The light from Sayaka's soul gem had dimmed. A layer of thick, roiling clouds fogged up the glossy window into the once endless cerulean sea. It had not been quite so dark prior, but then, neither had Sayaka's prospects. Those hopes, however fleeting, now laid much like the lamppost in the square of the first district: shattered and forgotten. Sayaka harbored some grim wish that she'd turn the corner and discover that the lamp was aright and the terrible meeting had never happened—but as she crossed into the square of the first district, the lamp wasn't only shattered. It was gone.
Sayaka pressed a palm into her forehead and sealed her eyes shut. Her ears buzzed, and the clouds crawling across the surface of her gem now threatened to etch a path across her mind. She felt weightless, drifting into the peerless sky of twinkling stars high above—but she was tethered by an anchor of shadow and fog whose chain clutched to her legs like the wiry arms of scrabbling, biting, whispering familiars, shuddering and bending in the way that witches were wont. Dimly, she wondered what she should see were she to open her eyes. The first district, or a witch's lair? Are they even different?
Kyouko was the key.
The thought of Kyouko burned new light and life into her soul gem, peeling back the gathering darkness. Kyouko was real. Even if none of these others, these strange people and things from alien worlds parading across a timeless swath of nostalgia cowered in the twilight of reckoning—even this all and more, should it not come of or from reality, could not take Kyouko away from her. Kyouko could not be some construct, some demon or witch's game. Kyouko was real. Sayaka was real.
Sayaka opened her eyes, wanting to scream away the nibbling doubts, and the first district greeted her—and it was quiet, and it was lonely.
Then, there was a voice.
“Hello, listeners,” said the bodiless voice of Cecil, both all at once smooth and more than a little pinched through the radio transmission. “In today's news, Amumu. Who is he? What does he do?”
Sayaka drew back to the same spot she where she had stood before—it's like I'm doomed to make the same mistakes—and glanced to the empty window where Kyouko had perched earlier. Cecil continued.
“I sent my intern Wilbur to investigate. According to intern Wilbur, Amumu was seen following Amethyst earlier this evening for reasons unknown.
“More on this story as it develops.”
The broadcast clicked off.
Amethyst, and it was tough to recall the purple gemmed girl without clenching a fist. What would she have done to Kyouko if...
“Oh, hey,” said Carlos in his usual casually disinterested fascination. Like Sayaka, he had returned to the same spot. “The university just contacted me to let me know I've received tenure.”
Sayaka stared, and then rolled her eyes, surveying the ensemble, and, of greater importance, wondering what connection Amumu had to Amethyst—whether he was a friend.
Or a foe.
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