual world. I hoped I'd live to see it. I felt like if I just, had a different body, I'd be comfortable doing all that stuff others did, leaving my computer and like, going to social events and partying and meeting people and... like, well, y'know, the sort of experimenting and finding themselves other young men and women did. And it wouldn't be weird that I wanted a girl body when there are people choosing furries and robots and stuff."

    She grabs her soul gem, and stands, and holds it up over her head. "And now it's all come f---ing true! Here's my cortical stack, my brain backup, I'm immortal, and I'm quite possibly young forever since we can regenerate but we can't shapeshift..."

    Her ranting grows more manic. "Does that mean I'm stuck with teenage hormones forever? Who knows! Stories just keep coming true! I turned into a girl! I fight magical creatures most of the world isn't aware of, risking death against monsters almost everyone else will never remember! My mind has been uploaded into a Clarketech rock so that I can be a better warrior, with a body that can be maimed or killed and still be fixed, so I can do something that actually matters and protect and help people!"

    She leans over and gives Mami a manic grin. "What's gonna come true next?! What story is gonna be real?! My life is a goddamn manga now and that's just a thing that happens! And it's way better than regular life but most people will never understand!"

    She slumps, and collapses to a sitting position on the floor with her legs splayed in front of her, looking down at the floor in melancholy. "Even most of the other magical girls won't really understand. They didn't... they haven't been reading stories for three decades before they started living them..."

Mami Tomoe has posed:
Mami Tomoe listens. She sips her tea and she listens. She's rather unflappable when she puts her mind to it. Nobody ever needs to know that she's an insecure mess underneath. No, the Mami most people see is always calm and collected in the face of anything, including a manic puella dream girl.

When Amy finishes her exposition, Mami reaches for the teapot. Her cup is empty. She pours more in hers, and looks to Amy's, offering to fill it up or top it off if she'd like.

"So, what you're telling me is that you're a millennial trans woman in a fifteen year old girl's body," she says, calmly. She's just stating her understanding of what Amy said like it's facts. Details of a conversation. Definitely not anything controversial. "So was that your wish then? To be a teenaged girl?"

For all she complains about them, Mami certainly enjoys being a teenaged girl. She can see why somebody who didn't really get that experience might wish for it.

This makes Amy's comment earlier about only getting an experience once make a lot more sense. Mami will have to make sure to invite her over for tea every so often, just to make sure that this time around is the experience she deserves.

Amanda Faust has posed:
    Amy blinks. That's not how she would have phrased it, but... "Uhhhhhhhh I mean I *guess* I'm a millenial, but I didn't start texting on my phone until the mid-2010s and I never got social media until I finally got a Tweeter account a few years ago I use sporadically. And I guess Mammoth when everyone thought Tweeter was gonna die. I say I feel like a 90's kid. Every time I say I think 'xennial' would be better, someone a few years older complains."

    She takes a breath and shrugs. "So, I knew I was gonna be a magical girl anyway, but I was in a bit of a time crunch and like, the image flew through my head of what if that does *not* change my body at all and I'm a 36-year-old man in a magical girl costume, I've seen manga like that, and I kinda panicced and wished to be cute. I feel bad I used it on something so silly and selfish *if* I was gonna be a teenage girl anyway, but I still don't actually know what would've happened. There haven't been any other cases!" She casts her gaze and her palms upward. "'Men becoming magical girls is already rare as it is-pon!'" Is she quoting something?

    Another breath and exhale. "So, I don't actually know, maybe my wish *did* save me from a terrible fate."

    She rubs the back of her neck. "I... dunno if I could've wished to be a teenage girl out loud. There are... problems with this, as far as society is concerned, but... I'm glad to get an experience I missed, you know? Although I guess it might be for the rest of my life, if we do stay like this."

    "...Still better than how I was, though."